Peter Burr is an artist based in Brooklyn who transforms complex computational systems into large-scale immersive environments. His practice grew out of experiments with computational graphics in the mid-1990s and has since come to merge basic computing operations with real-time rendering systems, exploring the relationship between human-machine interfaces and the systems that drive them.
Burr previously worked under the alias Hooliganship and founded the video label Cartune Xprez, producing hundreds of live multimedia exhibitions and touring programs that showcased experimental animators. His work has been presented at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the Barbican Centre, Documenta 14, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Centre Pompidou, and recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital Grant, and a Sundance New Frontier Fellowship.He holds a PhD in game design and serves as an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin.He has said he does not identify his work as pixel art, since the term evokes retro video-game nostalgia, and is drawn instead to what he calls “the lattice of crystal cubes that undergirds every image”.
Burr first minted work on the platform Digital Objects in 2018. When the platform later shut down, the works remained on-chain but became inaccessible to view, shaping his sense of what permanence on the blockchain actually means. In 2022 he presented BOOM TOWN, a solo show curated by Julia Kaganskiy and developed with collaborator Dave Tandem, reflecting on the aging indoor malls of his childhood through durational works designed to evolve over a decade of block time. The exhibition sold out within about ten minutes, though during its run his browser wallet was hacked, costing him roughly half his earnings for the year.In 2023 he took part in MoMA's Postcard project as one of its first fifteen invited artists, contributing a piece titled Architecture Machine 05, 2023 made in response to a prompt by Sasha Stiles.,
In 2025 Burr began releasing work from Aria Engine, a simulation of a decaying underground smart-building whose infrastructure and social systems collapse and regenerate under their own logic, set to premiere in 2026 as a room-sized video game. Infinite Refill, a related drop presented on objkt.one in November 2025 and shown in Berlin during Art on Tezos, depicts Aria Engine's commercial strips as AI-generated billboards processed into 3D kiosks. Describing his approach to worldbuilding, Burr has said he wants “worlds that feel like Tarkovsky, not Call of Duty”.
