Meet the Story Fellow: Kate Stonehill

Kate is an award-winning documentary filmmaker exploring innovative storytelling in the digital age. Her feature documentary Phantom Parrot—a nonfiction thriller about secret surveillance and digital privacy—premiered at CPH:DOX and Sheffield Doc/Fest, screened theatrically across the U.K., and was acquired by Tribeca Films. Her work has won a Grierson and an RTS Award (Fake News Fairytale, 2018), and screened at festivals and galleries worldwide (BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, BFI London Film Festival, DOC NYC). She has delivered guest lectures at the National Film & Television School, the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague, and UCL. She is currently developing a series of projects engaging creatively and critically with AI technologies. 

Kate’s Story Skills are Moving image storytelling – she has worked as a Director and Cinematographer on a variety of short-form and long-form projects. As a result she has relevant technical skills (camera, editing) and experience using visual storytelling in different contexts. 

The Challenge

Using the creative hub of the Sonic Screen Lab as a departure point, this research explores the relationship between generative AI subjects and human contributors in nonfiction filmmaking. The protagonist of the film is a dataset called LAION-5B. The other contributors of the film are arts practitioners and scholars at the Sonic Screen Lab, whose’ work exists within this dataset. As AI systems become inextricably linked with our future, the project investigates how we can find ways of being in dialogue with them, building a collective story that captures their relationship to the human labour that has facilitated their existence. 

Kate’s First Steps

Kate has been embedded with the Sonic Screen Lab, a research hub at the University of the Arts London that interrogates and experiments in moving image and sound-based practices and their relationship with culture, environment and social change. Her work so far has centred on building relationships with the hub’s core members and exploring ways to amplify the visibility of the hub, through its online presence and event series focusing on the work of the members. She began by photographing an event organised by Sonic Screen Lab – Screening Resistance – which invited a panel to discuss the changing media landscape within the context of historical and contemporary racism and fascism. She then embarked on a series of interviews with the core members, learning more about their research and creative practice and exploring the vision for the future of the Sonic Screen Lab.

By the end of her project, Kate hopes to have played a role elevating the profile and identity of the Sonic Screen Lab within the UAL community and beyond. Her project will result in various outputs across digital platforms, such as the Sonic Screen Lab blog, documenting the ongoing research and creative practice of the group’s core members. In addition, her project will lead to a short film that investigates the digital footprint of the different core members’ creative outputs, and how generative AI is changing the landscape for creative practitioners. 

Interested in documentary and filmmaking? Why not see how Story Fellow ____ is using these skills.

Meet another Story Fellow partnered with University of the Arts London: _____

Have a look at some of the our Fellows who have reached the end of their projects: _____