Sam Lavigne (born 1981) is an artist and educator based in New York. His work deals with technology, data, surveillance, natural language processing, and automation.

Sam Lavigne at the Re:publica conference 2023

Education

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Born in San Francisco, Lavigne studied Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. He has a Master in Professional Studies at Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University.

Lavigne has since taught at ITP/NYU,[1] The New School, and the School for Poetic Computation, and was formerly Magic Grant fellow at the Brown Institute at Columbia University,[2] and Special Projects editor at the New Inquiry Magazine.[3]

He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Design at University of Texas in Austin.

Projects

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Lavigne describes his work as "online interventions that surface the frequently opaque political and economic conditions that shape computational technologies".

He has exhibited work at the Whitney Museum,[4] the Shed,[5] Lincoln Center,[6] SFMOMA, Pioneer Works, DIS, Ars Electronica, the New Museum.[7]

Selected works include Smell Dating with artist Tega Brain,[8] White Collar Crime Risk Zones,[9][10][11] The Good Life[12] and The Stupid Shit No One Needs and Terrible Ideas Hackathon.[13][14]

He has been named an Honoree at the Webby Awards twice.[15]

ICE controversy

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In 2018, Lavigne published a database of the names of nearly 1600 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees sourced from LinkedIn in response to the Trump administration's family separation policy.[16] The project was removed by GitHub who claimed it violated community guidelines and information about the project removed from Twitter and Medium.[17][18] This prompted WikiLeaks to post a mirror.[19][20] Experts stated the project was not illegal as all information was already publicly available.[21]

References

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  1. ^ "SAM LAVIGNE". NYU TISCH. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  2. ^ "2017-18 Magic Grants Announced – Brown Institute". 4 May 2017. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  3. ^ Siddiqi, Ayesha (2014-12-19). "Announcing Derica Shields, Sam Lavigne, and Anwar Batte". The New Inquiry. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  4. ^ Hampton, Rachelle (2020-04-02). "How Two Artists Combined Thousands of NYC Listings Into an Ad for One Massive, $43.9 Billion Apartment". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  5. ^ "The Shed Is Funding 52 Emerging New York Artists to Make New Work—Here They Are". artnet News. 2018-10-09. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  6. ^ "LYFE Glass Ghost – Performance Space New York". Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  7. ^ "Sam Lavigne and Tega Brain: New York Apartment". whitney.org. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  8. ^ "New Dating Website Uses Body Odor to Match You With a Mate". ABC News. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  9. ^ "This App Warns You If You're Entering A Sketchy Financial District". BuzzFeed News. 25 April 2017. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  10. ^ "White-Collar Crime | The Record". The Marshall Project. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  11. ^ "This app alerts you to rampant white-collar crime in your area". The Daily Dot. 2017-04-25. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  12. ^ Wannmann, Azura (2017-01-04). "Experience Enron's Everyday Evil with a 500,000+ Email Experiment". Vice. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  13. ^ Vincent, James (2017-03-03). "Stupid Hackathon celebrates terrible tech with eyeball pong, a robot porn addict, and more". The Verge. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  14. ^ Mahdawi, Arwa (2016-02-08). "Mansplain it to Me: inside the Stupid Hackathon for extremely stupid ideas". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  15. ^ "Ghosts of a Chance ARG at the Smithsonian American Art Museum -- The Webby Awards". Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  16. ^ "What We Know: Family Separation And 'Zero Tolerance' At The Border". NPR.org. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  17. ^ Mikelionis, Lukas (2018-06-20). "Anti-Trump professor thwarted in bid to share ICE employee data". Fox News. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  18. ^ Lecher, Colin (2018-06-19). "GitHub, Medium, and Twitter take down database of ICE employee LinkedIn accounts". The Verge. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  19. ^ Betz, Bradford (2018-06-23). "WikiLeaks posts ICE employees' personal data, report says". Fox News. Retrieved 2020-05-06.
  20. ^ Flynn, Meagan (22 June 2018). "WikiLeaks publishes identities and information about ICE employees amid intensifying anger". The Washington Post. Retrieved 7 May 2020.
  21. ^ "Security, privacy experts weigh in on the ICE doxxing". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
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