Biographical Overview

James Coupe is an artist and Assistant Professor at the University of Washington’s Centre for Digital Art and Experimental Media (DXARTS). Before moving to DXARTS in 2004, he taught undergraduate and graduate students in the UK for four years, including three years at Thames Valley University as Lecturer in Digital Art, and then one year at London South Bank University as Senior Lecturer in Art and Media.

He has a degree in Fine Art from the University of Edinburgh, where he spent five years studying sculpture and the history of art. Following this he completed an MA in Creative Technology at the University of Salford, where he studied robotics, virtual environments and telematics. His artwork has been exhibited throughout the UK and abroad, including IDEA (Manchester), Camden Arts Centre (London), The Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art (Sunderland), Artsadmin (London), Custard Factory (Birmingham), Aspex (Portsmouth), Artsway (Sway), Lighthouse (Poole), Folly Gallery (Lancaster), Stills Gallery (Edinburgh), Lee Center for the Arts (Seattle) and The Junction (Cambridge). In 2001, his project “Digital Warfare Network” was selected for New Contemporaries 2001, a highly prestigious annual exhibition considered a significant launch pad for exceptional and dynamic emerging artists. Other notable commissions have included Metapod, Low-Fi, SCAN, Lancaster City Council, and Enter_.

He has also lectured internationally about his work and research interests. This includes presentations at ISEA (Nagoya), CHArt (Birkbeck College), State of the Real (Glasgow School of Art), CAA (Seattle and Boston), Pixelraiders (Sheffield Hallam University) and SLSA(New York). The recent Bloc Press publication, Remote, includes his essay, “Art, Systems, Networks and Parasites”, and another essay, “Art, Representation and Responsibility: Towards a System Aesthetic” has recently been published by IB Tauris as part of the book "The State of the Real: Aesthetics in the Digital Age".

His work focuses upon emergent systems, aesthetic machines, autonomy and networked consciousness. In 2003, his research on the synchronicity of art and artificial intelligence was recognized through a UK Arts and Humanities Research Board Innovation Award. This resulted in a range of projects built in collaboration with AI scientist Rob Saunders, including 9PIN++ and The Difference Engine. Current projects include (re)collector, exhibited in Cambridge in April 2007, which involves a city-wide network of surveillance cameras programmed to extract cinematic moments from people's everyday lives and recombine them into feature films.

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