Sahar Sajadieh is a computational media/performance artist, theorist, and poet. She is a research fellow at the MIT Open Documentary Lab. Sahar obtained her Ph.D. in Media Arts and Technology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She recently completed her Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at the UC San Diego Department of Visual Arts. Her academic background includes a dual bachelor’s degree in Computer Science (BSc) and Theatre (BA) from the University of British Columbia, as well as a master’s degree in Performance Studies from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

For Sahar, art practice is a way to challenge the public’s comfort zone and provoke dialogue about difficult, unspoken issues facing our communities. Through digital performance practice, computational art-making, and interactive storytelling, her work playfully examines the underlying problematic constructs of societal interactions and the exploitative systems of

power. She is interested in the applications of emerging media, robotic actors, and artificially intelligent systems as means for poetic expression, public intervention, and social empowerment.