Ben Swift
Senior Lecturer, ANU School of Cybernetics
Ben Swift leads the Cybernetic Studio. He's a researcher, artist, creative technologist and educator whose work spans AI, computational art and music, data visualisation, cybernetics and full-stack web development. As a livecoding artist, he performs at international festivals including ISEA and ICLC—often as one half of the duo Funktion with Ushini Attanayake—and co-developed the Extempore programming environment for musical livecoding. He's also a founding co-director of the ANU Laptop Ensemble, and received a Vice Chancellor's Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning in 2018. A common thread runs through all his work: "liveness"—human-in-the-loop interactivity with real-time feedback. Canberra born and bred, Ben cares deeply about "making computing a welcoming, interesting and creatively satisfying place, especially for people who don't fit the traditional picture of a 'computer scientist'."