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In this episode of Unlocked, we talk with digital art pioneer and sculptor Auriea Harvey to explore her extraordinary journey from early net art and video game design to immersive installations and hybrid sculptures. Auriea opens up about her creative process, the role of interaction in her work, her evolving relationship with AI, and the making of her recent exhibitions Prophecy (Arebyte, London) and C0D3X (Gazelli Art House). A deep, insightful, and inspiring conversation for anyone curious about the future of art.
Auriea Harvey has been in digital art longer than most of its current practitioners have been adults. From Entropy 8 Super - one of the foundational works of net art in the late 1990s - to video game design to sculpture, she has spent thirty years testing what happens when you refuse to choose between the digital and the physical. Her relationship with AI is the latest chapter in that sustained refusal.
Auriea Harvey is a digital art pioneer, sculptor, and net art veteran whose practice has evolved continuously across three decades. She is best known for Entropy 8 Super, the landmark net art project she created in the late 1990s, and for her subsequent work in video game design. Her current practice centres on sculpture that lives simultaneously in digital and physical registers, and she has presented recent work in significant institutional contexts including Prophecy at Arebyte London and C0D3X at Gazelli Art House. Her evolving relationship with AI is one of the most historically informed encounters with the technology available in the current conversation.
Harvey's historical perspective on digital art is irreplaceable: she was there at the beginning of net art, has watched multiple waves of digital enthusiasm arrive and recede, and has continued making work through all of them. Her relationship with AI is therefore not that of someone encountering a new technology - it's that of someone comparing a new tool to the full history of digital production she has inhabited. This conversation explores how that history shapes her current practice, what sculpture allows her to do that screen-based work doesn't, and what her long involvement with digital art has taught her about what actually lasts.
Net art origins and digital continuity
Harvey's work with Entropy 8 Super established principles about network, interactivity, and collective experience that remain relevant to everything being made now. Her historical depth makes her account of current developments unusually grounded.
Video game design and interactive narrative
The move from net art to video game design was not a departure - it was an extension of Harvey's interest in the participatory, the interactive, and the player's relationship to authored worlds. The skills and sensibilities she developed there carry directly into her sculpture practice.
Sculpture as digital-physical integration
Harvey's sculptures are not digital works translated into physical form - they emerge from a practice that treats digital and physical making as genuinely continuous. The result is objects with a quality of materiality that purely digital or purely physical work can't replicate.
AI as the newest chapter
Harvey's encounter with AI is informed by thirty years of experience with digital tools - which means she brings both excitement and hard-won scepticism to the encounter. Her evolving relationship with the technology is more nuanced than either the enthusiasts or the critics typically produce.
Auriea Harvey's practice is a living history of digital art - one that connects the net art of the 1990s to the most current questions about AI, sculpture, and digital-physical integration. Understanding her work means understanding where the current moment comes from, and that historical depth is essential for building a collection that holds its meaning over time.
Unlocked is the podcast by 100 collectors - the global network for digital art collectors. Each episode, we speak with artists, curators, collectors, and builders shaping the digital art world. No market speculation. No hype. Just honest, substantive conversations about art, practice, and what it means to collect today. New episodes release throughout the year. Find Unlocked on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 100 collectors is a membership network. [Explore membership →]
