Ben Grosser

Bio

Ben Grosser investigates how the designs of platform interfaces—from social media to AI chatbots—shape human behavior, desire, and culture. Through tactics such as software recomposition, interface reduction, and radical reimagination, his artworks expose software’s hidden politics and propose alternatives that restore user agency. Recent exhibitions include Centre Pompidou in Paris, The Barbican Centre and Somerset House in London, ZKM in Karlsruhe, the Louisiana museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, SXSW in Austin, and the Japan Media Arts Festival in Tokyo. His projects have been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Wired, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, El País, and Folha. The Guardian (UK) proclaimed Grosser’s film ORDER OF MAGNITUDE to be a definitive artwork of the 21st century, “a mesmerising monologue, the story of our times.” RTÉ (Ireland) dubbed him an “antipreneur,” and Slate commended his work as “creative civil disobedience in the digital age.” His artworks are regularly cited in books investigating the cultural effects of technology, including The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, The Metainterface, and Investigative Aesthetics, as well as volumes centered on computational art practices such as Electronic Literature, The New Aesthetic and Art, and Digital Art. Grosser is Professor of New Media in the School of Art & Design, co-founder of the Critical Technology Studies Lab at NCSA, and an affiliate faculty member with the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, the School of Music, the School of Information Sciences, and the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science. He was a recent Fellow and is now a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Campus Affiliations

• Professor, School of Computing and Data Science
• Professor, School of Information Sciences
• Professor, School of Music
• Professor, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
• Professor, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)

External Affiliations

• Faculty Associate, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University

Research Interests

• Interface aesthetics
• Platform culture
• Software studies
• Social media
• Artificial intelligence (AI)
• Computer vision
• Computational surveillance
• Data obfuscation

External Awards and Fellowships

• Artist Fellowship – Digital Arts, Illinois Arts Council (2024)
• Fellow, Institute for Rebooting Social Media, Harvard University (2023)
• Jury Selection, Art Division, Japan Media Arts Festival (2020)
• Expanded Media Award for Network Culture, Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Germany (2015)
• Artist Gallery Prize, Arte Laguna, Italy (2015)
• First Prize, VIDA Award for Art and Artificial Life, Madrid, Spain (2014)
• Rhizome Net Art Grant (2014)

Campus Awards and Fellowships

• University Scholar (2025-26)
• Campus Distinguished Promotion Award (2023)
• Associate, Center for Advanced Study (2022)
• Fiddler Faculty Fellow, NCSA (2020)
• Fellow, Center for Advanced Study (2017)

Courses Regularly Taught

• Net Art
• Computational Art
• Generative AI in/as Art
• Sound Art
• Interaction
• Critical Supercuts
• Physical Computing
• Advanced New Media Seminar
• Professional Practice (undergrad seminar)
• Art as Research / Practice as Strategy (grad seminar)
• Graduate Studio