Roopa Vasudevan is a South Asian-American media artist, computer programmer and researcher, currently based in Philadelphia. Her work examines social and technological defaults; interrogates rules, conventions and protocols that we often ignore or take for granted; and centers humanity and community in explorations of technology’s impacts on society. Through a varied creative toolkit that includes data collection practices, systems design, web development, and remix, she seeks to emphasize personal and human experiences, often on an individual or local level, in a time of Big Data and surveillance capitalism. Roopa is a current member artist at Vox Populi, one of Philadelphia’s longest-operating collectively-run arts spaces; a 2020 Eyebeam Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future Fellow (Phase 1); a Mellon Foundation–Simon Fraser University Artist Fellow as part of the Data Fluencies Project (2022–2025); and a member of the Art & Code track at NEW INC, the art and technology incubator at the New Museum (New York, NY; track in partnership with Rhizome). She is a PhD candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at Penn, where her dissertation focuses on the complex and involved relationships between new media artists and the technology industry.
