Jon Chambers

New Orleans
jon_chambers@sbcglobal.net
jonchambers.net

Education
MFA, New Media Arts, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, 2012
BFA, Sculpture, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI, 2005
Summer Study Abroad, Kingston University, London, England, Summer 2003

Solo Shows
The Practical Applications of Networks to the Body, International Museum of Surgical Science,Chicago, April-May 2019
Everything Is Text, Comfort Station, Chicago, 2014
RAZR: Left Over Mythologies of the Best Selling Clamshell Phone, The Milk Factory, Chicago, 2013

Group Shows
Personal Action, Public Display: A Balcony of Video Game Art, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, 2020
Moving_Image_00:05, Heaven Gallery, Chicago, 2019
I Was Raised on the Internet, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2018
UMW Media Wall, University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA, 2018
Being, enough, Chicago Artist Coalition, Chicago, 2017
Ethno / graphic, Chicago Artist Coalition, Chicago, 2016
Activate, Downtown Chicago, 2016
Athens Digital Arts Festival, Athens, Greece, 2016
r4w.EɌ̶Ɍ̶.b1t5!, TCC, Chicago, 2016
What Happens When..., Powrplnt, New York City, 2016
Post-Nature, Tele-Ecologies Pt. 2, ACRE gallery, Chicago, 2015
DAAC @The Fed, The Fed Galleries at KCAD, Grand Rapids, MI, 2015
Post-Nature, Tele-Ecologies, ACRE gallery, Chicago, 2015
Suite, Palmer House, Chicago, 2015
Terms of Service, UICA, Grand Rapids, MI, 2015

Please Stand By, ACRE TV Screening, Internet and MANA Contemporary, Chicago, 2014
The Wrong- New Digital Art Biennale, Internet, Organized in São Paulo, Brazil, 2013
#Programa La Plaza, Medialab-Prado, Madrid, Spain, 2013
Error<415>, Internet, ArtPadSF, San Francisco, CA, 2013
[STREET_TEAM:NYC], The Met in NYC, Internet, Davis, CA, 2012
Torch Song: UIC MFA Thesis Exhibition, Gallery 400, Chicago, 2012
Screenology: UIC New Media Arts Exhibition, Jackman Goldwasser Catwalk Gallery @ Hyde Park Art
Center, Chicago, 2011

Residencies
p5.js Contributors Conference, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Aug. 13-18 2019
International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago, Dec. 2018 - May 2019
ACE Hotel, Chicago, 2018
HATCH Projects @ the Chicago Artist Coalition 2016-17
ACRE, Steuben, WI, July 2014
Media Archeology Lab, Boulder, CO, May 2014

Writing/Publications
p5,js 1.0 Contributors Zine. 2020
The Uncanny Space Between Networks, Interfaces and Bodies: A blog post I wrote for the International
Museum of Surgical Science about the references/inspiration/research surrounding the work in myresidency capstone show “The Practical Applications of Networks to the Body”. 2019
The Hole Black Hole catalog published by Flatland Gallery in Chicago. 2019

PressWhat is NFT art? Quoted in Chicago Tribune article, 2021
The Wild West of Electricity Interview on Fnews Magazine.
The Spectre of Surveillance: Terms of Service at UICA on art-hack.org
Dig Up Dead Tech At The Media Archaeology Lab on vice.com
Review for my solo show RAZR: Left Over Mythologies of the Best Selling Clamshell Phone by: Jenyu
Wang on the Chicago Artist Writers blog

Awards
School of the Art Institute of Chicago Faculty Enrichment Grant 2020-21 for a solar powered web server
project I’m developing.

Teaching and Professional Experience
Instructor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2014-Present
Media Practices: a freshmen level class that teaches students how to utilize and develop skills
with various moving image techniques, while screening contemporary and historical examples
and reading relevant texts. These techniques range from using a 16mm Bolex camera to creating
animated GIFs and webpages.
New Media Crash Course: This Introductory course focuses on screen-based new media works,
their historical contexts and their specific aesthetics and theoretical concerns. Students gain anunderstanding of the emerging cultures and histories of new media through lectures andworkshops, while creating their own weekly projects. Interactive, game, networked and webbased technologies are introduced from the perspective of media art making and history.
Data and The Networked Body: Through a combination of lectures and workshops, this class
explores how data has been used, both historically and contemporaneously, to control,
manipulate and influence the body and how artists, writers and activists have responded to issuesof privacy, representation, gender and identity. Students will consider how the physical body is
reduced to data, surveilled and analyzed through our online behavior, mobile devices, CCTV, 3D
scanning, computer vision and machine learning algorithms. Topics include media consumption,
surveillance, climate change/global warming, labor, the anthropocene, representation, genderand identity, intimacy, sustainability, and how the physical body fits into the increasingly digitally
networked world.
Dynamic Information Visualization: Investigates design concepts of information visualization
design and reworks those within the context of interactive emerging media platforms. This is anadvanced course allowing students to develop experimental interactive projects exploring andquestioning affordances, ethics and promises offered by new media as providers of immediate
experiences and radically new solutions to communication. We will work with a variety of data
sets— from self-generated data to data produced by large-scale systems— juxtaposing individual
perspectives with big-data views. Students will learn and apply techniques to develop interactive
data visualization projects.
Adjunct Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2017- PresentIntroduction to New Media Arts: A studio based course that provides an overview of the theories
and practices of New Media Arts. Students learn fundamental practices of electronic arts
including but not limited to circuit design, basic to intermediate electronics, hacking, andprogramming for interactivity. Through hands on workshops, students will explore basic electronic
techniques and use of programmable microcontrollers (Arduino) to control interactive art, sound,light, and environments. Students are also introduced to and are encouraged to draw inspirationfrom various artists and their work through lectures rooted in the history, theory, and current
practices of responsive and new media art. This course encourages experimentation, research,and copy<it>right ethics through sharing sources, skills, and insights on a class blog and IRL.
Introduction to Creative Coding: A studio based course that introduces students to computer
programming with an emphasis on creative design and data visualization. Students learn
techniques to translate raw data into compelling audio and visual projects. Through readings anddiscussions, the course also unpacks the roles data plays in our lives. Composing a series ofprojects throughout the semester, students experiment and develop their own strategies tocreatively write code. Students complete the class with technical skills that will lay the foundation
for more advanced programming, scripting, and web development. Students are also introduced
to and are encouraged to draw inspiration from various artists and their work through lectures
rooted in the history, theory, and current practices of responsive and new media art. This course
encourages experimentation, research, and copy<it>right ethics through sharing sources, skills,
and insights on a class blog and IRL.
Game Play: This hands-on course offers an exploration of contemporary art works constructed asgames. Games represent a rapidly emerging medium, the history of which must be analyzed
through the lenses of art history, new media studies, and game studies in order to be fullycontextualized. Students will discuss methods by which game authors extend the visual traditions
and conceptual ideals of contemporary art into the gaming medium. In this course, students will
gain the technical skills needed to create their own games and participatory projects. Students
will play and analyze games in order gain an understanding of their frameworks andprogrammatic strategies. The course is intended to incite an active and critical perspective oncontemporary game practices in art.
Adjunct Professor, University of Chicago, 2020
Embodied Data and Gamified Interfaces: We produce caches of data within our networked lives,
from social media interactions to mass surveillance systems, mostly to the benefit of corporate orstate entities. The aesthetics of many of these interfaces uses gamification as a guise to datacollection, relying on dopamine rushes from “winning” likes, shares, and views to keep us comingback. Through a combination of lectures and workshops, we will explore data and games as
artistic mediums and how they interface and exchange with each other. We will look at how thephysical body is reduced to data, surveilled and analyzed through our online behavior, mobiledevices, computer vision and machine learning algorithms. Students will learn how to incorporate
the aesthetics of this embodied data into 2D and 3D gaming spaces, while considering how thephysical body fits into the increasingly digitally connected world.
Adjunct Instructor, Northwestern University, 2016-2017
Computer Code as Expressive Medium: A senior to graduate level class that introduces theexpressiveness of computing to visual artists. Students learn the basics of the open sourced
software Processing to create their own tools for interaction, animation, game design, movement,and form. Students are encouraged to establish interdisciplinary collaborations stemming fromtheir own field of research, while thinking critically about these software spaces. In addition toweekly code assignments, we explore various games and digital art works via lectures along withassigned readings.
Designing for the Internet: This studio course covers the principles of graphic design as they
apply to the interactive world of the web. Sensitivity to the visual elements of online interfaces isdeveloped through analysis of existing site designs. HTML and CSS are introduced along with
software such as Dreamweaver, Sublime Text, Photoshop and the mobile framework Bootstrap.
Students eventually conceive and create their own web-based project.
Adjunct Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2014-2015
Info Aesthetics: an interdisciplinary research studio utilizing an Interdisciplinary ResearchStudio methodology to research and generate new concepts in civic innovation for the city ofChicago. Multidisciplinary student teams consider the city as a resource (data & research) andlab (exploration & prototyping) for translating data into fully activated projects or proposals for
civic services or critical social interventions.
Freelance 2012-Present
Freelance jobs include designing and developing websites and custom game development using
Processing.

Web Developer, UIC, Chicago, 2012-2015
Worked as a front-end web developer for the College of Architecture, Design and the Arts at UIC.
My responsibilities included: HTML and CSS development, light PHP/MySQL development, light
JavaScript development, Drupal development, and Custom CMS development.
Research Assistant, Electronic Visualization Laboratory, UIC, Chicago, 2011-August 16, 2012
Was EVL webmaster and responsible for audio and video documentation of EVL’s research
projects. Specific activities included: worked with a back-end web developer to redesign EVL’s
website look and function; experimented with and learned JavaScript, jQuery, CSS3, and HTML5;
made an EVL interactive timeline with jQuery; made touch-screen applications using Processingfor Cyber-Commons, a 20-foot LCD tiled display wall with PQ Labs touch overlay; learned 3D
video workflow; documented projects created by EVL faculty, staff and students. My experienceat EVL enabled me to think more about how humans interact with technology in new ways,
especially involving the Internet.

Talks, Workshops, Projects
Presenter and Co-organizer of Processing Community Day in Chicago, Chicago 2019
I co-organized the Processing Community day in Chicago and will be presenting a workshop on
interactive narrative web-based applications
Artist Talk, Apple Store, Chicago 2018
January Arnall moderated a conversation with Jeremy Bailey and me about our work andcollaboration for the MCA show I Was Raised on the Internet
Artist Talk and Demo, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 2017
Gave an artist talk and 3D scanning demo for Hope Esser’s Core Studio class at the School ofthe Art Institute of Chicago.
Artist Talk and Workshop, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 2016
Gave an artist talk and HTML/CSS workshop for Christopher Meerdo’s Photography class at theSchool of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Dorkbot, Chicago, 2015
Discussed and gave a demo of work from my solo show Everything Is Text.
VIA Festival Chicago, 2014
Presented live visuals for the VIA Festival in Chicago. This festival pairs visual new media artists
with musicians to create an experimental laboratory.
Artist Talk, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 2013
Gave an hour artist talk for Marlena Novak’s Experimental 3D class at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago.
Presenter, Mobile Processing Conference, Chicago, 2013
Presented a workshop on the basics of Processing, while setting up attendees with the Android
SDK in order to work in Android mode with Processing.

OtherJuror for the Art Gallery at the SIGGRAPH Conference, 2019
Was part of the review and selection process of submissions for the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery

Offsite Reviewer For SIGGRAPH Conference, 2017
Reviewed projects submitted to the SIGGRAPH conference.