When Artists Break Tech
Iris Long’s ‘Under the Cloud’, 2023
Technology doesn’t evolve in isolation. The most interesting shifts happen when artists step in—not to decorate interfaces or make things “creative,” but to break technology open, expose its blind spots, and rebuild it from different cultural and human perspectives.
The British Council’s new report, Why Technology Needs Artists, captures this brilliantly. It gathers 56 voices from across 24 countries, showing how artists are inventing tools and techniques that industry wouldn’t, making complex systems visible and challengeable, injecting diversity, sensitivity, and cultural depth into technological development, and designing alternate futures—beyond the logic of optimization and control—that engineers alone rarely imagine.
The report also points to LAS Art Foundation and Ian Cheng’s BOB. I know that world well—I produced Ian’s Life After BOB exhibition for LAS. Projects like that aren’t just “using” technology. They pull it apart, push it into unfamiliar territory, and make it do things its makers never imagined. That’s exactly what this report is arguing for: artists changing the shape of technology itself.
Reading through the report felt familiar. In my own work, I see again and again that the projects which genuinely shift the conversation around tech don’t come out of R&D departments or accelerator programs—they come from artists. From independent studios to experimental labs, these are the people pulling technology into new shapes, making it stranger, more human, and ultimately more impactful.
If you work anywhere near art and technology, this is essential reading.
