Blurbs

Here’s a list of bios/blurbs that you could use in your glossy brochures. I’m open to being described/introduced in new ways, too—although if you’re going to do that then I’d appreciate having a discussion with you about it first :)

#General audience (short)

Dr. Ben Swift is an academic, educator, artist and maker of open source tools for creative computing and generative AI. He’s a Senior Lecturer at the ANU School of Cybernetics, where he leads the Cybernetic Studio: a cybernetic community that makes things out of hardware/software/people/stuff to explore cybernetic systems/ideas and their impact on the world.

#Academic (short)

Dr. Ben Swift is an interdisciplinary scholar and artist-programmer with interests and expertise in AI/machine learning, cybernetics, data vis/data science, human-computer interaction and computational art & music. His recent research takes a creative, experimental, and sometimes weird approach to AI and large language models, spanning AI literacy pedagogy, human-scale AI artefacts, and agentic AI development workflows. He’s a Senior Lecturer at the ANU School of Cybernetics, where he leads the Cybernetic Studio: a cybernetic community that makes things out of hardware/software/people/stuff to explore cybernetic systems/ideas and their impact on the world. He’s also the creator LLMs Unplugged and COMP4020 Agentic Coding Studio, the ANU’s flagship agentic software development course.

#Academic (long)

Dr. Ben Swift is an internationally-recognised interdisciplinary scholar, computer music artist and creative technologist/software engineer. He’s an expert in AI/machine learning, computing education, full-stack web development, user experience (UX) design, cybernetics, and computational art & music.

He leads the Cybernetic Studio at the School of Cybernetics at the Australian National University: a cybernetic community that makes things out of hardware/software/people/stuff to explore cybernetic systems and their impact on the world.

Ben’s recent research takes a creative, experimental, and sometimes weird approach to AI and large language models, spanning AI literacy pedagogy, human-scale AI artefacts, and agentic AI development workflows. He created LLMs Unplugged—a hands-on workshop where learners build language models with pen, paper, and dice, delivered to thousands of participants from school students to senior government executives—and leads Cybernetic Studio projects including the Perceptron Apparatus (a wooden device that performs neural network calculations by hand) and PANIC! (an interactive installation exploring how meaning transforms through feedback loops of generative AI models). He’s currently developing a new ANU course on agentic coding: building software with LLM-based AI agents.

As a livecoding artist Ben has performed at international arts festivals, including the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) and the International Conference on Live Coding (ICLC). Ben is a founding co-director of the ANU Laptop Ensemble, an interdisciplinary computer music research and teaching collective.

Ben works in the open: nearly all of his current research code, teaching materials, and Cybernetic Studio software lives on GitHub, across his personal account and the ANU Cybernetics organisation. This work spans AI literacy tooling, the software that runs Studio installations like PANIC! and the Perceptron Apparatus, and ongoing contributions to the Extempore programming environment for musical livecoding, used by a worldwide community of programmers, artists, and musicians. He has more than 15 years’ experience as an OSS community manager, technical writer, and software engineer.

#Academic (educator)

Dr. Ben Swift is an interdisciplinary scholar and artist-programmer with interests and expertise in AI/machine learning, cybernetics, data vis/data science, human-computer interaction and computational art & music. He has extensive learning and teaching experience in a wide range of contexts, having worked across two schools at the ANU: the School of Computing (2012–2021) and the School of Cybernetics (2021–present). He has designed, convened and taught large courses (e.g. 400+ student core COMP courses), innovative cross-campus electives (e.g. the ANU Laptop Ensemble), and extension courses (e.g. the ANU Extension “Creative Computing” H-course). He has been recognised for his teaching with a 2018 Vice Chancellor’s Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning. More recently, he created LLMs Unplugged—a hands-on workshop where learners build language models with pen, paper, and dice, delivered to thousands of participants across schools, universities, and government—and is developing a new ANU course on agentic coding that uses studio-style weekly critique sessions to teach students how to build software with LLM-based AI agents.

He is a previous Associate Director (Education) and team leader for “Exec Ed” Learning Experiences at the School of Cybernetics. He currently leads the Cybernetic Studio: a cybernetic community that makes things out of hardware/software/people/stuff to explore cybernetic systems/ideas and their impact on the world.

#Livecoder (short, informal)

Dr. Ben Swift is a livecoder and artist-programmer, perpetually struggling to reconcile his day job in academia with his longing to escape into the woods with a laptop and a solar panel and make beats with code full-time. He’s one half of the core development team for the Extempore programming environment. He regularly performs with Ushini Attanayake as Funktion.

#Explanation of livecoding (general audience)

‘Livecoding’ is the act of programming (writing code) as a musical performance—in front of an audience. You can see the code being written in front of your eyes, and this code is making all the music that you can hear.

It’s kindof like conducting an orchestra; but instead of humans in tuxedoes, the ‘musicians’ are the little bits of code that you can see being written on-the-fly. They follow the instructions they’re given, they play the notes they’re told to, and they never hit bum notes! They’re an army of musical robot ninjas summoned into existence in the improvisational performance of live coding.

So swing by and try to figure out what’s going on; try and understand which little bits of code are triggering which sounds and notice the way that the music changes as the code evolves. Or if it all seems too complicated then just sit back, watch the pretty colours and enjoy listening to the robot ninjas as they play diligently and tirelessly for your listening pleasure.