Yucef Merhi is an artist, coder, researcher, and curator, interested in raising cultural awareness through technology and language. Yucef has produced a wide body of works that engage poetry, hacking, facial recognition, AI, VR and retro video game platforms, towards the formulation of interactive experiences and environments. He is a pioneer of Digital Art, and is known for making the first work of art that included a video game console—the Atari 2600—back in 1985.His work has been exhibited in museums, biennials, galleries and public spaces in the the Americas, Europe, and Asia, including the New Museum, New York; LACMA, Los Angeles; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Caracas; De Appel, Amsterdam; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; and Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul; among others. He is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in Digital/Electronic Art, the 2018-19 CIFO Grant for Mid-Career artist, and the studio residency award at the 30th Ljubljana Biennial.
At OpenDocLab, Yucef will be doing research on how to reduce electronic waste by framing outdated technologies as artistic endeavors. He is calling this approach “Retrocycling”. To attain this vision, he is going to investigate alternative applications for discontinued consumer electronics that can help to renovate their function, maximize their creative potential, increase their value, and extend their life span.