Press kit

Use these bios and quick facts as-is. They frame the work the same way the core studio documentation does. Reach out before quoting if you need a bespoke angle or accessibility format.

Bio (100 words)

Ben Severns is a Minneapolis artist–educator pairing critical inquiry with hands-on digital practice. His systems-first lab ships consent-forward instruments like MOARkNOBS-42, civic media interventions, and justice-tethered curricula for K–12 and college learners. As faculty/adjunct, he has taught at MCAD and Augsburg; as Educational Equipment & Services Lead at createMPLS, he stewards large inventories and turns curiosity into skill. Severns documents like a researcher—assumption ledgers, latency scripts, reproducible builds—so collaborators can audit, remix, and deploy the work as civic instruments. He performs and releases music as B_S_. More: bseverns.github.io · github.com/bseverns · bbss.bandcamp.com

Bio (300 words)

Ben Severns is a systems-level educator–artist based in Minneapolis. He pairs critical inquiry with hands-on digital practice, designing instruments, installations, and learning environments that make their technical and ethical layers legible. His open-hardware instrument MOARkNOBS-42 pairs a Teensy-based brain with auditable documentation—assumption ledgers, mapping manifests, and latency bench scripts—so claims about feel, access, and ethics stay reproducible. Severns’s studio work stays consent-forward: detection-only kiosks, room-playing media pieces, and public provocations that treat media as civic instrument.

He teaches across institutions (MCAD, Augsburg) and leads equipment/services for createMPLS, developing practical kits, station cards, and quick-starts that tie digital literacy to justice, representation, and civic engagement for K–12 and community learners. As B_S_, he performs and releases long-form, glitch-lit sound collages. Unifying these threads is a simple measure of success: how well other people create—with documentation, consent, and accountability—using the tools and recipes he leaves behind.

Quick facts

  • Location: Minneapolis, MN
  • Roles: Artist–Educator; Educational Equipment & Services Lead (createMPLS)
  • Practice: Critical inquiry × hands-on digital practice; systems-first, consent-forward builds
  • Anchor project: MOARkNOBS-42 (open instrument)
  • Canonical handle: @bseverns
  • Links: bseverns.github.io · github.com/bseverns · bbss.bandcamp.com

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Press contact

Email severns3@gmail.com for interview coordination. For more context, see the contact page.