Gene Kogan is an artist and engineer working with AI and generative systems.
Originally trained as a machine learning engineer working on music information retrieval, he developed an interest in interactive and generative art. Inspired by open-source kits like Processing and openFrameworks, Gene began a creative coding practice using early deep learning models, sharing his experiments and code online through ml4a, a free curriculum teaching creative and generative AI to a generation of technologists.
Gene has given hundreds of lectures and workshops helping to popularize generative AI, and was one of the earliest people lecturing on decentralized AI and developing autonomous agents. He is a co-founder of Eden and Mars College. The founders of Runway were his students at NYU, and he became the company's first advisor.
His work has been exhibited at Christie's, Ars Electronica, the Seoul Mediacity Biennale, the Ming Contemporary Art Museum, Fotomuseum Winterthur, and the Toronto International Film Festival, and he has presented at NeurIPS in 2019 and 2025, and CVPR in 2026. His 2019 project Abraham proposed an autonomous artificial artist, now a living work that produces art daily under a thirteen-year covenant running from 2025 to 2038.
As a kid, my first true love was simulation games like SimEarth. In high school, I started programming and intensely studying emergence, dynamical systems, genetic algorithms, and artificial life. In college I studied applied mathematics, and discovered machine learning through an interest in recommender systems, publishing one paper on the topic under Cynthia Rudin. I shifted to music information retrieval and was an assistant researcher to Juan Pablo Bello at NYU until 2013.
During this time, I gravitated towards more artistic and interactive applications of machine learning, influenced by projects like Wekinator, PLOrk, and CataRT. I also began making generative art using creative coding toolkits like Processing and openFrameworks. Inspired by Deepdream, I combined my generative art and machine learning practices and began to study how to generate images and video using neural networks.
Sometimes I build installations for people to experience and interact with AI. Some notable places I've exhibited include Ars Electronica (Linz), Sonar Festival (Barcelona), Art Center Nabi (Seoul), Futurium (Berlin), Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Toronto International Film Festival, Copernicus Science Centre (Warsaw), QUT Art Museum (Brisbane), Eyebeam (Brooklyn), and Zorlu Center (Istanbul).
I co-founded Mars College, an annual off-grid college semester in the California desert where people gather each winter to learn about AI, art, and off-grid living. I lead the AI program.
Earlier, I created ml4a (Machine Learning for Artists), a free curriculum of tutorials, code, and lectures, along with a book explaining how neural networks work. I gave over 200 workshops in countries all over the world, an early on-ramp into creative AI for a generation of artists, and I wrote about that experience here.
I also taught 6 semesters at NYU, and recorded many of my classes. In 2016, I organized Alt-AI in New York, a very early AI art conference (highlights). If you'd like to organize a talk or workshop, get in touch.
If you are interested in working with me, I am available for select projects. E-mail or DM me.
