Kite Merges Lakȟóta Knowledge with AI at MIT List Center

Lakȟóta artist Kite (Suzanne Kite) presents her solo exhibition 'List Projects 31: Kite' at MIT's List Visual Art Center, running through May 18, 2025. The show centers on the installation 'Wičháȟpi Wóihanbleya (Dreamlike Star)' (2024), which uses AI to translate the artist's dreams into stone arrangements and musical scores. Kite, who heads the Indigenous AI lab at Bard College, employs sensor-embedded hair braids and the Wekinator machine-learning interface to create interactive soundscapes. Her work challenges settler-colonial epistemologies by positioning Indigenous knowledge as a valid research methodology, drawing on Lakȗota cosmology where stones are animate beings. Collaborators include musicians, researchers, and Lakȗota elders like her grandfather Maȟpíya Nážin. Kite's practice refuses 'Hungry Listening,' a term by scholar Dylan Robinson, and prioritizes legibility to Indigenous communities. The exhibition features works such as 'Hél čhankú kin ȟpáye (There lies the road)' (2021) and 'Ínyan Iyé (Telling Rock)' (2019), which materialize AI as a conduit rather than a collaborator. Kite's research paper 'How to Build Anything Ethically' (2019) outlines her commitment to Indigenous protocols. The show was previously performed at HKW in Berlin (2024).