Benjamin Pang is an artist/programmer from San Francisco, CA and a final-year Interactive Media major at New York University Abu Dhabi. With a background in software development and the sciences, he mainly deals with interactive installations, multimedia experiences, and CGI/VFX art. Drawing influences from a wide variety of classical and contemporary artists, music, digital multimedia, and personal experiences, his work explores sensory confusion, coping mechanisms, and loneliness in the post-digital age. He is currently making and posting CGI “everydays” online under the alias “BandidoJim,” as well as building a capstone project installation involving brain-computer interfaces.

Artist Statement

Once upon a time while browsing Reddit, I stumbled upon a short but sweet comment: “IT’S NOT USELESS IF IT LOOKS COOL.” This little quip by a random user on the Internet has not only changed my mindset and approach to creating art, but has also become an inseparable part of my identity as an artist. When we look at a work of art, neurons immediately fire in an attempt to register what we see. For the trained artist, this may mean analyzing composition, medium, and details to better understand the visual choices behind the work. But even the average person can still meaningfully understand and enjoy art: “I like the colors,” “This reminds me of…,” “This makes me feel…”

When I initially started making art, I spent much of my creative process obsessing about every pixel of detail. I was so hellbent on giving my art complex meaning that, ironically, the intended message of my art became lost. I was floundering, directionless, burnt out, desperate.

“IT’S NOT USELESS IF IT LOOKS COOL” helped me realize that the viewer automatically attributes their own intricate meanings to art, shaped and molded by their own unique experiences and worldviews. Once I learned to stop overthinking and simply let my imagination wander on its own, art suddenly became liberating, enjoyable, a new and intuitive way for me to talk to the otherwise silent Internet. Conversations are two-sided interactions in which both sides contribute new ideas; similarly, my art does not say everything, but rather contributes a piece to the conversation between me and the viewer.

I seek to create art that hits the viewer on a primal “gut” level. I absorb inspiration from anything I can find - art I see on or offline, music I listen to, dreams I remember, the ups and downs of everyday life, even random posters and billboards found on the street. This mixture of ideas and inspiration finds its way to a medium: CGI/VFX, code, electronics, plain cardboard, paper. The microcosms I construct in my art are tiny shards of the world I experience, a world that is equal parts beautiful and ugly, manic and depressing, empty and claustrophobic, so elegantly lucid and so maddeningly confusing. The viewer is temporarily invited into my surreal and turbulent world, even if for only a fleeting moment, so that they may relive memories from their own world.

“I,” the artist, am not what brings meaning to my art; “we,” the artist and the viewer, are what give my art meaning.