Jonathan Jennings Harris is an artist and technologist current leading the publishing studio Sunlight and co-stewarding High Acres Farm.
Born in northern Vermont on August 27, 1979, he attended St. Bernard’s School in New York City, studied painting and drawing at Deerfield Academy, computer science and magazine publishing at Princeton University, interaction design at Fabrica, and shamanic philosophy with The Power Path.
His work with data visualization (2004–2015) helped to establish that burgeoning field by rejoicing in the beauty of the newly social Internet — through pioneering digital artworks like Wordcount, 10x10, We Feel Fine, Yahoo Time Capsule, I Want You To Want Me, and Network Effect. His data works have been widely exhibited around the world, including at TED, Ars Electronica, Le Centre Pompidou, The World Economic Forum, The Museum of Fine Art, Houston, The V&A in London, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, where two are in the permanent collection.
His work with interactive storytelling (2007–2018) combined the digital and physical worlds through algorithmic approaches to data collection in real-life situations. These ritualistic experiments included The Whale Hunt, I Love Your Work, Balloons of Bhutan, A Silent Place, and Today, a daily photo practice he continued for 443 days. Today evolved into Cowbird, a storytelling platform open to all, producing a “public library of human experience” that ended up amassing 100,000 stories from 25,000 authors in 200 countries — until growing patterns of Internet addiction prompted its closure in 2017. He explored these dynamics in the visual essays World Building in a Crazy World, Modern Medicine, Data Will Help Us, and Navigating Stuckness. His storytelling works have been featured at international film festivals like Sundance, Tribeca, and IDFA, where he was the 2017 Guest of Honor.
His work with ritual placemaking (2015–) is rooted at High Acres Farm, his ancestral home and land in Vermont for six generations. From 2015–2021, he performed a series of 21 rituals there, seeking to alchemize old family patterns as a way of preparing the land for the best possible future — ultimately producing the 21 films of In Fragments. He engaged in this work as an exploration of "Life Art" — a way of co-creating that embraces a particular life situation as the frame for the work over time. Other tangible outcomes include the transformation of his grandparents' home into a contemporary gathering place; the design and installation of Electric Webb, a network of twenty-seven "lightning transformers" planted at specific locations across forty acres of land; the completion of Notitia Sanctuary, a home and place of retreat that can be experienced via weekly stays; the initiation of the Linestone Collective; and the inspiration for the evolving Electric Web.
His work with illuminated meditations (2023–) happens through Sunlight — a publishing studio creating illustrated learning materials for all ages.
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Still from Hall of Mirrors, ritual 14 of 21 from In Fragments
