Bio

Mirabelle Jones: Artistic Researcher of AI Systems and Interactive Technology

Mirabelle Jones (they/them) is a queer, non-binary artist, creative technologist, and researcher working at the intersection of art, computation, artificial intelligence, and human experience. Their practice investigates how emerging technologies shape the ways we understand ourselves, one another, and the data that increasingly mediates our lives. Working across artistic research, interactive installation, performance, immersive storytelling, and critical technology, Jones creates spaces for audiences to encounter technology not simply as a tool, but as a social, cultural, and embodied relationship.

Jones’s practice spans artificial intelligence, natural language processing, computer vision, deepfakes, extended reality, wearables, sensors, spatialized sound, LEDs, animatronics, sculpture, and participatory systems. Their works often use speculative and participatory approaches to make complex technological questions tangible, intimate, and experiential. Rather than treating AI as a neutral or inevitable force, Jones asks what kinds of relationships we are building with these systems, whose identities and values become encoded within them, and how we might imagine alternative technological futures.

Their artistic research centers particularly on human-AI relationships and the performative politics of data. Projects such as Artificial Intimacy and Embodying the Algorithm explore questions of identity, embodiment, intimacy, representation, and agency through experimental AI systems. Their research has examined personalized language models, deepfakes, algorithmic identity, and the ways people make sense of technologies designed to imitate or respond to human selves. This work culminated in their doctoral research, The Data Is of Us But Not Us: Exploring Relations to Responsive AI Systems Through Speculative Participatory Art-Based Research, which developed speculative participatory art as a method for investigating human relationships with responsive AI systems.

Jones holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Copenhagen, where they conducted research in Human-Centered Computing, as well as an MFA in Book Art and Creative Writing from Mills College and a BA in Language Arts from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Their interdisciplinary education in literature, book arts, computation, and human-computer interaction informs a practice grounded equally in narrative, critical inquiry, and technological experimentation.

Their research and professional practice have included work as an AI Ethics Researcher and Visiting Artist at Novo Nordisk’s AI Center of Excellence, a Visiting Researcher at metaLAB at Harvard, and a Research Assistant in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen. They have also worked as a Senior Designer/Developer of Interactive Technology at Meow Wolf, where they contributed to large-scale immersive environments and interactive artworks.

Jones’s work has been exhibited and presented internationally, including at Harvard Art Museums, Currents New Media, the Finnish National Opera and Ballet’s Opera Beyond, Museum Meermanno, Catch: Center for Art, Design, and Technology, ATA Gallery, and the Center for Performance Research. Their work is held in collections including the ONE Archives Foundation, the Center on Contemporary Art, the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, and special collections at institutions including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Syracuse University, Mills College, and the University of North Texas. They have also presented their research and creative practice at institutions including MIT, Harvard University, Aalborg University, the University of Gothenburg, Rhode Island School of Design, and Maryland Institute College of Art.

Alongside their studio and research practice, Jones is committed to education and public engagement. They have taught interactive art and technology, wearable technology, LED programming, and interactive installations, and have led workshops addressing AI, deepfakes, immersive technologies, creative coding, and social justice. In 2021, they founded AI Performance Space, an online gallery dedicated to performance artists working with artificial intelligence.

Jones’s broader practice is rooted in the belief that artists can play an essential role in shaping technological futures and revealing insights difficult to obtain through other research methods. Through artistic experimentation, participatory research, and critical making, they create opportunities to question technological assumptions, surface marginalized perspectives, and imagine forms of technology that are more ethical, inclusive, embodied, and accountable. Jones is originally from Oakland, CA and presently works globally as a researcher, educator, and artist.