Annual New Media Lecture Series Welcomes Bio-Artist and Filmmaker Kathy High ʼ77

By Rebecca Taurisano March 27, 2025

Colgate University welcomed prolific bio-artist and experimental filmmaker Kathy High ʼ77 as part of the Eric J. Ryan and Film and Media Studies (FMST) Annual New Media Lecture Series, March 11–13. The series is part of the Middle Campus Initiative for Arts, Creativity, and Innovation, which integrates the arts into life and learning at Colgate.

The filmmaker screened excerpts from her films for Alternative Cinema, presented the lecture “Being with Beings: Queering Art and Science,” and curated Mexican Muses: Works by Artists Ximena Cueva and Ricardo Nicolayevsky for the Ryan Family Film Series. In addition to the on-campus events, FMST students benefited from High’s critiques of their films.

High is a professor of video and new media in the arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, N.Y. Through her art, she collaborates with scientists on issues surrounding living systems, animal sentience, and biotechnology and medical ethical dilemmas.

She is the co-founder of the Sanctuary for Independent Media, a community organization focused on the use of art and science to promote social and environmental justice and freedom of expression. She is also the coordinator of NATURE Lab, the Sanctuary’s community health and urban ecology research initiative.

High’s focus on the intersection of art and science was born at Colgate, thanks to the foundation of a liberal arts education and her own health journey with Crohn’s disease. Originally on track to be in the class of 1976, High became so ill that she did not graduate until the following year. She describes her diagnosis as a blessing in disguise — serving as the inspiration for her films that explore the medical community’s treatment of women and chronic diseases, as well as laying the groundwork to venture into bio-art.

High initially worked as an artist assistant for experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton and his wife, photographer Marion Faller. Frampton encouraged High to pursue graduate studies at the University of Buffalo, where he was teaching. There, High created one of her earliest works, Cow Film, which explores how the state of women’s and cows’ bodies are regarded. “I gravitated toward being a storyteller always, that was just my propensity,” she said. “I liked the temporality of film — that it is capturing something in time.”

After teaching and working as a cinematographer, sound technician, and editor in New York City, High joined the faculty at RPI, hoping to increase citizen engagement in scientific advancements and involve herself as an artist in the conversation surrounding advances in science and technology.

High’s foray into bio-art — working with living systems — began with Embracing Animal, a multimedia scientific installation about transgenic rats that have been modified with DNA from humans with particular diseases, like Crohn’s. The project combined sculpture, video, and performance and was exhibited at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass.

High conducted two art residencies in 2009 and 2010 at SymbioticA based at the University of Western Australia in Perth, the first institution to pair artists and researchers in a biological lab setting. She returned to Australia to create Death Down Under, a documentary that follows the collaboration of fashion designer and funeral celebrant Pia Interlandi and forensic scientist Ian Dadour as they explored death, decay, and eco-friendly burials. High’s recent work explores the human gut microbiome with Dr. William DePaolo, an immunologist from the University of Washington.

At the heart of High’s work is a desire to analyze the ethical dilemmas facing the medical community and bring the conversation to a broader audience. She believes that combining art with science is the path to accomplish that goal. “Interdisciplinarity is the key to our survival,” said High. “If artists, scientists, and engineers start working together, we’re going to get a better outcome.”

For more information on Kathy High ʼ77, visit www.kathyhigh.com.