Experience

James Coupe is an internationally renowned artist whose work delves into themes of visibility, labor and Surveillance Capitalism. He works with a wide range of media, including Photography, Video, Sculpture, Installation and Digital Media.  

His recent works include real-time public surveillance systems, deepfake interactive installations and collaborations with Amazon Mechanical Turk micro-workers. At the same time, reflecting on the impact of Big Data, immaterial labor and AI, his pieces explore searches, queries, automation, classification systems, the use of algorithmic narratives, surplus value and human affect. His ongoing investigations at the intersection of art, technology, human rights, ethics and privacy position him as a true visionary and a leader in the field of global critical-creative thinking. 

James Coupe is Professor of Art and Experimental Media and Head of Photography at the Royal College of Art. Prior to assuming this position, he was a professor in the Department of Digital Art and Experimental Media (DXARTS) at the University of Washington in Seattle for nearly two decades. While there, he helped establish the DXARTS practice-based PhD program as one of the world's leading PhD programs in Digital Art. 

His 2020 project, "Warriors," was a milestone in the use of deepfake technology in a mainstream art space. Beyond the technical infrastructure and machine learning models he uses to make his work, his interests in synthetic media transcend disciplinary boundaries: ethics and best practices for dealing with and detecting fake media, artistic exploration of deceptive, altered, and parafictional media, and emerging opportunities in filmmaking, algorithmic film, and narrative. 

His work, both solo and group, has been exhibited at renowned galleries such as the International Center of Photography in New York, Kunstraum Kreuzberg in Berlin, FACT Liverpool, Ars Electronica and the Toronto International Film Festival. At the same time, he has received numerous awards and prizes, such as those from Creative Capital, Ars Electronica, HeK Basel and Surveillance Studies Network. 

  • Head of Photography at the Royal College of Art 
  • Former Professor, Department of Digital Art and Experimental Media, University of Washington. 
  • Author of a dozen solo exhibitions and participant in twenty group shows. 
  • D. in Digital Art and Experimental Media from the University of Washington- Professional Master's Degree in Creative Technology from the University of Salford in Manchester (UK). 
  • Professional Master's Degree in Fine Art (Sculpture) from the University of Edinburgh (UK). 
Programmes in collaboration with

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