Professor Geoff Cox

I am Professor of Art and Computational Culture, Director of the Digital x Data Research Centre, and co-Director of Centre for the Study of the Networked Image (CSNI) at LSBU. Previously I worked at University of Plymouth, where I did my PhD (2006). I worked at Aarhus University (2010-17) and am now Honorary Professor in Digital Design and Information Studies in the School of Culture and Communications. In addition, I am adjunct faculty of Transart Institute, an independent art school registered in the New York (since 2006). Previously I have held curatorial positions at Camerawork in Education/Outreach (1994-98) and Arnolfini as adjunct for online projects (2008-13) and was co-Director of MA Curating Art and Public Programmes, in partnership with Whitechapel Gallery (2020-24). I have held Visiting Scholar positions at the Computer Lab, University of Cambridge (2016), and Digital Visual Studies, Max Planck/University of Zurich (2022).

My research interests lie broadly across the fields of computational culture, contemporary art, and autonomous publishing. With a background in photography and print, my concerns have evolved into an interest in image politics more broadly, and particularly developments in generative AI. This includes engaging with new ways of seeing and the wider considerations of infrastructures through which images are produced and circulated, thereby understood as relational assemblages. Furthermore, I am interested in publishing as an artistic medium, and experimental approaches that exploit the creative and political potential of computation.

Published books include Speaking Code (with Alex McLean, MIT Press, 2013), Aesthetic Programming (with Winnie Soon) published by Open Humanities Press (2020), and Live Coding (with Alan Blackwell, Emma Cocker, Thor Magnusson, Alex McLean, MIT Press, 2022). I am an advisor for the online journal Computational Culture, and AI in Society and Culture, an initiative of Oxford University Press.

As an outcome of The Contemporary Condition research project (co-PI, Danish Research Foundation), I co-wrote The Contemporary Condition: Introductory Thoughts on Contemporaneity and Contemporary Art (with Jacob Lund, Sternberg Press, 2016), the first in a book series that I continue to co-edit. I also co-edit (with Joasia Krysa) the open access DATA browser book series published by Open Humanities Press, and co-edit (with Christian Ulrik Andersen) the open access online journal APRJA, published by Aarhus University and hosted by The Royal Danish Library.

Current projects include ServPub (co-PI), an experimental publishing infrastructure (with Aarhus, UCL Slade, Varia/CC, In-grid, and Systerserver), and related collaborative book project with Minor Compositions supported by Open Book Futures (2023-26); "Ways of [Machine] Seeing" (PI), an ongoing public engagement project in collaboration with UCL Institute of Education, and the The Photographers' Gallery on AI and visual literacy, initially funded by The Alan Turing Institute (2022-23) and since through Responsible AI and UKRI (2024-25).

Director, Digital and Data Research Centre

Co-Director of Centre for the Study of the Networked Image (CSNI)