Summary
Wes Modes is an interdisciplinary artist-director and lecturer based in California with 11 years of focused experience at the intersection of art, technology, and social practice. They design immersive, participatory projects—like A Secret History of American River People—that combine creative coding, oral history, and installation to surface marginalized narratives. With a technical background in systems architecture and a BA in Computer and Information Science plus an MFA in Digital Arts and New Media, Wes bridges large-scale web and archive engineering (notably the Grateful Dead Archive Online) with hands-on experimental media. Their pedagogy emphasizes radical, studio-based learning that trains non-programmers in computational tools while foregrounding community engagement and ethical storytelling. This blend of production-grade systems experience and long-standing fine arts practice makes them equally fluent in scalable infrastructure and intimate, people-centered projects.
11 years of coding experience
5 years of employment as a software developer
University of California Santa Cruz
javascript, python, c, php, shell scripting, perl