Ben Snell (American, b. 1994) is a New York-based artist whose drawings, photography, and sculpture treat computational power as raw material, using technology as a mirror to explore the self as a computational being.He holds a B.A. in Experiential Art and Design from Carnegie Mellon Universityand was an Artist in Residence at Autodesk's Pier 9 workshop in San Francisco in 2018.
Snell works with a range of machine learning and AI technologies, choosing each one for its conceptual fit to a given piece. Rather than describe his tools in technical language, he uses more accessible, metaphorical terms, acting, in his words, as “mediator between us and the machine”.
In Dio (Consummation), he used artificial intelligence to pursue what he describes as a desire to “consummate product and process, mind and body, physicality and virtuality”.He has been grouped among sculptors using machine learning to create new forms, alongside Scott Eaton.On GitHub, he has published tools for depth-camera imaging, volumetric rendering, and point cloud registration algorithms.
His work has been included in group shows in New York, including BWAC's “Red Hook Summer Popup Show” and The Factory's “LIC Arts Open”, both in 2019, and in Pittsburgh, at Miller Gallery's “DCI, ICD” in 2017.In 2019, the physical art fair circuit organized by ArtXCode showed his work alongside artists including Manolo Gamboa, Helena Sarin, Zach Bodtorf, and David Mrugala, with NFTs used as certificates for the physical pieces.
