Douglas Rosman was born and raised in Santa Monica, California, and attended the University of California, San Diego where, after building a foundation in computer science and media studies, received his Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts (ICAM). Since Fall 2017, he has been pursuing an MFA in Studio at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, from the Art and Technology Studies department. His work includes creative coding, interactive installations, video, and audiovisual performance. He recently co-organized the Art and Technology Studies 24-hour art hackathon.

Artist Statement

I am an artist working at the intersection of art, code and technology. Fundamentally, I am motivated to explore how technology determines the dynamics of a world we perpetually reconstruct for ourselves: I seek to map the lived reality of an algorithmically mediated existence.

I utilize emerging technologies simultaneously as tools for artistic expression and as the subject matter of my work. I work primarily with code to create generative, computationally-driven experiences that manifest themselves as video works, interactive installations, audio-visual performances, drawings, and a variety of other media. Specifically, I create works that address–either through metaphor or recontextualization–our relationship with sophisticated technologies that observe us, learn from us, and then filter our world back to us in personally-tailored feedback loops.

Technology extends us, but it also presents a mirror. In our digitally augmented environment, data-parsing, artificially intelligent black box algorithms are increasingly a part of our everyday lives, such that we are always encountering situations where we do not and cannot access a one-to-one, transparent exchange of information with our surroundings. In this context, identity formation, relationship building, and the very act of meaning-making, is always precarious. We have learned to adapt to this condition of living, but I wonder what an alternative might be.

As an artist, I confront these less-than-visible systems that carry unknown amounts of control over our lives. I try to locate myself in these systems, in the hopes of providing some sort of template for others to find themselves in these systems.

I don't have you but you've still got my heart 2018, generative installation, custom code
Cosmic Author 2018, interactive installation, custom code
Scroll 2019, Processing code, ink, vellum
self-contained 2019, pix2pixHD generated images
self-contained. 2019.
Scroll: Making Of. 2019.
Cosmic Author. 2019.
I don't have you but you've still got my heart. 2019.