Background & Biography
Zach Lieberman is an American artist, researcher and educator whose work connects creative coding, interactive installations and digital art. MIT Media Lab currently lists him as Adjunct Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, affiliated with Future Sketches. His practice often uses human movement or voice as the starting point for software-generated images and experiences. He is a co-creator of openFrameworks and helped co-found the School for Poetic Computation.
His background extends well beyond blockchain. MoMA lists him among the six collaborators behind EyeWriter, dated 2009, alongside James Powderly, Evan Roth, Chris Sugrue, Tony “TEMPT1” Quan and Theo Watson. The museum record is evidence of a collaborative design practice rather than a claim that he alone created the project. This earlier work provides context for his later experiments with audience participation and tokenized art.
Notable Contributions
openFrameworks is an open-source C++ toolkit intended to make creative programming more accessible. Its official documentation describes a framework that brings together tools for graphics, audio, images, video and computer vision. The project is distributed under the MIT License and emphasizes collaborative development. It is creative infrastructure, not a blockchain protocol, and should not be described as having been built specifically for NFTs.
Lieberman’s direct involvement in NFT art is documented by multiple primary sources. In January 2022, Prada Group announced adidas for Prada re-source, a project combining community-contributed photographs into a digital mosaic designed by Lieberman. The announcement described 3,000 contributions to be minted as NFTs and incorporated into a larger NFT, with an auction planned on SuperRare. This profile treats the announcement as evidence of the project’s design and his named participation, without inferring a realized sale price or charitable payment from promotional plans.
Another example is Body Circles, presented with playrecordmint at Kunsthalle Zürich’s DYOR exhibition from 16 December 2022 to 15 January 2023. The institution describes an open edition of still images from an interactive artwork in which points on participants’ bodies were joined by evolving circles and curves. Visitors could help create images and mint them as NFTs. Here, blockchain distribution was connected to a physical encounter with the artwork, rather than simply added to an existing static picture.
Artistic Practice & Research
The Toledo Museum of Art’s Infinite Images catalogue identifies Color Blinds Study #4 as a 2023 work combining custom software, looping video, an NFT and the Ethereum blockchain. It lists the work as being in a private collection, not owned by the museum. The study uses code to explore light and color effects associated with Venetian blinds.
The same catalogue distinguishes Lieberman’s method from generative systems whose outputs are issued without individual selection. He explores the system and chooses results to save and export. That distinction matters when discussing blockchain art: software-generated work does not necessarily mean that its final visual output is selected entirely by an automated minting process.
At MIT, Future Sketches describes research into software as an artistic medium, computational sketching and tools for creative expression. Its stated areas include generative form, machine learning and augmented reality. These interests help situate the NFT projects within a broader research and teaching practice. They do not establish that every artwork or classroom project uses a blockchain.
Why Katharos.ai Follows
Lieberman offers a documented link between the creative-coding community and NFT production. His projects provide concrete examples of artist-selected generative imagery, participatory minting and collaboration between artists, cultural institutions and commercial brands. Katharos.ai follows this work for its contribution to the forms and practices of digital art, not as a recommendation to purchase an NFT.
Areas We Follow
- Creative coding and open-source artistic tools. - Participatory and generative NFT projects. - Museum documentation of blockchain-based art. - The relationship between software authorship, audience participation and digital editions.
Reporting Scope
Institutional records and project announcements support this profile. Historical exhibitions are described with their dates. NFT status is attributed to specific works rather than his entire practice; no claims are made about investment returns, guaranteed royalties or platform security.
Category
Community, Media & Education.
Current Position
Artist and Adjunct Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT Media Lab, verified 5 November 2026.
Photo Credit
Kris Krüg for PopTech, Zach Lieberman at Pop!Tech in Camden, Maine, 23 October 2009, via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0. Original photograph and license are linked in Sources 8–9. Cropped and resized; adapted images are licensed CC BY-SA 2.0. This is a historical photograph.
Source Notice
Prepared from the primary sources listed with this profile and checked on 5 November 2026. Roles, affiliations and project availability can change.