Symposium Spotlight: Chris Coleman
News Member SpotlightInterviewed on February 19, 2026.
When did you first start working with time based/ Interactive Media?
I got my first computer, the VIC-20, in 1981 and learned to be creative with code.
What inspires your work?
I am interested in how complex systems are constructed or emerge in ways that shape and control our lives.
Tell us a little more about your work for the Symposium.
Humans scan the surfaces of the earth, bombarding it with rays that look deep underground, hoping to find metals and treasures for extraction. The barely decipherable images returned from such scans are almost always unclear and yet tantalizing, leading people to carve off the top of entire mountains. And yet, it is the surface that holds the future, where we receive enough energy from the sun and wind to do everything we need to thrive.
In these layered works, every component is derived from the 3D scan. The computational surface of rocks, plants, and soil becomes abstracted, compressed, distressed, and re-materialized into the different strata, offering a false sense of what exists beneath. These plots all come from one large scan of a hillside in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. A drone was used to take more than 400 images of the hill, and then a complex slab of silicon in a GPU turned all those images into millions of points and polygons.
The work emerges from the ways we treat the ground under our feet as a source of endless treasures. TV shows like "The Curse of Oak Island" show just how far these desires can go.
Do you have any current projects that you're working on that you would like to share?
I just finished this commission: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/first-western-trust-expands-arts-investment-with-landmark-digital-installation-in-boulder-1035721836
What brought you to the New Media Caucus?
I have been to all of the symposia! I have always enjoyed the chance to catch up with and meet new colleagues from across the country as we face shared challenges in teaching art and technology that changes at breakneck speeds.
Where can we follow your work?
https://digitalcoleman.com