Ash Eliza Smith

Ash Eliza Smith uses storytelling, worldbuilding, and speculative design to shape new realities. Smith works across art and science, between fact and fiction, and with human and non-human agents, including animals, plants, and machines to re-imagine past and future technologies, systems, and rural-urban ecologies. Smith incorporates liveness, play, and participatory co-design strategies to create interactive stories, films, mixed reality theater, live-action role-plays (LARPs), and prototypes of the future that may solve or re-frame problems.

Ash is an Assistant Professor at the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts. She received her MFA from the Visual Arts program at UCSD, where she worked as an affiliate of the UCSD Design Lab and associate director of the Culture, Art, and Technology department. Previously, she attended the Performance Studies program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Smith has presented work at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA), Qualcomm Institute (Gallery QI), and the Without Walls Festival. Smith has worked as a producer, director, and writer for various media groups and publications such as Vice, Motherboard, and The Creator’s Project and produced work in collaboration with Creative Time and MoMA in NYC.

September 2023