Dr Petra Gemeinboeck's installation practice explores the materiality of the digital, its embodiment, agency and performativity. She is interested in the audiences’ aesthetic experience as they become bodily involved, or even implicated. Her research crosses the fields of architecture, interactive installation, mobile media, robotics, and visual culture. Currently, Gemeinboeck collaborates with the artificial intelligence researcher, Rob Saunders, to develop a robotic sculptural practice that explores the anatomical trauma of a machine-augmented environment and its performative potential. She is also a founding member of the international artist group In Serial, which works with messy assemblages of choreographed robots and chemical materials.

Previously, Gemeinboeck developed interactive installations and locative media works that implicated participants in the production of hybrid spaces, problematising the paradoxical ground common to both intervention and surveillance. Her immersive virtual spaces challenge dominant notions of control, knowledge and representation by placing participants inside responsive performative realities.

Petra is an artist and researcher, working across creative robotics, performance and feminist theory. She currently leads an Australia Council Research project that investigates the potential of movement, and dance in particular, for reimagining how machines look, learn and affect us. Her earlier work, Accomplice (2013-14), investigates the co-evolution of humans and machines by deploying autonomous robots embedded into the architectural fabric of a gallery.

Petra was a finalist for the National New Media Art Award 2012, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, and the International Lace Award 2011, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, and received an honorary mention at the Live 2011 Grand Prix, Digital Turku, European Capital of Culture. Her works have been exhibited internationally, including at the Ars Electronica Festival, AT, International Triennial of New Media Art at NAMOC, Beijing; Centre des Arts Enghien at Paris; Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT), Liverpool, UK; Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, AU; ICC Tokyo; and MCA Chicago, IL. She has published widely on issues of interactivity and machine agency. Gemeinboeck has been artist in residence at Artspace Sydney, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Sony Computer Science Laboratories Paris, and Fraunhofer Institute Stuttgart, and has been a participant in the European Mobile Lab for Interactive Media Artists. Her works have been exhibited internationally at venues including Archilab (FR), Ars Electronica (AT), Centre des Arts d'Enghien-les-Bains Paris (FR), Gallery Fabrica (UK), ICC Tokyo (JP), MCA Chicago (USA), OK Center for Contemporary Art (AT), and the Thessaloniki Biennale (GR)