10 Digital Artists: Interactive Art and Design
In the world of interactive art and design, engagement is not just encouraged — it’s essential. The use of technologies like AI, VR, and real-time interactivity is allowing artists to create dynamic experiences that react to the viewer’s actions, decisions, and presence.
Whether it’s through gaming, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), or public installations, interactive art is redefining how we engage with creativity, where technology, interactivity, and immersive experiences take center stage.
This shift from passive observation to active participation transforms the viewer into an integral part of the artwork. Whether stepping into a virtual environment or engaging with public art that responds to movement, these interactive pieces invite exploration and collaboration, fostering a sense of connection between the art, the artist, and the audience.
The artists featured in this article are leading the way in this exciting era of interactive art, blending game art, immersive experiences, and innovative design to create art that is not just seen, but experienced. Through their work, they are redefining how we understand space, identity, and the role of technology in art. By encouraging participation and engagement, these artists are helping to shape a new understanding of what art can be and how we can experience it.
From virtual reality worlds to interactive public installations, these 10 digital artists are creating groundbreaking works that invite us to engage, explore, and think in new ways.
Whether you are an artist looking for inspiration, a curator working on an exhibition, or a digital arts fan looking to discover digital artists, this list is for you.
Here are 10 digital artists who are using interactivity and engagement to redefine the future of experiential art.
Scroll the learn more about them! Here’s the featured artists:Lucy Boyd-WilsonLaureano SolisJen LewinMaja PetrićMatthew NiederhauserJames RohaMartina MenegonOrnaghYiting LiuAlina NazmeevaLet's be friends on Instagram!
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Lucy Boyd-Wilson, an experiential artist based in San Diego, California, combines her background in Computer Science and Fine Arts to create immersive and interactive experiences. Her art evokes the rhythms and flows found in nature, inspiring a sense of awe and connection to the land. With a focus on the subtle and ephemeral, she crafts experiences that encourage slow, contemplative engagement, much like the steady rhythm of a deep breath, capturing the poetry of organic systems in motion.
Growing up in England and Canada before studying at McGill and Concordia in Montreal, Lucy initially pursued a career as an animation software developer. Today, she channels her technical expertise into creating art that envelops the viewer, using cutting-edge mediums like virtual reality, dome displays, and Kinect tracking devices.
Her works have been showcased internationally, including in dome and 360 VR film festivals, galleries, and virtual events. In 2022, Lucy was recognized for the 1st prize at the Artist Alliance Biennial exhibition at the Oceanside Museum of Art in San Diego.
“I used to play a game with my cat. I’d follow her wherever she went. She knew the game and would stop and wait for me to catch up. She’d lead me through cat-sized tunnels into the center of dense bushes, and I’d discover the game trails and secret places of smaller animals. She shared her world with me. I think this is what I am always trying to recreate in my art – the immersion of undergrowth and organic life, where everything is quivering in motion. But also, a sense of familiarity and belonging in such places.”
Read our interview with Lucy to learn about her art, creative process, and inspirations.
Laureano Solis is a graphic developer specializing in real-time 3D interaction and immersive digital experiences. Based in Valencia, Spain, with roots in Argentina, he blends design and programming to create innovative artistic and commercial projects using cutting-edge technology.
With a strong focus on interactivity, Laureano designs and develops 3D environments for browsers, allowing users to explore immersive, real-time digital spaces across multiple platforms. His expertise opens up new possibilities for artistic, commercial, and educational applications.
In the cultural sphere, Laureano has extensive experience crafting audiovisual content for live shows. His work includes 2D and 3D animation, concept design, and visual storytelling tailored to musicians and performers. He collaborates across diverse genres — from electronic music to cumbia and rock — developing visuals that enhance live performances and align perfectly with each artist’s style.
Jen Lewin is an internationally recognized artist-engineer who has been creating interactive public art for nearly 30 years. Based in Brooklyn, New York, she blends art, technology, and community engagement to craft large-scale, immersive sculptures that invite participation and play. Her work transforms public spaces into dynamic environments that foster connection, emphasizing the ripple effects of human interaction and collective action.
With a background in architecture and a highly technical approach to fabrication, Lewin’s installations brilliantly integrate nature and technology. Her works have been exhibited at renowned events and institutions worldwide, including Vivid Sydney, Burning Man, iLight Marina Bay, Istanbul Light Festival, and the Oklahoma Contemporary, among many others. She has also created permanent public sculptures across the globe, from Miami and Minneapolis to South Korea and Greece.
Lewin’s latest project, Cyclicality, continues her exploration of light, motion, and shared experience, reinforcing her commitment to making public art that unites people and places.
Maja Petrić is an award-winning contemporary artist who utilizes custom-developed new media who creates immersive installations, light sculptures, and AI-driven art that evoke the sublime and connect people across time. Over the years, she has produced more than 80 artworks that artfully blend light and advanced technologies like AI, exploring the interconnectedness of our existence.
Each of Maja's pieces begins by highlighting the sublime elements of nature, aiming to engage people through a universal and inherent bond with the environment. Once immersed, viewers discover deeper, more challenging themes within her work, including mortality, interdependence, climate change, and collective action.
Maja Petrić is also featured in 10 Digital Artists: Immersive Art Experiences
Matthew Niederhauser is an artist and educator specializing in immersive storytelling through the use of AI and XR technologies. His work spans various mediums, including virtual reality, installation, and video. With a background in anthropology from Columbia University, Matthew's early career focused on long-term documentary projects in China, supported by the Pulitzer Foundation. His work has been featured in publications such as The New Yorker, Wired, The New Republic, Vice Motherboard, and The New York Times. He also published Sound Kapital, a collection of portraits exploring China’s underground music scene.
Matthew earned his MFA in Art Practice and Theory from SVA, and has held visiting positions at the MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism and MIT’s Center for Art, Science, and Technology. He is a co-founder of Sensorium, an experiential studio focused on immersive storytelling, and currently serves as the Technical Director at Onassis ONX, an XR production and exhibition space in Manhattan. In addition, he teaches courses on immersive storytelling and virtual production at NYU Tisch and Tandon.
One of his most recent works, The Golden Key, was created alongside Marc Da Costa and received the Jury Award at SXSW 2024. The interactive installation invites participants to contribute their own stories, which the AI weaves into a continuously evolving narrative with visual and auditory interpretations. The installation highlights the collaborative potential of AI in creative storytelling. For a closer look at The Golden Key, you can read more in our article.
James Roha is a digital artist and educator who creates speculative research and philosophical terrariums through his art. His practice explores the unexpected implications of contemporary technologies and evolutionary trends. By intertwining concept artwork with socio-political narratives, Roha encourages audiences to question long-standing trends and current decisions.
Trained as an architect and storyteller, Roha uses digital environment art and world-building to translate complex ideas into accessible, pluralistic narratives. He is currently teaching at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.
His most recent public interactive game experience, Sorn-Lai, tasks participants with exploring the First Forest. Audience members can use their phones to scan NFC data tags attached to the scape’s characters and dioramas - uncovering details about the world along the way. The exhibition features a series of 7 large tabletop dioramas showcasing different environments around the first forest and over 50 character inhabitants of Sorn-Lai, all interwoven in an intricate web of narrative and ecology.
Stories unfolded around the tables are sets of cautionary tales regarding contemporary generative, manufacturing, and integrated technologies; the very technologies the installation is made with while the settings themselves are metaphors for societal trends and attitudes.
Read our interview with James to learn about his art, creative process, and inspirations.
Martina Menegon is an Italian artist, curator, and researcher based between Vienna and cyberspace. She explores the contemporary self and its hybrid corporeality, blending physical and virtual elements to create complex, intimate assemblages. Martina specializes in Interactive and Extended Reality Art, using these mediums to explore performative self-portraiture and hybrid identities.
Her work often creates disorienting experiences that challenge perceptions of reality and identity in the virtual realm. She has exhibited internationally in both physical and online spaces, including prestigious venues like Francisco Carolinum Linz, MAK Museum of Applied Arts Vienna, NRW-Forum Düsseldorf, and FILE Festival, among others.
Beyond her artistic practice, Martina is an active curator and educator. She has curated various exhibitions, including pop-up solo shows under the collective /afk, which she co-founded, and currently serves as Vice Director and Curator at the CIVA Festival for New Media Art. Martina has also contributed to the sound:frame team and led the Area for Virtual Art platform. Her curatorial work focuses on digital and immersive art, helping to elevate the visibility of new media and virtual experiences. Additionally, she lectures internationally, teaching courses on digital design, virtuality, and interactive arts at universities such as the Art University in Linz and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.
Martina's work has earned her recognition in both the art and academic worlds, with her NFT piece for the "Unsigned" series recently added to the permanent collection of Francisco Carolinum Linz.
Ornagh is a self-taught Irish artist whose bold and unapologetic work explores themes of political and social issues, like societal expectations of gender and sexual diversity through extended reality (XR) art. Based in London, she has embraced cutting-edge technologies like 3D scanning, motion capture, and virtual reality to create immersive, surrealist environments.
For Ornagh, XR is a limitless canvas — one that allows her to build entire worlds free from physical constraints. Through her work, she reimagines past experiences, giving them new narratives and resolutions. Ornagh’s work invites viewers to step into these immersive digital spaces, reflecting on the balance between light and dark, chaos and order, and the tensions that shape our lives. Through XR, she challenges perceptions and offers a space for deeper understanding and dialogue.
“By immersing audiences in these stories, XR makes the abstract tangible, enabling them to feel the emotional weight of these issues and fostering empathy. My goal is to spark conversations about freedom, empowerment, and the beauty of diversity—encouraging people to see beyond societal expectations and embrace the complexity of human identity.”
Read our interview with Ornagh to learn about her art, creative process, and inspirations.
Yiting Liu is an XR developer and designer who intertwines a personal odyssey with artistic innovation. Yearning for independence, the artist moved to the United States at 18 and started her creative journey that celebrates her intrinsic connection to community and power of personal freedom.
Alongside dance, music, and poetry, the artist creates AR experiences and simulations where technology meets human experience, emphasizing empathy and understanding. After completing her studies at NYU and UW-Madison, she has worked as a mentor at ITP Camp and collaborated with companies like Accenture and Disney.
“Looking ahead, I will continue exploring the intersection of technology and community. It is rewarding to use technology to do social good for people in need. I want to make the world a better place and make peoples life easier. I have the drive to always create and connect as many people together as I can in this life time and I will never stop.”
Read our interview with Yiting to learn about her art, creative process, and inspirations.
Alina Nazmeeva is a Detroit-based artist and an educator at University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. She creates simulations and worlds that analyze the interactions of physical and digital spaces and objects, and their cultural, economic and political consequences.
Using XR, gaming engines, CGI software, machinima, and physical installations, her creative and research practice examines the relationship between virtual and concrete, cities and video games, life and animation, organic and engineered.
“I enjoy complex, contradictory subjects. For instance, virtual worlds and their cultural, social, economic status…on the one hand, the video game industry is a massive global network of corporations, and the game production, consumption and circulation manifest the tension between market and cultural values, among others. On the other hand video games and virtual worlds are the lived spaces in which social, aesthetic and political reality and experience are constructed.
The so-called metaverse-yet-to-come—and here I do not mean only Meta’s proprietary metaverse—but rather all kinds of spatial and social computing systems and digital spaces encompassing from MUDs (multi-user dungeons) to some ideas of future of XR—seems to be a neoliberal hellscape. However, it also holds a liberatory and emancipatory potential.”
Read our interview with Alina to learn about her art, creative process, and inspirations.
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