Antonio Roberts (b. 1985, Leicester, UK) is a British artist, curator, musician, and live coder based in Birmingham. His practice spans glitch art, installation, audiovisual performance, and digital culture research, with a particular focus on the social and political implications of digital technologies. Across his work, Roberts examines issues including representation, algorithmic bias, copyright, free culture, and the historical relationship between Black communities and digital media.
Roberts studied MA Digital Arts in Performance at Birmingham City University between 2010 and 2011. Since the mid-2010s, he has established an international profile through exhibitions, performances, and curatorial projects exploring the aesthetics and politics of networked and computational culture. His work frequently combines live coding, generative systems, sound, and moving image, often presented within algorave contexts and experimental digital art environments.
A recurring concern within Roberts’ recent work has been the representation of Black people within digital systems, ranging from stereotypical depictions in early video games to the ways contemporary algorithms and artificial intelligence reproduce and reinforce existing social biases. Alongside his artistic practice, he has developed educational and mentoring initiatives intended to address historical underrepresentation within digital art and electronic music cultures. His (Algo|Afro) Futures mentoring programme teaches live coding software while foregrounding the contribution of Black artists and musicians to computational and electronic culture.
Roberts has also undertaken research into copyright, archival reuse, and open-source culture. He was an artist in residence at the University of Birmingham (2014), where he conducted research into copyright and the reuse of archive material. His practice consistently engages with questions surrounding ownership, remix culture, and the circulation of digital media.
His work has been featured in many galleries and festivals including, Furtherfield (2013, 2019), Tate Britain (2014, 2015, 2020), Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago (2014), Birmingham Open Media (2015-2016), Jerwood Arts (2016), Whitney Museum of American Art (2017), Green Man Festival (2017), Barbican (2018), Victoria and Albert Museum (2019), Czurles Nelson Gallery (2019) New Art Exchange (2021), Tate Modern (2024), Vivid Projects (2024), and Festival Tormenta (2025).. In 2026, he was selected for an Ode to the Midland commission.
He has also curated exhibitions and projects, including GLI.TC/H Birmingham (2011), Bring Your Own Beamer (2012, 2013), Stealth (2015), No Copyright Infringement Intended (2017), Copy Paste (2020), Rules of Engagement (2020), and Patterns and Process (2025).
He is currently a trustee at Site Gallery. He was on a-n's Artist Council from 2019-2022, was an Artist Advisor for Jerwood Arts from 2019-2023 and from 2014-2019 he was Curator at Vivid Projects, where he produced the Black Hole Club artist development programme. From 2021-2025, he co-founded the (Algo|Afro) Futures programme for early-career Black artists to learn about live coding and creative coding.
Alongside his visual art practice, Roberts continues to develop work in music and immersive media, including projects involving live coding performance, hardware synthesisers, and experimental game development as a form of narrative and critical storytelling.
Antonio Roberts. Some of My Favourite Songs - Catalog (2012)
Medium: Digital Image. Dimensions:1280 x 960px
The song "Catalog" by The Octopus Project was converted to a JPG from its binary data using a process that Antonio Roberts created in 2012. Some of My Favourite Songs is the name of a project in which Roberts converted 16 songs to JPGs.
Antonio Roberts. Glass (2014)
Medium: Video. Duration: 09:18 / Variable. Dimensions: 1280x720px
The image is a screenshot from the generative video Glass, made in 2014 with Pure Data/GEM.
Antonio Roberts. I Am Sitting in a Room (2010)
Medium: Video. Duration: 00:36. Dimensions: 1440x1152px
A screenshot from the generative glitch artwork inspired by Alvin Lucier's work of the same name. Image held as part of the Government Art Collection and used with permission.