Brent Watanabe

Brent Watanabe is an artist combining a background in traditional materials and practices (drawing, sculpture) with emerging technologies (computer programming, electronics), exploring an artistic field still being defined and discovered. His work explores themes of human consumption and waste, our effect on nature and animals, as well as spirituality, suffering and sentience. Using computers, computer programming, robotics, and video game engines, he utilizes technology as a medium to explore these themes in algorithmically controlled gallery and site specific installations, online projects, and video game interventions. One of his recent projects, San Andreas Deer Cam (2016), was presented live on the Internet, had over 800,000 visitors in the first three months, and was written about in dozens of publications, including New York Magazine, the BBC, and WIRED. He has had a number of recent screenings, projects, and exhibitions, nationally and internationally, most recently at Bureau Europa (Maastricht, Netherlands, 2022), Centro Cultural Banco de Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2022), a VR artist-in-residence with Meta / Facebook (2021), MassArt Art Museum, (Boston, MA, 2020-22), NTT InterCommunication Center, (Tokyo, Japan, 2019), MAAT Museum, (Lisbon, Portugal, 2019), and Bumbershoot (Seattle, WA, 2016). He is a three-time MacDowell fellow.