Alex May is a British artist whose work examines how technology reshapes memory, perception and our sense of what is real.,He works across moving image, photography, sound, robotics and custom-built computational systems, and taught himself to program as a child.,Many of his works are made with the bioartist Anna Dumitriu, his partner, who brings research into bacteria and genomics into pieces built with his software and robotics.,
May studied both Art and Computer Science at school, and in the early 2000s worked as a VJ, writing real-time visual software by day and performing with it at night. From 2007 he moved into outdoor projection and video-mapping installations using his own mapping software.He first minted work on Hic et Nunc in April 2021, then returned to NFTs in February 2025 with BLAZE on objkt, a series of live generative pieces coded in WebGL and three.js.
With Anna Dumitriu, May has developed works including ArchaeaBot, an underwater robotic installation imagining a microorganism able to survive after climate collapse, first produced during a residency at LABoral in Gijón and premiered at Ars Electronica in 2018. A version entered the collection of ZKM in 2023.In Susceptible (2020), the pair turned tuberculosis genome data from the University of Oxford's CRyPTIC research consortium into an interactive video installation in which simulated bacteria swarm through a lung-shaped environment.For The Human Super-Organism, commissioned by the Eden Project, May wrote software to track and digitally isolate colonies in time-lapse footage of bacteria the pair grew from their own bodies.,The finished installation lets a visitor place a hand on a screen that fills with colour and texture drawn from bacteria on their skin.
As part of the second objkt Labs Residency, May released Moment of Significance in 2026, a 30-part video series combining photogrammetry, 3D rendering and generative digital processes. The work was inspired by a chance encounter with weathered concrete playground sculptures beside a dried-up paddling pool in Urgench, Uzbekistan, and reflects on how an ordinary moment can start to become memory before it is fully understood.His work with Anna Dumitriu has also been shown in group exhibitions including “BioMedia” at ZKM and the Centre des Arts d'Enghien and “On The Earth” at Diriyah Art Futures in Riyadh.,
