Kathy High graduated with a BA from Colgate University in 1976 and an MAH from the Center for Media Studies at University at Buffalo in 1981 where she studied with media pioneers Tony Conrad,[3] Hollis Frampton, and Steina Vasulka.

[5] In 1991, she founded FELIX: A Journal of Media Arts and Communication produced in conjunction with The Standby Program.

[6] She is co-editor of The Emergence of Video Processing Tools: Television Becoming Unglued, with Sherry Miller Hocking and Mona Jimenez.

[7] She has been a professor of video and new media at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York since 2002.

[8] Since the early 1980s, High has been creating and exhibiting art in the form of videos, photographs, performances and installations.