Home | Podcast | Listening, prototyping and delivering media art in public space with Betty Sargeant

Listening, prototyping and delivering media art in public space with Betty Sargeant

Listening, prototyping and delivering media art in public space with Betty Sargeant

In this conversation, we hear how Betty Sargeant develops site-led installations through listening, prototyping, and stakeholder collaboration. We also discuss why delivery skills matter as much as ideas when working in public space. This interview is part of our series that focuses on media artworks in public space.

Betty shares the creative process behind The Fauxrest and what it takes to make media art that can survive real-world conditions, including weather, public interpretation, and the layered expectations of councils, communities, and collaborators.

AI sits in the background of this conversation as a conceptual provocation. Betty explains her “AI robot” persona, and how the claim of an “AI-created” installation sparked rumour, backlash, and debate. Those reactions provide a way into bigger questions about trust, authorship, and agency in public space.

Listen to this podcast to learn about:

  • How listening builds trust and reduces friction in public space projects
  • Prototyping site-led work through fast sketches, rough models, and material tests
  • Why visual mock-ups are essential for keeping stakeholders aligned over time
  • How participation shifts when audiences have not opted in
  • What it takes to take a public artwork from idea to install, and why project management protects your agency

 

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Chapters

  • (00:00:00) Finding the site first
  • (00:00:29) Podcast intro and acknowledgement
  • (00:01:02) Meet Dr. Betty Sargeant
  • (00:01:52) Inside the Fauxrest artwork
  • (00:02:38) Why public art matters
  • (00:04:19) The AI robot provocation
  • (00:06:04) Public reactions and town halls
  • (00:09:38) Fauxrest and Satire
  • (00:10:33) Performing Betty Sargeant AI
  • (00:12:22) Backlash and misunderstandings
  • (00:16:52) Collaboration and stakeholders
  • (00:20:33) Prototyping and models
  • (00:26:11) Visual communication for projects
  • (00:27:24) Three career essentials
  • (00:28:23) Why project management matters
  • (00:29:51) Wrap up and thanks

About Betty Sargeant

Betty Sargeant is a Melbourne-based media artist and researcher, and co-creative director of the art-technology duo PluginHUMAN with Justin Dwyer. Her practice spans public art and immersive installation, using light, moving image, sound, and sculptural form to place audiences inside multi-sensory experiences. She has received Good Design Awards in 2018 and 2020, and a Victorian Premier’s Design Award in 2017. Her recent project, Betty Sargeant AI, uses satire and performance to question authorship, agency, and the stories we tell about automation.

Takeaways from this interview with Betty Sargeant

About The Fauxrest

The Fauxrest is a temporary public artwork installed in wetlands on a beach in southern Australia. It is experienced by walking through a field of fluorescent poles, with lighting and audio that become more pronounced at night. Betty describes how wind and weather are not background conditions. They actively shape how the work is encountered.

Listening builds trust and reduces friction in public space projects

“I think a large way I approach the beginning of any project is listening.”

Betty frames listening as a practical method, not a soft skill. It helps her understand stakeholder needs, spot risks early, and read the personalities and power dynamics that shape a public project. Listening is paired with reassurance and clarity about expertise, so collaborators feel confident and do not overstep into creative control.

Prototyping site-led work through fast sketches, rough models and material tests

“I try to get to the site very quickly… I’m not sure I will make much before I get to a site.”

Betty’s prototyping begins with the site itself. She moves quickly from feeling the space to sketching, then to simple 3D models and material tests. Keeping prototypes rough reduces over-attachment and makes change easier. The goal is to understand spatial relationships and how bodies will move through the work, not to perfect an object in isolation.

Why visual mock-ups keep stakeholders aligned over time

“Sharing mock-ups so everyone stays aligned.”

Public projects can stretch over long timelines, with new people joining and expectations shifting. Betty uses visual mock-ups to keep everyone oriented and confident in what is being delivered. Images reduce the risk of misinterpretation that comes from describing spatial work only in words. They also help maintain trust by showing steady progress in a form stakeholders can immediately grasp.

How participation shifts when audiences have not opted in

“When it’s in the street, not everyone has asked for that piece of art.”

Betty distinguishes the gallery “contract” from public space, where people have not chosen to encounter art. Participation in this context is not just interaction. It includes confusion, refusal, debate, rumour, and ownership. Public response becomes part of the work’s meaning, and the artist’s job includes designing for unpredictable levels of attention and tolerance.

AI as a background provocation about trust and authorship

“How does it make us feel? When AI robots design our public spaces…”

AI is not presented as a production method here. It is used as a narrative trigger that reveals what people believe about automation, labour, and control. Betty’s satirical framing opens a pathway into questions of trust, authorship, and agency in public space, especially when the public is already uneasy about decisions being made without them.

Advice

“Learn how to manage so you can work on time and on budget.”

Betty links creative autonomy to delivery. Strong ideas only become public experiences if they are produced, negotiated, installed, and maintained within real constraints. Project management skills help the artist protect intent during the pressures of budget, timeline, and stakeholder expectation. For Betty, delivery is part of authorship, and it is a key factor in sustaining a long-term practice.

Links from the podcast with Betty Sargeant

Edited transcripts in this interview with Betty Sargean

What The Fauxrest feels like on site

Robin Petterd: What’s it like to experience it?

Betty Sargeant: The Fauxrest is a public artwork that consists of about 250 fluorescent pink poles. They’re textured, and they sit in wetlands on a beach in southern Australia. It was a temporary public artwork.

The experience is walking in and around these poles. There’s lighting and audio as well.

At night it becomes illuminated. Wind is also a factor in the artwork because it’s outside on a beach that gets blustery southerly winds. There are elemental factors with it as well.

Robin Petterd: What originally sparked your interest in working in public spaces?

Betty Sargeant: I think it’s the scale, really. I love working on a large scale.

I enjoy piecing together something about the site, my current curiosity, and the needs of the people around that site, and weaving those three things together. For me, that’s a creatively fascinating space to be in.

Participation when audiences have not opted in

Robin Petterd: There’s a strong participation edge in your work as well — that sense of, as you talked about, the people. It’s something we think about in interactive work, but it’s different with public work because people aren’t expecting to see a piece of artwork normally.

Betty Sargeant: Yes. I make interactive work, and also non-interactive work, and work that responds in different ways at different levels.

But you’re right. When people go to a gallery, they kind of sign up for a contract: I am going to see art. Whereas when it’s in the street, not everyone has asked for that piece of art. Not everybody has asked to be included.

But I also think that I haven’t been asked whether I want to see a piece of advertising either.

Part of being in a democracy — a true democracy — is this idea of difference, and being surrounded by difference. That difference can pose internal questions within myself about what it is to be human, what it is to exist with other humans, and what it is to live in this particular landscape.

I think those things are served well by public art being part of the mix.

The “AI robot” persona as a provocation about trust and authorship

Robin Petterd: What’s the involvement of your AI double in this particular project?

Betty Sargeant: That sits at the heart of the conceptual side of this project.

To be clear, this was a real public artwork that existed in real space over time. The way I advertised it was that the work was created by an AI robot called Betty Sargeant AI. My name’s Betty Sargeant — I’m an artist.

I said this AI was trained on my artworks, and that this AI robot could deliver artwork from beginning to end, including sourcing funding, project managing it, installing the artwork — with no human intervention.

We know AI robotics can’t do that at this point. But the provocation was: how does it make us feel when AI robots design our public spaces?

Through this project, I discovered how it made people feel. It wasn’t surprising, but the fervour of it bowled me over a little, Robin.

Robin Petterd: Queensland Symphony Orchestra used an AI-generated image to promote a series, and people’s reactions were shock and dislike. It’s interesting because quite often when people use AI, it’s making their life easier, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the end participant — viewer, reader — actually wants that. (Context: coverage of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra AI promo backlash)

Betty Sargeant: Yes. A couple of things are going on.

When people talk about AI these days, they’re mostly discussing large language models and generative AI. That’s around big companies that have sourced a lot of information from the internet and use that to generate new images, video, and audio based on an amalgam of what already exists online.

Many people have concerns around the environment — the cost to the environment — and the cost to creatives, because until recently they haven’t been remunerated for that, although that’s starting to shift a little bit.

There’s also this feeling of: where is our agency amongst it all? The average human is left feeling powerless amid this surge of AI becoming predominant in our lives.

That hits at the core of what The Fauxrest was about. I organised public panels, artist talks, discussions, and town hall meetings where people could bring their questions about AI, and I could answer them.

Understanding AI very simply as automated systems — and we’re surrounded by automated systems — helps people get to the next level: where do we want this operating in our lives, and how?

I set up this public artwork before dawn on this beach. Then I sat on the beach with my crew.

People came along and said, “What is this?” And I said, “I don’t know. It just appeared out of nowhere.” That was meant to be the narrative of the artwork.

Whispers began about what it meant. Somebody came back later and said, “A film crew’s coming — it’s a film set.” People started to take ownership over the artwork.

They got annoyed that they weren’t consulted and that it was suddenly appearing — that this was part of their public space. They didn’t know who’d made it.

That was part of the beginning of this project.

I did another public artwork in town at Mornington Peninsula Shire. While I was installing that work — as a human — people were yelling at me saying, “No robot work,” and I’m going, “Okay.”

I’m standing there as an obvious human along with my crew, installing it, and they’re getting very passionate and refusing to see that.

In the town hall meetings and discussions, we dug down past the raw emotions: it being unknown, it being new, humans being taken out of decision-making positions.

We dug into deeper levels — what artificial intelligence can offer us, and what its limitations are.

The Fauxrest — as a fake or false forest — also speaks to that. It’s F-A-U-X-R-E-S-T, so it also speaks to “false rest”. AI was meant to provide leisure time by taking away menial tasks we don’t want to do.

This artwork is raising issues around: that’s for a limited number of people, and for other people it’s creating more issues than solutions.

I’ll say it’s complex. I love technology. I’m not against artificial intelligence.

But for the foreseeable future, all of my artworks are being credited to an artificial intelligence robot called Betty Sargeant AI, and I am impersonating this robot.

In an era where machines are impersonating humans, I’m impersonating a machine — and I’m finding it fascinating.

Robin Petterd: You’re starting to move into some performance work around that as well. What does that look and feel like?

Betty Sargeant: I’ve just got back from South Korea where I did a live performance of Betty Sargeant AI. (Work overview: Betty Sargeant folio)

There was a screen — a three-channel video artwork as the backdrop — and it was 120 metres wide. I performed as this robot.

This robot has given talks, done public presentations, sat on panels. This was the first large-scale performance she’s done.

She’s a diabolical character. This is a persona that I adopt — it’s me as a human being pretending to be a robot. It’s ridiculous. I find it funny.

But it’s not just satire. It has a dark underbelly. She’s quite diabolical — a little military, a little flirty — oscillating between power and flirtation.

So it touches on issues of data, feminism, what robotics is doing for the role of women in society.

For me, it’s fun. I’ve never done figurative work before — I’ve always done abstract work — but it seems like the current climate has pushed me to do this.

I’m getting heavy emotional backlash about it, even though I’m clearly not a robot. I’m a human making this, and it is satire.

Robin Petterd: As you’re talking about it, there’s a tone where you’re having fun playing with something new and different. Do the people getting that visceral reaction include creators?

Betty Sargeant: It’s a real mix.

With The Fauxrest, it was presented in an ageing community. A lot of people felt like they were being intellectually edged out — not understanding what was happening, why it was happening, or why we needed it to happen.

They were finding things less personal and more difficult to access, so we had robust discussions.

I continue to get backlash from the creative community as well, even though I’m a human impersonating a robot in the name of satire.

I take that to heart — it shows the pivotal place we’re at as creatives right now. All the feelings in the room are valid. They’re big feelings.

It makes me think I’m onto something, because people feel something big about it.

Technology people often laugh at the performances, and everybody else looks terrified. And she is diabolical.

She makes real artworks, and she’s continuing to make them. I’m doing a large-scale immersive work in Europe next year under the name Betty Sargeant AI.

There’s always a disclaimer: this is a satirical provocation made by humans. But it’s advertised as being entirely the work of robotics and AI with no human intervention.

I don’t find it funny that artists are losing work because of AI and robotics. But I find it funny that I’m gaining work pretending to be a robot.

Sometimes people want “the robot”. Sometimes they don’t even understand it’s an impersonation. I have to tell them this isn’t real — it’s satire.

A lot of people approach me because they want this provocative AI robot to design something.

Robin Petterd: So they had the impression they could ask it to design a new piece in the same style?

Betty Sargeant: No. To be clear, I’ve never put this out as a generative AI platform.

It’s a robot run by AI trained on a small dataset — my own artworks — rather than a large language model trained on the whole internet.

It’s had 10 years of training, which is the amount of time I’ve spent in universities training to be an artist.

It could, I suppose, have an infinite number of creative outcomes because I feel like I have an infinite number of creative outcomes in me.

I’m not sure people literally think they can plug into it and get a creative outcome generated. But even people speaking to me on the phone don’t entirely understand that I’m impersonating an AI robot.

There’s a gap between reality and emotion around AI. Part of me doing this is trying to close that gap — to inform people about what we can do to implement ethical AI systems and get more proactive about how they’re implemented in society.

Australia’s doing some good things in this area — some steps forward. Many say it’s not enough. I say it’s a good beginning.

Listening, visual mock-ups and stakeholder alignment over long timelines

Robin Petterd: Collaboration is central to any media work, but it’s heightened in public artwork. You’ve got land owners, council permissions — it just keeps going in complexity. How have you negotiated those challenges?

Betty Sargeant: A large way I approach the beginning of any project is listening — particularly listening initially to stakeholders.

That helps me understand the desires and needs, and the personalities in the room, and how big or small they’re going to be in relation to the project.

Then I often reassure them — to help them feel comfortable and confident I know what I’m doing, so they don’t feel like they have to become creative if that’s not their realm.

They might be in an administrative role, so I help them understand: I’ve got three degrees in this. This is my job. This is what I do. I know what I’m doing.

Once I’ve listened and learned, and reassured them, I often find the job works a lot more smoothly.

I’ve got a team I work with, many of whom I’ve worked with for years. You rely on trusted people.

Projects often bring new people in too, and that’s interesting. Sometimes there are creative collaborations.

For me, there’s always collaboration with the machine as well, because there’s an element of digital in most of my work.

Even though what I’m doing now is impersonating the digital, it still sits there as a conceptual wrapping.

All the work is made by hand. With The Fauxrest, there’s no AI involved at all — it’s all made by hand. None of it was made digitally. It wasn’t even made by machines, beyond materials being manufactured.

There’s an irony in making work by hand and crediting it to a machine.

Prototyping and delivery skills that protect artistic agency

Robin Petterd: It’s interesting — collaboration with space, people and machines. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone call digital technology around us “machines”.

Betty Sargeant: I see them as machines because it helps us understand them as tangible.

The cloud is not a cloud that floats in the sky. The cloud is a large factory of machines running with air conditioners, often in a desert or somewhere remote.

It is a space. They are machines you can touch. Your computer is a machine.

Calling AI “automated machinery” helps us understand it’s not mythical and floating in the ether. Even if it’s connected by wifi, it’s still based on machines and machinery.

And I like machines.

Robin Petterd: The cloud example is useful. I overheard someone in a lift saying, “Then it goes into the cloud.” And someone asked, “Where’s the cloud?” It’s a good question — there’s still something physical, a data centre somewhere.

Betty Sargeant: It’s not intangible at all. Data is physical.

I use external hard drives. I don’t use cloud storage. I use cloud for file transfer, but I would never entrust my creative work — my heart and my soul — to sit on a server somewhere externally.

For bigger projects and remote teams, efficient workflows become important. But storing the project? No.

I’m sitting here with my computer. I’ve got two hard drives plugged into it, and two backups I can hold and touch — because the machine is tangible, Robin.

Robin Petterd: Working in public spaces has challenges around prototyping. What are the best ways you figure things out before you get to site?

Betty Sargeant: Before I get to site, I try to get to the site very quickly. I’m not sure I make much before I get to a site.

I need to really see, feel, and exist in the space — that triad between my curiosity, what the space needs, and what the people need, including stakeholders and the general public.

The space as it exists before the artwork is important to me. I can’t always do that if it’s far away or difficult to access, but mostly I can.

After that, I like working with my hands, even though I’m a digital person.

I like making small-scale models. Sometimes they’re very quick and not polished, but it allows me to make fast changes because I’m not too invested in a single prototype.

Quite often I move to the materials I intend to use and test components at material scale — not exactly on full scale, but with the real materials — to see how they respond.

Often there’s a digital element too — video, interactive lighting, something like that.

Sometimes I turn mock-ups into a digital mock-up that might be a digitised photograph, or a video of a scale model. Or it might be a digital-native piece designed to share with stakeholders.

That’s important to keep everybody on the same track. These projects can take a long time, so you want to keep checking: this is where it’s at, this is what we expected, this is what I’ve delivered, and it’s in the same realm. Everybody stays onboard and happy.

Robin Petterd: Someone said to me recently, “So what does that look like?” at different stages. And I realised I talk in abstracts. Other people need something tangible in front of them.

Betty Sargeant: I really agree.

Robin Petterd: Why models first?

Betty Sargeant: Maybe I do sketches first, and then they grow into models.

It’s about spatial relationships — setting up spaces where humans can be in the centre of the experience, so they feel like they can just be there, and the artwork orbits around them.

I need to see it spatially in model form.

Once I’ve visited a space and understood stakeholder expectations and my creative curiosity, I do a few sketches. That enables me to get ideas out quickly.

From sketching, I pretty quickly move to simple 3D models where I can spatialise the idea and imagine how to place humans at the centre.

Sometimes I do digital modelling too, but mostly I like to work with my hands.

Robin Petterd: It gets more of your body involved in the process. The end result is spatial, so the process should reflect that at the right stages.

Betty Sargeant: I think so. I’ve always been a maker. I constantly have big and small projects on the go, personal projects as well.

I finish my day of work and start my personal making projects. I love to make with my hands.

Although I’m a digital creature — I make video work — I try to balance time with computers and screens with time working with materials away from those things.

Robin Petterd: I’m going to interview an architect friend who loves model building and paper plans and has refused to learn digital tools. The models are his best way to communicate, especially because he’s in a country where he doesn’t fully speak the language.

Betty Sargeant: A picture tells a thousand words. We’re making visual works that are tangible in three dimensions.

To describe them with words — when the aesthetics are tactile and visual — is counterintuitive.

If you describe them with words, those words translate differently for everybody in the room, and that’s a big risk.

Being able to do it in pictures — still imagery, moving imagery — is vital.

Robin Petterd: For other artists thinking about working with media in public places, what’s the greatest bit of advice you could offer?

Betty Sargeant: One bit of advice?

Robin Petterd: Some people have three things ready to go, and I’m always in awe of that.

Betty Sargeant: Three things.

First, think of yourself as an ideas machine and exercise that, so you feel like you’ve always got more and more ideas. You need to exercise that as an artist.

Second, learn how to project manage so you can work on time and in budget.

Third, believe in yourself. Be realistic about the skills you have and the skills you don’t have, and bolster the skills you don’t have by building a team. Be strong in your leadership, and always be humble.

Robin Petterd: Thank you. That’s a lovely set of advice.

Betty Sargeant: I’m not sure that’s three, but maybe I can hyphenate a few.

Robin Petterd: Project management can be one — yes.

Betty Sargeant: Timelines and budgets can send artists to sleep, but without these skills it’s hard to have a long career if you’re making your living from this.

You can outsource them, but being able to do them yourself is useful.

I think it’s important that artists have autonomy within their practice and aren’t beholden to an agency or intermediary that takes away that part of the work.

You can make more money by doing it. It also gives you a 360-degree vision of the project — and the ability to deliver it how you want to deliver it.

Robin Petterd: Why did you choose project management as one of those things?

Betty Sargeant: Artists will talk about aesthetics — that’s why my first point is being an ideas machine and exercising your ideas. The work you make needs to be good.

Then the work will only be seen if it’s delivered. Being able to deliver it in the way you want is crucial.

Project management sits intertwined with the work being what you envisage.

I advocate for artists having autonomy and the confidence and knowledge to run budgets and timelines and manage people alongside the creative load.

Not everyone wants to do that, but when artists can, it can give you more freedom and open you up to more opportunities.

Posted 28-03-2026