Alan Warburton
I’m an artist, technologist and video essayist working with CGI, AI, XR and VFX between art, industry and academia.
I’m best known for my critical video essays which are taught extensively in art, design and architecture schools worldwide. I’ve been commissioned by the BBC, the Open Data Institute, Tate Exchange, The Photographers’ Gallery and Channel 4, exhibited work at Club Transmediale, Transfer Gallery, RMIT, Ars Electronica and the National Gallery of Australia, and undertaken lectures and residencies at Somerset House, the ICA, Science Gallery, V&A, Carnegie Mellon and the AA School.
I’ve just finished a practice-based PhD at Birkbeck’s Vasari Centre, where I have been researching 21st century image technics. My thesis Rendering Work at the Bleeding Edge reflects on two decades of industry experience working with CGI and extrapolates on themes from my 2020 solo exhibition RGBFAQ, which considered how multi-modal synthetic datasets inform the operation of computer vision systems.
I’m a passionate advocate for digital literacy and sustainable creative practices. My contributions to Routledge’s The Networked Image in Post-Digital Culture (2022) considered the changing economies of digital labour and my chapter in Bloomsbury’s upcoming Encyclopedia of Animation Studies (2025) discusses contemporary theories of rendering. I recently investigated AI ethics and aesthetics in 2023’s The Wizard of AI (commissioned by the Open Data Institute and featured in the Guardian), and countered myths of AI in collaboration with the BBC and Better Images of AI.
Feel free to ask me about CGI, AI, VFX, digital aesthetics, queer politics, artistic labour and mental health awareness. Feel free not to ask me about becoming the unwitting face of a viral story about my upstairs neighbour’s artwork.