August Black with blue shirt and bolo tie, smiling
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.
Two photos of August Black, one in gray long sleeve shirt with blue sky behind, another portrait shot from below and looking upwards with T-shirt that says ‘resist’
Left: California, 2022. Right: PIF Camp, Slovenia 2022.
Hi, I‘m August Black. I‘m a hybrid practitioner of art, design, and engineering that critically engages with techno-social systems in playful and evocative ways. I create software, systems, and spaces through experimental 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.
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.
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 don't 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.