KATHERINE HELEN FISHER

EdgeCut Photo Documentation: Maria Baranova

Human Resources Photo Documentation: Anastasia Velicescu

Read the academic paper: A Cyborg's Mirror: Bodies in Hyperreality

An ongoing research project, Cyborg Mirror is a techno-feminist performance work that reimagines embodiment through real-time AI-powered choreographic systems. Moving between choreographed movement and improvised, dialectical exchange with generated images, the performer enters a live feedback loop in which the body is continuously reframed. Conceived and performed by Katherine Helen Fisher, the piece thinks through the maternal, aging body and the shifting value of womanhood, reifying desire in the algorithmic age as a desire-less, middle-aged femme body meets the audience’s disembodied desires.

Built as an integrated real-time media ecology, the work combines machine vision, diffusion imaging, live AI photography, and voice-to-voice conversation with a custom-tuned LLM, all steered by audience prompts. Audience text enters through a phone interface, travels via WebSockets into a language model that interprets and routes prompts across the system, then returns as synthetic speech and generative visuals projected back into the room. The loop becomes the score, with authorship continually negotiated through who controls the frame, who understands the system, and who supplies the data.

Credits
Concept and performance: Katherine Helen Fisher
Co-created with creative technologists: Shimmy Boyle, Mingyong Cheng
Original music: Joshua Kadish
Early iterations, performance, and devising: Jae Neal
Visual décor and visual art prompts: C. Finley
Dramaturgy: August Henders, Eloise Deliuca
Ozempic Mommy styling: Uma Shannon
Work-in-progress showings hosted by: Emily Barasch (First Draft at Human Resources) ’24; Barnard Movement Lab ’25; Kat Mustatea (EdgeCut) ’25
Initial research: Data Fluencies Theater Project ’23–’24