Ben Olsen

Welcome

benolsen.com

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about ben

1975 → 1980 → 1994 → 1997 → 2001 → 2004 → 2010 → 2016 → 2020 → 2026

Resume

AI

creative machines & weird experiments

curious → skeptical → experimenting → building → questioning

daily comic

AI Things Considered

Every day, an AI reads NPR's All Things Considered and draws a 6-panel comic strip in a vintage newspaper style.

Click any panel to read the original story on NPR. View archive →

News 2 MTV

Turning daily news into music videos.

coming soon

Thoughts on AI

Neither utopia nor apocalypse. Mostly just weird.

essays coming

Silly Stuff

AI-generated nonsense and experiments gone wrong (right?).

Public Art

installations & interventions

Seattle → Websites → Knox → Hampshire → Europe → Tacoma → Lakewood

ongoing since 2018

Cosmic Love Blanket

Large blankets printed with my shirtless body, given to friends eventually given to goodwill.

~50 blankets now in the wild. The real art is the stranger who discovers it at a thrift store.

gift → use → document → donate → public art

Dig Pit

Filmed myself digging until I disappeared. Buried the footage in the same hole under plexiglass.

→ tiny looping elf

Bottomless Pit

Fake land-use permits for bottomless pits in national parks.

Hampshire College Div III

Noses

Ceramic noses for telephone poles.

surveillance → smelling

Telephone Booth

Free public phone booths via WiFi.

in progress

Perform

actions & endurance

Steve Martin → Ana → NWS → JZ → College → Zen → Youtube

Colors

Seattle, early 2000s. Groups in coordinated colors walked the city.

I led the yellow group — everyone in chicken suits.

Clean

12 people in white masks publicly cleaned Pioneer Square.

daytime: weirdo
night time: art

Stream

Dancing in the creek to LCD Soundsystem.

location: Tacoma
song: Dance Yrself Clean

Algreens

Walgreens - W + Let's Stay Together = Dance

Wonderland Trail

~100 miles · around Mt. Rainier · 3x completed

Is hiking art? yes.

Music

makes me move

Kindergarten → Road Trips → 90s → 2010 → Ableton → news2mtv

WVKC Radio

Knox College Early morning DJ.

audio of this coming soon

some stuff i made

Willis

ah, high school.

the beeeeees!

Art

Thanks mom

mom → cartoonist → summer camps → europe → degree → div4 → ideas

Photography

Drawings

Ceramics

Printmaking

Painting

Computer

286 → senior network engineer

tinkerer → sysadmin → webdev → consultant → engineer

early days

First computer: 286 with Word 1.0 (newspaper ad)

9600 baud modem → 14.4k modem (mind blowing!)

useless shit I know

Macromedia Flash
ActionScript
Netware
every version of SBS
Office 97 Pro = 55 floppy disks (~3 hrs)
manual HTML/CSS
how to 100% Breath of the Wild
Centronics SCSI 50pin
RS232
every single Windows edition
DD-WRT
every Exchange Server since v5.0

useful shit I know

<lists take time>

Poetry

bad but I love it

book reports → philosophy → divorce → toast → EKF → freedoom

Finding My Voice

Started writing 2009-2011. I'll put my stuff up here eventually

writing about the toast that's inside of my body

Words & Pics

Examples coming soon.

Video

from Bruce Lee to video art

bruce lee → art barn → art and audience → documentation → 253 → youtube

Early Days

Circa 1980, two aspiring 5 year old martial artists expertly recreate frame for frame Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon in Betamax.

Confession Box

Camera in photo booth for confessions in disguise.

before StoryCorps

Art & Audience

a video i made while at hampshire about art, audience, public, private, james bond, chicken suits etc.

253 Films

Tacoma's 72-hour film competition. You get 4 random requirements and 253 seconds to make something.

Realistic Expectations

Requirements: a tattoo, "it's time to roll", a competition, and AI.

Won best use of AI. Surprisingly.