About
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I am a computational farmer.
We farmers grow and harvest novel hierarchical structures and spatiotemporal materials that blur the line between nature and technology to provide a wide range of potential applications for medical, environmental, aerospace, and renewable energy sectors.
We form close collaborations with “intuition programmers”, graph theorists, biomaterial engineers, “digital morphogenesists”, data scientists, environmentalists, artists, designers, and educators.
We embrace complex adaptive systems and data-driven solutions that shape how the frameworks we create look, function, and feel.
We use data as a building material to create multi-scale products and environments, from multicellular to multiplanetary.
We aim to enhance physical and perceptual complexity and simplicity.
I like collecting rocks, building telescopes, and hiking. The year is 2036. I am 42 years old.
- Ben Johnson, February 2020
I seek to grow with a cross-functional, international team to help create a new generation of bio-inspired, biosynthesized, and biocompatible materials, woven and spun at the molecular level to form a kind of quasicrystalline textile that can sense and respond to its environment. These materials for wearables and construction can share energy, nutrients, and other resources with one another to adjust local and global parameters, ultimately maintaining structural and aesthetic resiliency.
I’m curious about combining complex adaptive systems in unusual ways, something the universe seems to love to do.
I discovered I shared this passion for complexity with thinkers from antiquity. Euclid believed that art and science were deeply intertwined. Leonardo da Vinci was intrigued by swirls and vortices that appeared in fluid mechanics. Isaac Newton’s unpublished works were primarily about alchemy -- the seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or recombination.
We are constantly transforming information into knowledge and wisdom; we transform the visible into the invisible. As Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke once said, “We are the bees of the invisible.” Since the creation of the hearth, humans have gathered around fires and shared stories by which our invisible knowledge shaped the visible environment around us. How did we share our knowledge with communities in an engaging way? Art. I find this entire process absolutely fascinating.
At the end of the day, people are everything. I would not be the optimistic Ben I am today without the hundreds, probably thousands, of people I’ve interacted with over the years that have supported and inspired me.
While at Berkeley High School, I joined UC Berkeley’s ATDP, Berkeley Scholars to Cal, and SMASH. Upon graduating, I was awarded the Berkeley Community Fund and Students Rising Above Scholarship. I became a Kapor Capital Fellow with Desmos. In college, I was a videographer for TEDx Cal Poly, helped cub scouts earn their astronomy badge, volunteered at the Media Architecture Biennale in Sydney, and attended conferences as a member of both Alpha Rho Chi and AIAS. Following Cal Poly, I joined iFixit in San Luis Obispo, worked with Carlo Ratti in Italy, participated in the Wearable Biotech and Growable Interfaces workshop at the MIT Media Lab, became a Colorwave Fellow, and have now become a NuVuX Design Education Fellow.
Some of my favorite interactions occurred and still occur quite randomly and unexpectedly in bookstores, cafes, farmer’s markets, or while hiking.
I am extremely grateful that all of these people, programs, experiences, and collaborations have become a piece of me.
Looking ahead in anything I do, I hope to continue to instill a sense of wonder, curiosity, and awe.
-Ben Johnson, February 2025
Ben is from Berkeley, California and has a background in architecture and astrophysics.
Ben loves space, time, and people.
He is currently a Design Education Fellow, co-developing studio curricula and teaching at an innovation lab for students ages 10-18.
You can watch a video about the beginning of his Fellowship at the link below:
Ben Johnson: NuVu Fellow at The Elisabeth Morrow School
Resume PDF
Portfolio PDF