Alayt Issak
Tagline:Doctoral Candidate in Interdisciplinary Design and Media at Northeastern University, CAMD
Boston, MA, USA
Biography
Hello! I'm Alayt Issak. My first name is pronounced as "A-light".
I am a final-year Ph.D. candidate in philosophy, art, and AI at the College of Arts, Media, and Design (CAMD) at Northeastern University in Boston, MA. I joined the Inaugural Interdisciplinary Design and Media Ph.D. program at CAMD in 2022 and am advised by Dr. Casper Harteveld of the GhostLab.
Prior to Northeastern, I graduated summa cum laude in Mathematics and Studio Art (minor) from The College of Wooster followed by a Postbacc in applied mathematics with Dr. Todd Coleman at Stanford University and a Predoctoral Fellowship in visual arts, creativity, and AI with Dr. Lav Varshney at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
My research explores “creative expression through new technologies” ⎯ the new technology being AI. Using a HCI lens, I ask what creativity, art, aesthetics, expression and embodiment are with AI weaved into the creative practice.
Alongside research, I enjoy making found-object art and playing music in a reggae band.
You can find my recent work on my Google Scholar page and my CV.
Feel free to email me or reach out on LinkedIn!
Research Interests
- Theoretical Foundations on AI Ethics for Creativity
- Empirical Studies of AI-based Creative Practices
- Ethics of Human-AI Co-Creativity
- Design and Analysis of Human-AI Co-creative Systems
Education
Doctor of Philosophy
from: 2022, until: presentField of study:Interdisciplinary Design and MediaSchool:Northeastern UniversityLocation:Boston, MA
DescriptionFields: Philosophy, Art, and AI
Advised by Dr. Casper Harteveld
Member of Ghost LabBachelor of Arts
from: 2017, until: 2021Field of study:B.A., Mathematics and Studio Art (minor)School:The College of WoosterLocation:Wooster, OH
DescriptionGPA: 3.9/4.0 (Summa Cum Laude)
Publications
Recognizing Creativity as a Right: Human and Cultural Rights for Creativity in the Age of AI
Conference PaperPublisher:Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Creativity and CognitionDate:2026Authors:Alayt IssakShani Claire SpivakRamya SrinivasanCasper HarteveldDescription:Since the inception of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) more than a decade ago, artists have been facing the rising impact of AI systems on their creative practice and livelihood. As a result, the imposition on creativity has led to adverse consequences for the creative community. In this work, we take a foundational approach to mitigating these impacts by proposing a rights-based framework to recognize creativity as a right. In Part 1, we argue for creativity as a human right, and in Part 2, we argue for creativity as a cultural right. We then combine these arguments to present a Co-creative Rights Enablement (CORE) Design Framework comprising rights, capabilities, and possibilities. This work advances creativity in the context of technical change and contributes a rights-based framework for developing co-creative AI systems that is applicable to co-creative system designers, policymakers, and design researchers.“Control Is a Trajectory, Not a Point”: Conceptualizing Control in Human-AI Co-Creativity
Conference PaperPublisher:Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsDate:2026Authors:Alayt IssakJeba RezwanaCasper HarteveldDescription:Control is a critical yet underexplored concept in human-AI co-creativity and more broadly human-AI collaboration, where AI systems are expected to act as collaborative partners with creative autonomy. Existing frameworks for characterizing control remain limited and often fall short in capturing the tensions and complexities of co-creation dynamics. In this paper, we examine how experts conceptualize control and expect human-AI control dynamics by leveraging a recent framework on characterizing control as our theoretical probe. We conduct a semi-structured focus group study with nine experts in HCI, co-creativity, and AI. Our findings reveal that control is widely viewed as a dynamic, context-dependent construct that should adapt across different phases of co-creation, domains, and levels of trust in AI. Drawing on our findings, we propose a conceptualization of control along with actionable design implications for designing such AI systems. This work contributes to the literature on Human-AI collaboration, Computational Creativity, and HCI, advancing our understanding of control in co-creative human-AI partnerships.Gamification of Control in Co-Creativity through Design Cards
Conference PaperPublisher:Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computational Creativity, Coimbra, Portugal, June 28 - July 3, 2026Date:2026Authors:Alayt IssakJeba RezwanaCasper HarteveldMOSAAIC: Managing Optimization towards Shared Autonomy, Authority, and Initiative in Co-creation
Conference PaperPublisher:Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Computational Creativity, Campinas, Brazil, June 23 - 27, 2025Date:2025Authors:Alayt Issak*Jeba Rezwana*Casper HarteveldA philosopher, an artist, and a HCI researcher write a dissertation: Designing Ethical Human-AI Systems for Co-Creativity
Conference PaperPublisher:Proceedings of the 2025 Conference on Creativity and Cognition Graduate Student SymposiumDate:2025Authors:Alayt IssakKaleidoscope Gallery: Exploring Ethics and Generative AI Through Art
Conference PaperPublisher:Proceedings of the 2025 Conference on Creativity and CognitionDate:2025Authors:Alayt IssakUttkarsh NarayanRamya SrinivasanErica KleinmanCasper HarteveldMapping the Typographic Latent Space of Digits as a Matter of Responsible Design
Conference PaperPublisher:Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Computational Creativity Computational Design and Computer-aided Creativity Workshop, Campinas, Brazil, June 23 - 27, 2025Date:2025Authors:Alayt IssakSarthak KakkarSair GoetzNik BrownCasper HarteveldCreativity as a Human Right: Design Considerations for Computational Creativity Systems
Conference PaperPublisher:Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computational Creativity, Jönköping, Sweden, June 17 - 21, 2024Date:2024Authors:Alayt IssakAI Ethics for Creativity
Journal ArticlePublisher:Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society Doctoral ConsortiumDate:2024Authors:Alayt IssakStories Stay, Lessons Leave: Principles on AI Art from Photography
Conference PaperPublisher:Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Computational Creativity, Waterloo, ON, Canada, June 19 - 23, 2023Date:2023Authors:Alayt Issak
Creative Work
CANVUS (Computationally Arranged Network of Visual-Auditory Uncontrolled Synthesis)
date: 2026Organization:Team: Jake Farr, Alayt Issak, Gauri Menon, , Evan O'Nell, and Nemo Rosas.
Description:Interactive multi-media immersive projection installation that generates real-time, audio-visual feedback from body mechanics and motion tracking data. Drawing in two people at a time, control is dispersed among the actions of the participants, i.e., through shared interaction, canv(us) is a canvas of us!
Emerald Necklace
date: 2025Description:Emerald Necklace is a memorabilia to Boston as a home one cultivates for place and presence. The necklace was made in response to an artifact the artist finds personally meaningful for her time in Boston and is a translation of the Emerald Necklace, a 12-mile park system that hangs on the neck of the Boston Peninsula, into a physical emerald necklace. In the piece, the artist maps all nine parks of the emerald necklace to jewels and creates the density of the chain according to the density of greenery in each park. The necklace was iterated through the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) framework and incorporates the values of peace and connection. The necklace shown here can be worn in any arrangement, ranging from an earlace (an earring necklace) to a double-strand necklace. Below are images from an exhibit where participants were invited to map parts of the necklace to the physical map.
Listen to Nature Speak
date: 2024Organization:Kaaysá Art Residency in São Sebastião, Brazil.
Description:Situated on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, where only 12% of the original Atlantic Forest coverage remains, the impact of human action is ever so present in the evolving ecology of the area. Traversing Serra do Mar (the largest Atlantic Forest reserve in Brazil), this Video Art installation reimagines a 360-degree video camera (Ricoh Theta V5), which captures the video, as a microphone for Earth’s words. Elements of nature are captured, rather interviewed, to speak Earth’s words, and in the audio, indigenous knowledge creates soundscapes for their presence. This installation is part of a three-part series that maps the evolution of technology-based visual art and, using a phenomenological encounter in Video art, questions what the medium of AI art could be. We invite the audience to speculate on this question and submit to the reflection box below.
Teaching
Design Perspectives (ARTG 1002)
From: 2026, Until: 2026
Organization:Northeastern UniversityField:College of Arts, Media and Design
Description:Introductory design course that acquaints students with a range of perspectives and points of view on design as a human activity, ultimately investigating what it means to develop a personal design practice.
Ethics in Creativity (INAM 2000)
From: 2024, Until: 2025
Organization:Northeastern UniversityField:College of Arts, Media and Design
Description:Studies the role of ethics in creative practice. Offers students an opportunity to reflect on many of the concerns creative professionals face, such as how creative practitioners manifest care as a social intervention for building intimacy, healing, and hope across communities and how to develop and articulate creative goals. From the rhetoric of trust and authenticity, to honesty and generosity, ethical concepts consistently make their way into creative practice. Examines (and affords students an opportunity to hone) strategies to systematically navigate uncertainty and iteration within creative practice, culminating in a student final creative project. Readings focus on ethical paradigms that illustrate how systems of power shape the role of creative practices in society.
Curriculum Vitae (CV)
DownloadContact
Address
issak.a@northeastern.edu