Joel Ong has joined the Department of Computational Arts in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design as assistant professor of Information Design and Data Visualization.

Ong is a media artist whose fields of interest include ambisonics, aural architecture, bioart, cybernetics, data sonification, environmental art and sound art. His works connect scientific and artistic approaches to the environment, particularly with respect to sound and physical space. He is invested in a broad range of art-science collaborations, engaging in discourses and creative processes that find common ground between these two disciplines.

Presented in venues and festivals internationally, Ong’s projects have involved nanotechnology, site-specific sound installations, collective multi-media improvisations, physical computing, environmenta sensing, and data systems. As well as creating aesthetic experiences, he is also working on experiments that explore how memory, nostalgia, intimacy and distance can be reinterpreted through a combination of physical and digital/networked geographies. A visiting artist at the UCLA ArtSci Center since 2014, his current research/creation projects include a large-scale interdisciplinary initiative on bird communication, where scientists and artists collectively explore the poetics of interspecies communication and interaction through site-specific installations.

Ong holds a BSc in Biology and Ecology from the National University of Singapore and an MSc in Biological Arts from the University of Western Australia, where he conducted interdisciplinary work in nanotechnology and sound at SymbioticA Centre for Excellence in BioArt. He is currently completing doctoral studies in Digital Arts and Experimental Media at DXARTS, University of Washington.