James Coupe is a Seattle-based artist who works with video, installation, internet, and emerging media forms. His work includes real-time public surveillance systems, interactive deepfake installations, and collaborations with Amazon Mechanical Turk micro-laborers. Reflecting on the impact of Big Data, immaterial labor and AI, Coupe’s works explore the aesthetic value of searches, queries, automation, classification systems, the use of algorithmic narratives, surplus information and human affect. He has been on the faculty at the Center for Digital Art and Experimental Media (DXARTS) at the University of Washington since 2004, where he teaches classes in Video, Internet and Data-Driven Art.

Notable projects include “Sanctum” (2013), an interactive public artwork exhibited for two years on the facade of the Henry Art Gallery; his Creative Capital project, “Swarm” (2013), which was exhibited at both ZKM and The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art / Toronto International Film Festival, and received an Honorable Mention for Interactive Art at the Prix Ars Electronica; “General Intellect” (2015), exhibited at Aktionsart, and which received the HeK Award for net-based art; “Watchtower”, exhibited at FACT, and recipient of the Surveillance Studies Network Arts Fund Award; and “Warriors”, currently the inaugural exhibition at the new International Center of Photography (ICP) museum in New York City. Forthcoming exhibitions include From Social Sculpture to Platform Capitalism, at Kunstraum Kreuzberg in Berlin.