Wes Modes

Wes Modes is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator working at the intersection of new media, games, and animation. Their practice blends generative systems, interactive storytelling, and material craft, engaging audiences through participatory installations, game design, and time-based media. They teach courses in game tools, animation, creative coding, and experimental gameplay, drawing on professional experience with 3D modeling, procedural art, and immersive media environments. Modes’ projects — including DriftConditions, A Secret History of American River People, and Black Rock Station — have been exhibited nationally, exploring themes of impermanence, resilience, and the social histories embedded in technology and place.

MFA: University of California Santa Cruz, 2015 (Digital Art and New Media)

BA: University of California Santa Cruz, 1992 (Computer Science - Machine Learning concentration)

Participatory and socially engaged new media; game design and experimental gameplay; generative and procedural systems; interactive storytelling; animation and time-based media; physical computing and installation art; social histories of technology and place; community-based narrative and oral history projects; critical media theory and creative coding.

Peer Reviewed Publications

Modes, W (2012. ) Revisiting the Technical Achievements of Listening Post Ten Years On .NMEDIAC: The Journal of New Media & Culture, , 9 (1 ) ,

Zellmer, S. B.; Miller, A.; Ruys Smith, T.; McMillin, T. S.; Modes, W. (2015. ) Knowing the Mississippi .Open Rivers: Rethinking the Mississippi, , (1 ) ,https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/knowing-the-mississippi-4/

Academic - DAAP – University of Cincinnati
Aronoff Center for Design & Art
Cincinnati  Ohio, 45221
Phone: 831-704-6690
modeswa@ucmail.uc.edu