Octopus Initiative Artist Joel Swanson
Joel Swanson’s work examines the relationship between language and technology. His practice explores how language structures our world through standards such as spelling and grammar, digital character encoding, and even alphabetization. As tools of language, he is interested in erasers, highlighters, and correctional fluid but also typography, spell-check algorithms, and machine learning. Through dimensionality, repetition, and decontextualization his work makes the familiar unfamiliar and the ordinary strange.
Swanson was born in 1978 in Chicago and currently lives and works in Denver. He received his BFA in Digital Art from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and his MFA in Computing in the Arts at the University of California San Diego. His artwork has been exhibited at institutions including The Banff Centre for the Arts, The MSU Broad Art Museum, The Power Plant in Toronto, the 57th Venice Biennale at the European Cultural Center, the Glucksman Museum in Cork, Ireland, the North Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. He is an Associate Professor in the ATLAS Institute and the Herbst Program for Engineering, Ethics & Society at the University of Colorado Boulder where he works and teaches at the intersection of language and technology.
