Kat Mustatea
Kat Mustatea is a playwright, technologist, and imagination engine whose tech-native storytelling stretches theater into the digital age. She has written plays in which people turn into lizards, a woman has a sexual relationship with a swan, and a one-eyed cyclops tries to fit into Manhattan society by getting a second eye surgically implanted in his head. Her TED talk originates a wholly new thesis about the meaning of machines making art as society shifts radically toward autonomous, algorithmic systems. She speaks frequently about the intersection of cutting edge technology and art (most recently at SXSW, The Pompidou Center in Paris, and Creative Tech Week in NYC), and is writing a book about art in the age of autonomous machines. She studied philosophy at Columbia University and fine art at Pratt Institute, worked as a software engineer and product manager, and founded a theater company in Berlin. Over the last decade, she has developed cross-disciplinary works for the stage that combine music, dance, and highly emotional theater. Her plays have been performed in New York, Chicago, Berlin, and Oslo. Her essays appear in Forbes, The Week, and Hyperallergic.