What does it mean to think, act, and create within a world composed not of discrete, binary entities and identities but of systems that are interdependent, reciprocal, and nested? In the face of ecological chaos, social fragmentation, and technological acceleration—all of which demand new modes of responsiveness and accountability, at a new pace—this is an increasingly urgent question. My arts-based doctoral research approaches systems thinking relationally, as both a conceptual methodology and a creative practice: I combine media art, sculpture, diagrams, and performance, using techniques of expanded cinema and the Light and Space Movement to explore neurodivergent and non-colonial ontologies.

Proposal:

Presentation: A system may be understood, per Donella Meadows, as a set of elements that are interconnected such that their interactions generate distinctive patterns of behavior over time, revealing responses that are characteristic of the system itself. My research draws upon systems thinking, Enactive Cognition—viewing humans as processes nested within other processes—and Participatory Sense-Making—which emphasizes the co-regulation and dynamic flows between agents in relation. My experiments engage a fundamental question underlying my practice: Can artworks be made using node-based media and feedback at the human scale to reveal the structures and operations of feedback at other-than-human scales?

As a PhD candidate at RPI, my work is shifting from representing systems dynamics to engaging them. From a systems thinking perspective, my goal is to set conditions for processes that unfold through feedback, iteration, and relational responsiveness. My decades-long practice of using techniques of expanded cinema and the Light and Space Movement—combining moving image, glass, diagrams, and sunlight in works—explores neurodivergent and non-colonial ontologies. I have begun using node-based and generative media (Houdini, Touch Designer) to create murmurations and particle generators as means of visualizing, for example, how the dynamics that emerge between people in dialogue can take on autonomous form. Building upon that work, I will soon be using Touch Designer to experiment with live and recorded feedback—light, sound, EEG, gesture—translating these signals into performative video-sculptures. In this sense, Touch Designer serves not just as a tool but as a collaborator: a responsive system through which I can explore patterns of reciprocity, attention, and resonance. At ISTP, I will discuss and present recent experiments with generative systems, bio- and video-feedback systems, and videosculpture to enact divergent ways of sensing, processing, and exchanging information, i.e., ways of knowing.

Installation:

Extending and supporting this presentation, I propose a looping video installation of recent short works (see below). These may be projected in a darkened space (equipment: projector, speakers, wall or projection screen) or played on a monitor (equipment: sufficiently large monitor, speakers, media player). These works are 1) The Cloud Model, 2) video excerpts of the 2025 International Symposium for Assistive Technologies in Music and Art (ISATMA*25) in which The Cloud Model features, and 3) the film/expanded cinema/manifesto from which The Cloud Model emerges, Stitching the Future with Clues. (Please see Vimeo captions: under user “Oilly Oowen” click “…more”)

1. The Cloud Model: https://vimeo.com/1055014843

2. ISATMA 2025 (excerpt): https://vimeo.com/1089255506

3. Stitching the Future with Clues (excerpt): https://vimeo.com/647940094

Artist Bio:

Allison Leigh Holt is a neurodivergent, anti-disciplinary artist, a Fulbright scholar (Indonesia), and the first person in their household to graduate high school. A current Lucas Arts Fellow at Montalvo Art Center, they have held residencies at EMPAC, Djerassi, the Cemeti Institute for Art and Society (Indonesia), Bullseye Glass Company, and the Experimental Television Center; and resident researcher roles at Sanggar Perbakayun, the Santa Barbara Center for Art, Science and Technology, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Notable exhibitions include Eye Filmmuseum (The Netherlands), The Ford Foundation Gallery, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, BAMPFA, Stanford University, SFMOMA, The Exploratorium, Cemeti Institute for Art and Society (solo, Indonesia), The North Dakota Museum of Art (solo), and San Francisco Cinematheque. They have lectured at Stanford Arts Institute’s Imagining the Universe: Cosmology in Art and Science; FEMeeting: Women in Art|Science|Technology (Canada); RIXC Art-Science Festival (Riga, Latvia); After Agency (Mickiewicz University, Poland); Video Vortex (Indonesia); the 20th Annual Science of Consciousness Conference; the American Anthropological Association Conference; and the Yogyakarta International New Media Festival. At the University of North Dakota Writers Conference, Holt was in dialogue with science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson and theoretical physicist Brian Greene; and has served on the Mind & Life Summer Research Institute faculty.

Holt’s commissions include The Ford Foundation Gallery, San Francisco Arts Commission, the David Bermant Foundation, the Zero1 Biennial, Pro Arts Gallery, and UC Santa Barbara’s Denise Montell Molecular Science Laboratory, where they are also included in the collection. They have taught at San Francisco State University, Massachusetts College of Art, and developed Neurodivergent Media, an experimental media pedagogy for autistics. Their writing features in journals like Panorama, Public, Leonardo, and Yale’s Theater Magazine. Holt studied at The Evergreen State College (BA), Massachusetts College of Art (MFA), and now, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Ph.D. candidate).