Archana Prasad
Crafting Community-led Innovation with Ada, Andal and AI
This practice-led research investigates how participatory approaches can reshape the development of AI tools for the cultural sector, with a focus on empowering underrepresented creative communities. Situated at the intersection of technology, poetry, and textile histories, the work explores how inclusive, community-centered AI can bridge cultural, gendered, and temporal divides that persist in the digital age.
Drawing inspiration from two visionary women – Ada Lovelace, whose “poetical science” imagined programmable creativity, and Andal, the 8th-century Tamil poet-saint whose writing and ritual traditions continue to influence South Indian weaving communities – the research develops a conceptual and methodological framework for cross-cultural collaboration. These figures anchor an inquiry into how AI’s latent spaces might be shaped through feminist, craft-based, and non-extractive knowledge practices.
By tracing how weaving technologies have historically transformed labor, authorship, and gender – from the Jacquard loom to contemporary mechanization and AI – the study examines how current AI systems risk reproducing inequities embedded in cultural production. Through community co-creation, the project seeks to prototype equitable, open, and provenance-aware AI tools that honour cultural lineages while expanding who gets to participate in shaping future technologies.
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Biography
Archana Prasad is an artist, technologist, and cultural entrepreneur whose work bridges participatory design, responsible AI, and community-centered innovation. She is the Founder & Chief Creative Officer of Gooey.AI, a low-code AI platform advancing inclusive and culturally grounded AI practices. Through initiatives such as Beyond Bias, the AI Futures Fellowship, and collaborations with the Goethe-Institut, Archana leads pioneering work on multi-lingual, provenance-aware, and equitable AI tools co-created with underrepresented cultural and craft communities. Her approach blends technical R&D with field-based methodologies that challenge extractive AI systems and expand access to creative and computational technologies.
For over two decades, Archana has built institutions and collaborative ecosystems at the intersection of art, technology, and social impact. She founded Jaaga, Bangalore’s influential art–architecture and creative technology space, and BeFantastic, a transnational tech-art platform that explores sustainable futures through public engagement. As a former design researcher at Microsoft Research India, she contributed to early HCI innovations in digital heritage, mobile communication, and inclusive interaction design, earning multiple U.S. patents and publications at ACM CHI, Creativity & Cognition, AVI, and WWW.
A Clore–Chevening Fellow, ArtThink South Asia Fellow, CSCLeader, and British Council Digital Arts Awardee, Archana’s work has been showcased at global venues including Ars Electronica, India Art Fair, Mozilla Festival, Amsterdam’s Rmbrndt.Nu, and the Bangalore Literature Festival. Across all her projects, she remains committed to building equitable AI futures shaped by cultural producers, artisans, and communities who are too often excluded from technological design.
Degrees
Masters - Animation Film Design, National Insitute of Design, India
Masters - Art History, Chitrakala Institute of Advanced Studies, India
Bachelors - Painting, Chitrakala Parishath, India
Experience
Archana Prasad has over two decades of experience leading organisations, research programs, and large-scale cultural–technology initiatives across India and internationally. Her career bridges art, design research, community development, and responsible AI innovation, and works with multiple types of stakeholders - international embassies, national and state governments, activist and citizen-led initiatives, cultural, technology and educatoinal institutions.
She is the Founder & Chief Creative Officer of Gooey.AI, where she leads the development of inclusive, multilingual, and provenance-aware AI tools designed with and for underrepresented cultural communities. Through initiatives such as Beyond Bias and the AI Futures Fellowship, she has shaped Gooey’s global reputation as a leader in participatory and ethical AI.
Archana is also the Founder of Jaaga, a pioneering creative technology not-for-profit set up in 2009 in Bangalore, India that supports artists, technologists, and social innovators through collaborative programs, residencies, community infrastructure, and public engagement.
In 2017 she founded BeFantastic, a tech-art platform and festival that brings together artists, researchers, technologists, and the public to explore sustainable futures aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Earlier in her career, Archana worked at Microsoft Research India as a researcher and creative director, contributing to influential projects in digital heritage, inclusive communication tools, and HCI innovations for emerging markets. Her work during this time resulted in multiple U.S. patents and internationally presented research at ACM CHI, Creativity & Cognition, AVI, and WWW.
Across her roles—as founder, curator, director, researcher, and designer—Archana has led interdisciplinary teams; produced urban accessibility studies; directed public art, craft documentation, and digital storytelling projects; and introduced new forms of live visual performance for contemporary music and dance. Her work consistently foregrounds community collaboration, cultural equity, and the thoughtful integration of technology into public life.
Awards
Grants and awards
British Council’s Digital Arts Grant Awardee, 2018
Facebook Global Developer Circles Community Challenge, Third Place Regional, 2018
Public Arts Grantee, India Foundation for the Arts, 2015
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Patents
Generalized Interactive Narratives, USA, 2010 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20100169776)
Simplified Electronic Messaging System, USA, 2008 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8601589)
Community Journaling Using Mobile Devices, USA, 2008 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20080189357A1/en)
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Fellowships
Clore-Chevening Cultural Leadership Fellow, British High Commission, 2017
CSC Leaders, UK, 2017
Le Conclave Member, Art of Change 21, France, 2017
ArtThinkSouthAsia Fellow, 2010
Exhibitions
The Radbots presented at Ars Electronica, 2023
Beyond.Tomorrow presented at Bangalore Literature Festival, December 2019
Beyond.Tomorrow presented at the Rmbrndt.Nu exhibition in Amsterdam, October 2019
TheADAO.org - Mozilla Festival, London. Curated by Tate Modern and V&A UK, 2017
Snakes & Lotuses - Exhibition of Video Art, Poetry and Drawings at 1 Shanthi Road Gallery, Bangalore January 2009
Performance Poetry and Display of Sketches at Maya Contemporary Art Gallery, Bangalore, 2008.
Festival c/o Pop, Cologne, Germany Display of Sketches and Poetry from the Snakes & Lotuses series, 2008.
Putiklub, Berlin, Germany: Sketches and Video Art from the Snakes & Lotuses, 2008.
The Correra Contemporary Art Gallery, Naples, Italy: Sketches, Poetry Reading and Video Art from the Snakes & Lotuses series, 2008.
Drawings and Poetry Presentation at Pecha Kucha, CKS House, 2007
The Kanoria Centre for Arts, Ahmedabad, India Studio Scholarship and Group Exhibition, 2001.
Karnataka Chitrakala Parishat Group Exhibition, 2000
Publications
Prasad, A., Blagsvedt, S., Pochiraju, T., and Thies, I. M. 2019. Dara - A Chatbot to Help Indian Artists and Designers Discover International Opportunities. Presented at India HCI as part of the Out of India track that includes papers researched in India and presented outside (Hyderabad, India 1-3 November 2019)
Prasad, A., Blagsvedt, S., Pochiraju, T., and Thies, I. M. 2019. Dara - A Chatbot to Help Indian Artists and Designers Discover International Opportunities. Presented at ACM’s 12th Conference on Creativity and Cognition (San Diego, USA, June 23 - 26, 2019)
Sankar, A., Prasad, A., Joy, J., Datha, N., and Manchepalli, A. 2009. Digital Heritage. In Proceedings of the 27th international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Boston, MA, USA, April 04 - 09, 2009). CHI EA '09. ACM, New York, NY, 3503-3504.
"Digital Heritage", presented in the Video Showcase at CHI 2009 | Aditya Sankar, Joseph Joy, Archana Prasad and Naren Datha
Exploring the Feasibility of Video Mail for Illiterate Users – Presented in the proceedings of the Advanced Visual Interfaces Conference 2008, Italy
Art & the City - Executive Editor of this online art journal, 2008
SMSBlogging: Blog-on-the-Street Public Art Project – Presented and in the proceedings of the ACM MultiMedia Conference 2007, Germany
Optimal Audio-Visual Representations for Illiterate Users. International World Wide Web Conference 2007, Canada
Photography and the Avant-Garde in Art – Dissertation. Bangalore University 1999
Projects
Beyond Bias - Making AI More Inclusive | 2025 | Principal Investigator
AI Futures Fellowship - Women Shaping Inclusive and Ethical AI Through Speculative Storytelling | 2025 | Research Director
FutureFantastic.in - International AI Art Festival for Climate Change | 2023 | Curator
Malleshwaram Calling - Neighbourhood Memories Across Time | 2014 | Director
InvestmentZone - A Reality Game in 12 Moves | 2014 | Curator & GameMaster
Hampi Crafts Documentation - India Digital Hampi Project | Principal Investigator
Urban Avantgarde Project – Redefining public space through collaborative, cross-cultural urban art | 2012 | Curator
Malleswaram Accessibility Project – | 2011 | Principal Investigator
1&1=1 - Cross-pollinating cultures to reveal what lies between doing alone and becoming together | Co-Artist
We Are Here - Rethinking Collective Life Through Digital and Physical Presence | Co-Director
Poetry Across Borders - Live shared international poetry performance events | 2010 | Founder
Art & the City - Goethe-Institut’s Online Journal on Contemporary Indian Art | Executive Editor
Neighbourhood Diaries - Stories and Histories of Neighbourhoods in Bangalore | 2010 | Founder
Digital Narratives - Rich Media Storytelling Platform Pilot | 2006 | Creative Director
Samuha - An Artist Initiative and Collective | 2009 | Co-Initiator & Facilitator
CitySignals - A Sonic-Video Public Art Project | 2007 | Video Artist
The Bangalore City Project - Connecting the City through People’s Stories | 2007 | Documentation Lead
The Manjunauts - A Sci-Fi Experimental Electronica Art Band | 2007 | Video Performance Artist
Lounge Piranha - Progressive Post Rock Band | 2004-05 | Video Performance & Lighting Designer
The India Digital Heritage Project - A Microsoft Research Project | 2005 | Creative Director