august black

I'm August Black. I investigate mediated modes of collectivity and togetherness. My research is a mixture of applied conceptual art, critical design, community activism, and expanded engineering. I write software, organize collectives, build instrumentation, and construct new formats for real-time interactive performance.

Office portrait in stereo, summer 2024. Squint and concentrate your vision on the center to see a 3D image pop-out.

August Black presenting art papers at SIGGRPAH 2024 in Denver, Colorado.

August Black presenting a talk on "AI and Acoustic Space" at the Prolog Re-Enacting Dartmouth conference in St.Poelten, Austria. September 2025. photo by Avital Meshi

As a hybrid practitioner of art, design, and engineering, I conduct practial and theoretical research in the overlapping areas of new formats, network dynamics, and virtual architectures with a focus on audio and transmission. My activities tend to evoke themes of power, migration, play, noise, chance, and operate under methods of collaboration, commons-building, and communal interaction.

August Black presenting "The Conduction Series" at the Audio Mostly 2025 conference in Coimbra, Portugal. July 2025. photo by Jordan Wirfs-Brock

August Black presenting The Conduction Series in Coimbra, Portugal.

August Black presenting "The Conduction Series" at the Audio Mostly 2025 conference in Coimbra, Portugal. July 2025. photo by Jordan Wirfs-Brock

My past work focused on live networked audio, mixing FM radio with user input through online software. I'm currently investigating novel ways to use global networking for local and hyper-local real-time communication.

August Black in residency @ Evans School October 2024, Denver Colorado.

August Black in white protective suit standing in front of a large white table with lights on it and a project of superworms behind him.

August Black in residency @ Evans School October 2024, Denver Colorado.

August Black presenting Mezcal via video link to the Ars Acoustica group o the European Broadcasting Union.

August Black presenting his radio work via video link to the Ars Acoustica group of the European Broadcasting Union. Geneva, Switzerland 2022.

I‘ve earned a living at various points in time as an artist, producer, graphic designer, software engineer, and educator. I‘ve had the pleasure of working at places like the ORF Kunstradio, the Ars Electronica Futurelab, the UCSB BioImaging Lab, and Cycling ’74 - the makers of Max / MSP. As an educator, I‘ve taught media art classes at University of California Santa Barbara, University of San Francisco, and Colorado University Boulder.

I hold a Phd in Media, Arts, & Technology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and am currently an Assistant Professor at Colorado University Boulder in the department of Critical Media Practices.

I'm a bit old-school and am just learning to participate in the instagoogle socials and whatnot (...I know, I know), so I offer here a few serious and semi-serious images as a consolation.