Jeff Ong

Jeff Ong (b. 1990) is an artist and educator of Chinese Malaysian heritage, born and raised in rural Michigan. He works with stories, music, sound, and computers. His work engages the fringes of cultural tropes and tendencies emerging among a new generation of Asian Americans: wealth and status fixation, racial privilege, how Western "knowledge" comes into contact with Eastern folklore and traditional wisdom. His artwork has been exhibited at Museum Siam (Bangkok), SIGGRAPH, CURRENTS New Media Festival, NYC Resistor, and the Dumbo Arts Festival. He is a resident on The Lot Radio in Brooklyn, and performs regularly across various DIY venues and clubs in the city.

He is an Adjunct Professor of new media technology at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, New York. For the past 12 years he has operated a digital design and development studio, building websites, digital tools, and interactive installations. Frequent collaborators include academic institutions, cultural organizations, tech companies, and design & branding agencies.

ABOUT — I (Jeff Ong) is (am) a person living in Queens, New York City.

SOFTWARE — I have made many websites, apps, and installations, both independently and within multidisciplinary design teams, for 13 years. I was involved for six years as a sponsored contributor to the open source project, WordPress, in the form of themes, plugins, and the editor itself, Gutenberg.

SOUND — I make music, DJ, and perform under various monikers e.g. Off-Brand, Convalescence, DJ Coupon. I'm a resident of the Lot Radio, co-hosting a monthly show SLUICE with Laenz — exploring some fringes of dance music and various process-oriented, often live sonic excursions.

ART — My artwork has been exhibited at SIGGRAPH, CURRENTS New Media Festival, NYC Resistor, and the Dumbo Arts Festival (RIP). My master's thesis, The Medium is the Machine (2015) looked at the commercial use of artificial intelligence in mediating personal identity. I spoke about the automation of design at the St. Etienne Design Biennale (2019).

TEACHING — I'm an Adjunct Professor at LaGuardia Community College (CUNY), where I teach Introduction to New Media (2026 - present) and Principles of Multimedia and Web Design (2026 - present). Course materials are here.

EMPLOYMENT — I've been a full-time employee of Automattic (2019 - 2024), frog design (2015 - 2018), barbarian (2012 - 2014). My titles included code wrangler, design director, software engineer, creative technologist, and design technologist.

BACKGROUND — I was born and raised in Michigan (1990 - 2008), and currently live in New York City (2012 - present). I graduated from the University of Michigan (2012) and New York University (2015) with degrees in business and computers, respectively. I am the third child of two immigrants from Hong Kong and Malaysia to the United States. I converted to Judaism by an orthodox beit din in 2014.

OTHER — I enjoy books, movies, writing, amaro, and cooking. I’m currently learning Japanese. A spreadsheet of citations from things I’m reading can be found here, and some collections of things here.

I would love to hear from you, please get in touch by email at jffng at proton.me.