Biography | CV

I have been a practising and exhibiting artist and designer for over thirty years. These works include electronic installations, collaborations with performers, video and audio work, generative and software based artworks, VR environments and data visualisations/ecologies. Interdisciplinary and collaborative practice informs the development and ultimately the design of these artworks.

Biography

Sarah Waterson is a media artist, designer, and practice-led researcher specialising in mapping, materiality, and data ecologies. As a senior lecturer in interactive design at the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University, Australia, she explores the influence of electronic technologies on subjectivities and how design as a discipline can inform practice and interdisciplinary collaborations.

Over the past thirty years, she has invited audiences to engage with the politics of representation and the frameworks that shape perceptions. Embracing collaborative and experimental practices—including non-human collaborations, site-specific electronic arts, data-driven installations, and generative software-based artworks—she investigates the intersections of art, science, and philosophy.

Among her notable works is “WeatherState” (ISEA2024), an ongoing generative project visualising weather data to explore ocean environmental climate change phenomena. In “Hothouse” (Cementa2019), she created an installation connecting exotic plant species with climate systems to critique the relationship between nature and capital. Her interactive project “Laika’s Dérive” (Carriageworks, Sydney, 2010; Furtherfield, London) invites participants to experience urban spaces from a canine perspective, centring the non-human.

Collaborating with Juan Francisco Salazar on “33ºSouth”, she developed a three-channel audio-visual installation that juxtaposes the cities of Sydney and Santiago using a custom-made data mapping system and database. In “trope” (Sydney Writers’ Festival, 2008), she created a virtual environment promoting new Australian writing, creatively intervening in the reader’s engagement with text.

Her earlier collaborations with Kate Richards include “subscape-PROOF” (Australian Centre for the Moving Image, 2004–2005; Sydney Opera House), a data-mapping installation critiquing political rhetoric and media through generative video and sound, and “subscape-BALTIC” (ISEA2004), which explored data mapping and environmental interactions.

Her publications include a book chapter co-authored with Dr Juan Francisco Salazar: “Play_Space: Conceptualizing Interactive Media for Community Participation” in PLACE: Local Knowledge and New Media Practice, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008. Her current research interests encompass data mapping, data ecologies, and embodied media.

Through her academic role at Western Sydney University, she continues to engage in practice-led interdisciplinary enquiry, striving to expand the boundaries of experimental art while blending artistic vision with interdisciplinary inquiry. She invites you to explore her projects and join in examining the dynamic interplay between technology, environment, and human experience.

For a full resume please email me using sarah at sarahwaterson dot net