Joel Ong

Position
Contact
Credentials
Ph.D. Digital Arts and Experimental Media - University of Washington. M.Sc. Biological Arts - University of Western Australia. B.Sc. Ecology/Biology - National University of Singapore
Area of expertise
Digital arts practice, community engaged research.
Brief Biography
Joel Ong is an artist-researcher whose works connect scientific and artistic approaches to the environment, developed from more than a decade of explorations in contemporary ecological thought expressed through digital art, installation and socially conscious community engaged practices. Joel is interested in the way objects and spaces can function as repositories of ‘frozen sound’, and in elucidating these, he is interested in creating what systems theorist Jack Burnham (1968) refers to as “art (that) does not reside in material entities, but in relations between people and between people and the components of their environment.
As an artist, he has presented in places like the Gregg Museum of Art and Design (NC, USA), Ectopia Gallery (Lisboa,PO), Stamps Gallery (Michigan, USA), El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe (NM, USA), Geothe Institute ( Paris, FR), Times Square (NY, USA), Centro de Cultura Digital, Mexico, the Substation Gallery, Singapore and at UCLA’s Art|Sci Centre as part of Getty’s PST Art: Art&Science Collide program. He has curated international exhibitions such as Life: a Sensorium (ISEA 2019, Montreal), Sensoria: the Arts and Science of the Senses (Toronto and Gdansk,Poland, 2022), and most recently Love Letters to the Past and Future at the ELO2025 symposium (Toronto 2025). Joel was most recently guest editor for Public journal #70 : The Weather
Joel received a BSc. in Ecology from the National University of Singapore (2008), an MSc. In Bioart from SymbioticA, the Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts in Western Australia (2011), and holds a PhD from DXARTS (2017) at the University of Washington. He was a recipient of the Petro-Canada Young Innovators Award in 2020 and has been in artistic residencies with Biofrictions Creative Europe research project, the Coalesce Centre for Bioart and UCLA’s Atmospheres of Sound program. Prior to joining UVic, he was the Director of Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology (2019-23) and Helen Carswell Chair in Community Engaged Research in the Arts (2023-25) at York University in Toronto.