Author, Artist, Activist, Cultural Alchemist.
Sean Bonner is the co-editor/author of the Phaidon published CRYPTOPUNKS: Free To Claim and wrote an introduction for Covert to Overt: The Under/Overground Art of Shepard Fairey for Rizzoli.
He maintains a newsletter and telegram group.
Since 2020 has been immersed in the world of digital/crypto/art playing an educational and advocacy role, as well as working in directly with artists and platforms, on his own as well as in his role a Venture Partner with Japan based web3 fund gmjp. He heads up web3 exploration for Obey Giant Art and along with DJ Muggs he co-created the virtual lofi musician 8tari Lofi Punk. He’s been an Associate Professor at Japan’s Keio University where he worked with the Blockchain Research Lab and a researcher at MIT’s Center for Civic Media and Digital Currency Initiative.
He is the co-founder of the environmental open data non-profit Safecast which led to being a Shuttleworth Fellow, a now shuttered foundation that focused on open solutions to major world problems, and with whom he co-authored the book about the foundations approach 50 Shades of Green: Reimagining Philanthropy.
He’s a published street photographer and experimental musician releasing work under the monikers DRØNEWAR (harsh noise) and Delay 5000 (aka d5k) (ambient). Previously he co-founded the multimedia art/music collectives Cross My Heart Hope To Die and Saturday Night Massacre and has collaborated with monochrom and Soul Assassins. He also co-founded the educational outreach Coffee Common and the first hackerspace in Los Angeles.
His photo books, Unfinished Projects (2024) and Don’t Go Outside (2017) collect various autobiographical & street photography. He’s been an Artist In Residence at the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna, a Hacker In Residence at Sparkfun in Colorado, and an Entrepreneur In Residence at The Groop in Los Angeles. A selected artist CV can be found here.
In the 2000’s as co-founder of Bode Media Inc, Sean helped create Metblogs, the first global network of local media sites. Prior to that, Sean helped build the hard to categorize gallery sixspace exhibiting artists such as Glen E. Friedman, Shepard Fairey, Space Invader and ran a record label releasing music by the likes of Hot Water Music, Integrity and Less Than Jake. He’s designed things for Playboy, Victory Records, Bad Brains, Die Antwoord, Hatebreed, and countless others. Way before that he was a dishwasher.