About Sahar

Sahar Sajadieh is a computational performance/media artist and scholar, interaction designer, and poet. She recently completed her fellowship at Open Documentary Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as her Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship (as part of the UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program) at UC San Diego Department of Visual Arts. She was a recipient of an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Fellowship at Vanderbilt University. She obtained her Ph.D. in Media Arts and Technology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her academic background includes a dual Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science (BSc) and Theater (BA) from the University of British Columbia (UBC) and a Master’s Degree in Performance Studies (MA) from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts. 

Sahar’s research lies at the intersection of computational arts, artificial intelligence, socially engaged design, and performance/media theory. She is interested in the creative and critical applications of natural language processing, machine learning, extended reality, and robotics as means of storytelling, poetic expression, and social intervention. For Sahar, art practice is a form of activism, a way to challenge the public’s comfort zone and provoke dialogues about difficult, unspoken issues in society. Her research focuses on making interactive technologies and artificial intelligence more alive and their societal applications more ethical.

Sahar’s work has been presented at international digital arts festivals and computer science conferences such as the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA), ACM CHI, SIGGRAPH, HRI, and ACM Multimedia, as well as performance and interdisciplinary studies conferences such as PSi, ATHE, ASTR, and HASTAC. She has received funding and fellowships for her artworks and research from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the Digital Democracies Institute, the Mellon Funded Data Fluencies Project, the University of California Humanities Research Institute, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Sahar has served on the committees of numerous conferences and digital art exhibitions, such as ISEA, CHI, SIGGRAPH, and the Alliance of Women in Media Arts and Sciences. Her recent video artwork, Tales of the Hair, was exhibited at the Currents New Media Arts Festival in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the CVPR AI Art Exhibition in Seattle, Washington, and ISEA2024 in Brisbane, Australia. As a theater artist, she has written, directed, performed, and worked as a dramaturge in several theatrical performances in New York, Vancouver, and Santa Barbara.