Our artist collective
American Cyborg
American Cyborg is an artist collective inspired by the hybridization of animal, machine, plant
American Cyborg is an artist collective inspired by the hybridization of animal, machine, and plant. We explore the relationships between living organisms, technological systems, and the environments they inhabit, challenging the boundaries between nature and culture, organic and artificial, human and nonhuman. We locate ourselves within American folk culture, drawing on its traditions of storytelling, craft, invention, and collective knowledge while questioning and reimagining the histories and identities they carry. Through art, research, experimentation, and collaboration, we investigate how these systems shape one another, and how new forms of creativity, community, and coexistence emerge from their entanglement. We understand the cyborg not simply as a fusion of human and machine, but as a way of recognizing the interconnectedness of all things.
Cyborg Mandala
This is an object we call the Cyborg Mandala. It is the map to our organization. Its mathematical form is a vesica piscis — two circles whose perimeters intersect each other’s centers, named for a fish’s swim bladder.
The cyborg travels between realms
The plants show us how to grow roots and absorb light
The animals show us who we are
The machines show us how to organize information
The past year at American Cyborg
Our Founders
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Bluebird
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Albatross
Cooper, Writer
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Finch
Elizabeth, Scientist
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Starling
Ashley, Lawyer
Our Collaborators
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Cardinal
Bryan, Artist
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Raven
Celia, Site Manager
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Owls
Ben, Christina, Midge, Emily, Alex; Artists
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Condor
Joseph, Archivist
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Penguin
George, Investor
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Flamingo
Kristin, App Developer
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Kestrel
Game Developer
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Petrel
Sheena, Artist
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Phoenix
Emma, Mathematician
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Wren
Lauren, Event Manager
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Toucan
Rad, Animator
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Pitirre
Chiara, App Developer
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Pigeon
Emma, Poet
Every member of American Cyborg is associated with a bird, creating a collective taxonomy of personalities, perspectives, and practices. These avian identities serve as both personal symbols and a shared language, reflecting the diversity of roles and relationships within our community. Birds are messengers, travelers, builders, mimics, and collaborators; they navigate between territories and connect distant environments. Our flock is an evolving record of the people who have contributed to American Cyborg, honoring individual identities while celebrating the collective.
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The Ten Knots are American Cyborg's code of aesthetics and etiquette for interacting with the natural and technological worlds. Inspired by Tom Sachs's Ten Bullets and Donna Haraway's writing on knots, they establish a shared set of principles for creative practice, collaboration, communication, and care. From establishing sacred space and entering the magic circle to documenting our work, annotating our processes, and doing no harm, the Knots connect everyday habits to larger ethical commitments. They are not rigid commandments but practical tools for working together, preserving institutional memory, and remaining accountable to ourselves, one another, and the environments we inhabit.
10 Knots
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Knot 0 — Overhand Knot: Space Within
The Overhand Knot represents the Space Within. Before beginning, pause and arrive in your body. Take three Ocean Breaths, then stretch, fold, or make whatever movement helps you become present to the work.
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Knot 1 — Square Knot: Magic Circle
The Square Knot represents the Magic Circle. When we enter a shared working space, we consent to its intentions, agreements, and rituals. Protect the attention of others, contribute to the spirit of the space, and represent the team with care.
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Knot 2 — Bowline Knot: Cascading Style
The Bowline Knot represents Cascading Style. Receive the patterns established by earlier work and understand why they exist before changing them. Connect past, present, and future while leaving the pattern legible enough for the next person to continue.
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Knot 3 — Sheet Bend: Information Index
The Sheet Bend represents the Information Index. Our Archive is our temple, and the Index is its map. Give each project a place and preserve both its living record—notes, conversations, experiments, and uncertainties—and its formal, edited account.
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Knot 4 — Clove Hitch: Annotating Everything
The Clove Hitch represents Annotating Everything. Record materials, methods, sources, decisions, and relationships while they remain knowable. Comment the code, add aura to the papers, and add metadata to the machine: descriptions help make worlds.
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Knot 5 — Fishing Knot: Effective Outreach
The Fishing Knot represents Effective Outreach. Message sent does not mean message received. Address every open point, confirm what has been understood, and clearly signal whether you are awaiting a response or closing the exchange.
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Knot 6 — Taut-Line Hitch: Having Empathy
The Taut-Line Hitch represents Having Empathy. Practice response-ability: become capable of noticing and responding to the needs of yourself, your collaborators, your materials, and the living world. Try your level best to do no harm, and repair what you can when harm occurs.
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Knot 7 — Running Knot: Having Patience
The Running Knot represents Having Patience. Work carefully without demanding immediate resolution or visible progress. Know your strengths and limits, make room for uncertainty and dormancy, and help create the conditions in which people and projects can develop at different speeds.
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Knot 8 — Figure 8 Knot: Having Gratitude
The Figure 8 Knot represents Having Gratitude. Nothing makes itself. Recognize the people, places, histories, organisms, materials, and technologies that make the work possible, and use these relationships with care and generosity.
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Knot 9 — Lariat Loop: Resting and Resetting
The Lariat Loop represents Resting and Resetting. File the completed record, return tools and materials to readiness, and resolve open problems with grace and careful listening. Step out of the Magic Circle and give the mind, body, collaborators, and work time apart.
American Cyborg was founded and incorporated in New York because we love the state and believe in being part of its stewardship. We are a New York company by choice: part of a local, geographical community whose cultural and civic institutions we value and support.
Our mission is to create financial stability for human artists through automation. We build tools, archives, exhibitions, publications, and other structures that support creative work while investing in the communities in which that work takes place.
Community engagement, patronage of the arts, ecological sustainability, and health and well-being in the workplace have been at the heart of our business since its founding.
Our Philosophy
We believe technology should support human creativity rather than replace it.
We also believe technology exists within communities, governments, economies, and ecosystems. It is never placeless. The systems we build — and the standards we choose to follow — are part of our responsibility to the people and places around us.
American Cyborg supports the work of local and state institutions seeking to protect the environment, strengthen communities, support artists and workers, and establish meaningful public standards for rapidly changing technologies.
We think about this relationship through three interconnected systems: Plant, Animal, and Machine. A healthy technological culture must remain accountable to the human and more-than-human worlds in which it operates.
Our Policy
We maintain best practices in privacy and security. To protect both ourselves and our community, we voluntarily look to strong public standards — including those established by New York, California, and the European Union — as our baseline.
We believe thoughtful regulation and public standards are necessary counterweights to technological systems whose scale and power can otherwise exceed the ability of individuals and local communities to shape them.
We collect as little information as our work requires. We favor user ownership, portability, understandable systems, and durable archives.
The archive belongs to the artist. The machine is there to help.
