22 Facts About Roy Ascott

Roy Ascott FRSA was born on 26 October 1934 and is a British artist, who works with cybernetics and telematics on an art he calls technoetics by focusing on the impact of digital and telecommunications networks on consciousness.

Since the 1960s, Ascott has been a practitioner of interactive computer art, electronic art, cybernetic art and telematic art.

Roy Ascott is recognised by Ars Electronica as the "visionary pioneer of media art", and widely seen as a radical innovator in arts education and research, having occupied leading academic roles in England, Europe, North America, and China, and is currently leading his Technoetic Arts studio in Shanghai, and directing the Planetary Collegium.

Dr Kate Sloan's comprehensive study of his early work "Art Cybernetics and Pedagogy in Post-War Britain: Roy Ascott's Groundcourse" was published by Routledge in 2019.

In 2025 Roy Ascott was the subject of a comprehensive interview at Artforum that was conducted by Hans-Ulrich Obrist.

Roy Ascott is President of the Planetary Collegium, Professor of Technoetic Arts Plymouth University, and the De Tao Master of Technoetic Arts at the DeTao Masters Academy in Shanghai.

Roy Ascott is Chief Specialist of the Visual Art Innovation Institute at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

Roy Ascott is the founding editor of the research journal Technoetic Arts, an honorary editor of Leonardo Journal, and author of the book Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness, University of California Press.

Roy Ascott was educated at the City of Bath Boys' School.

Roy Ascott then moved to London, where he established the radical Groundcourse at Ealing Art College, which he subsequently established at Ipswich Civic College, in Suffolk, working with artist tutors such as Anthony Benjamin, Bernard Cohen.

Roy Ascott taught in London Ealing, and was a visiting lecturer at other London art schools throughout the 1960s.

Roy Ascott was then briefly was President of Ontario College of Art, now OCAD University, Toronto and then Chair of Fine Art at Minneapolis College of Art and Design before moving to California as Vice-President and Dean of San Francisco Art Institute, during the 1970s.

Roy Ascott was Professor for Communications Theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, during the 1980s, and Professor of Technoetic Arts at the University of Wales, Newport in the 1990s where he established the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts.

Roy Ascott is recipient of the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica award for Visionary Pioneer of Media Art 2014.

Roy Ascott has advised new media arts organisations in Brazil, Japan, Korea, Europe and North America as well as UNESCO, and was Visiting Professor, Design Media Arts, University of California Los Angeles at the UCLA School of the Arts.

Roy Ascott was an International Commissioner for the XLII Venice Biennale of 1986.

Roy Ascott is the founding president of the Planetary Collegium an advanced research center which he launched in 1994, with its Hub currently based in the University of Plymouth, UK, and nodes in China, Greece, Italy, and Switzerland.

Roy Ascott is a Doctor Honoris Causa of Ionian University, Corfu, Greece.

In 1964, Roy Ascott published "Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetic Vision" in Cybernetica: Journal of the International Association for Cybernetics.

Since the 1960s, Roy Ascott has been working with interactive computer art, telematic art, and systems art.

Roy Ascott built a theoretical framework for approaching interactive artworks, which brought together certain characteristics of Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus, Happenings, and Pop Art with the science of cybernetics.

Roy Ascott has shown at the Venice Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, Electra Paris, Ars Electronica, V2 Institute for the Unstable Media, Milan Triennale, Biennale do Mercosul, Brazil, European Media Festival, and gr2000az at Graz, Austria.