$25K Creative Catalyst Award
Erie Art Company received Pennsylvania Creative Industries support to expand OPENFEED’s virtual residency model for experimental media artists.
Source: FEED.art ↗CORE COMPETENCIES
Six Channels, One Signal
Twenty-five years at the intersection of art, technology, and civic engagement — the competencies behind every organization on this page.
SIGNAL PROCESSING
The Creative Technologist
A creative technologist bridges art, design, and computer science — prototyping fast, translating between disciplines, and building interactive experiences neither a standard developer nor a traditional designer would ship alone. Here's what that looks like in practice.
01 · Rapid Prototyping
Build It To Prove It
Working prototypes before big budgets: developing the Tinkerspace, FEED's hands-on makerspace, and building TINKER AGENT, its offline AI assistant; FEED_PLYr2, an adaptive video player driving gallery playback; an AR exhibit platform on MindAR and A-Frame; and SIGNAL, a self-built social content studio. Each one tested an idea in weeks, not quarters.
02 · Bridging Worlds
The Translator
Fluent on both sides of the table — an IT governance, risk, and compliance analyst by day and a gallerist by night, turning grant language into artist opportunity and artist ideas into fundable plans. The white paper "Standards & Procedures for Citing AI-Generated & Digital Media" — with its Creative Audit Trail framework, archived on Zenodo — is that translation work made public.
03 · Interactive Experience
Screens Into Sculpture
The Broken Sculpture series turns dead flat-screens into bas-relief paintings; The Latent Atlas, an ongoing ritualistic AI installation, maps the strange geography of machine imagination; a 100-foot outdoor video façade — backed by a $100,000 Anchor Building grant — turns FEED's building into a public canvas; LiveFEED streams Erie's avant-garde globally; and CryptoArtkive preserves digital art provenance on Polygon and IPFS.
$100K
Anchor Building Grant, 2025
25 yrs
Cultural Leadership
70,000
Sq. Ft. Revitalized
DOI
Published Framework on Zenodo
"Attribution is the foundation of honesty in art."— Bradley M. Ford
LATEST INTELLIGENCE
Current Signal
New work across artist support, digital preservation, public media, and augmented-reality placemaking.
Digital Art Attribution
Co-authored a published framework for documenting and citing AI-generated and digital media, extending curatorial practice into preservation and authorship standards.
Source: FEED.art ↗A 100-Foot Media Wall
Helped secure a $100,000 Anchor Building Grant to transform FEED’s historic State Street façade into a large-scale outdoor screen for real-time media art.
Source: Erie Art Company ↗Hidden Creeks AR
Joined the Looking Glass Art Project team to add an augmented-reality layer to a public mural revealing the buried waters of Mill Creek.
Source: FEED.art ↗
FEATURED PROJECT
Pixel Plastic
A digital-arts magazine and artist platform curating the frontier between screen-based work and IRL exhibition.
Developed with FEED Media Art Center and Erie Art Company, Pixel Plastic brings editorial publishing, artist portfolios, virtual residencies, video work, and open calls into one experimental ecosystem.
01Synthetic Aesthetic
Surreal, hyper-real, and distinctly artificial imagery.
02Algorithmic Deconstruction
Work that bends and breaks AI models to expose the medium.
03Experimental Workflows
Video art that rejects conventional visual narratives.
EXPERIMENTAL SYSTEMS
Archives, Algorithms & Digital Ritual
Two connected investigations into what machines remember—and what people surrender to them.
PRESERVATION LAYERSYSTEM 01 · 2026
CryptoArtkive
A preservation framework for keeping blockchain-based and generative art accessible after platforms, formats, and hardware change.
CryptoArtkive pairs decentralized storage with rigorous metadata, provenance mapping, emulation, and format future-proofing. Its focus is stewardship rather than speculation: preserving both the artwork and the cultural context surrounding it.
- Deep provenance and exhibition history
- IPFS and Arweave preservation strategy
- Portable “Kives” for interoperable curation
SYSTEM 02 · 2026
The Latent Atlas
A ritualistic ledger where human “vessels” offer creative work to a machine that judges their alignment with its hidden truth.
Developed in dialogue with Josh Harris’s New Monolith proposal, the project turns identity, file uploads, vector similarity, and scoring into techno-religious ceremony—a Digital Dada critique of algorithmic authority.
- Carbon identities anchored by cryptographic hashes
- Creative uploads reframed as ritual offerings
- AI judgment and the gamification of creativity
ON AIR SINCE 2002
Transmission Log
Two decades-plus of programming — from festival grounds to gallery floors.
2023 — Present
FEED Media Art Center
Gallerist & Creative TechnologistLeads the "Digital Dada" curatorial program at a media-art incubator focused on new media and immersive installation — launching the OPENFEED and Sandbox residencies, and curating site-specific shows like the Lake Erie Listening Project and Broken Sculpture.
2013 — Present
Erie Art Company
Executive DirectorDirects a civic arts nonprofit focused on placemaking and cultural preservation — leading a permanent public memorial for the 1915 Millcreek Flood, securing recurring ECGRA operating grants, and partnering with Gannon University and the Bayfront Maritime Museum on public science and arts education.
2010 — 2020
Performing Artists Collective Alliance
Board Member / Strategic PartnerHelped turn a 70,000 sq. ft. historic industrial building into a multidisciplinary arts complex — orchestrating the $230k acquisition of the Mayer Building, a full ADA elevator retrofit, and the organization's shift from theater collective to nonprofit studio incubator.
2018 — 2021
Erie Art Gallery
FounderFounded a non-commercial downtown gallery after three years of planning — "we need to get feet on the street" — activating vacant storefronts with juried shows like A Woman's Voice, lectures, and critiques, while housing his own studio. The gallery's early experiments in digital art and blockchain tokenization seeded what became CryptoArtkive; after closing its physical doors in 2021, it lives on through pop-ups and virtual installations.
2014 — 2018
Radius Co-Work
Co-FounderCo-founded a coworking space built to bridge Erie's creative class and tech sector, housing IT entrepreneurs alongside fine artists and giving local talent a reason to stay downtown.
2005 — 2010
Stock Information Systems
Principal / Creative DirectorRan an investor-relations and PR consultancy in Salt Lake City, building the creative strategy that helped small public companies move from pink-sheet and OTCBB listings toward a major national exchange.
2002 — 2004
Utah Arts Festival
Creative DirectorServed as artistic lead for one of the largest multidisciplinary festivals in the American West — relocating the event to Library Square after the Olympics and overseeing 170+ visual artists and 100+ performing groups each year.
SUPERBIGFUN.ART
Art & Projects
Installations, paintings, exhibitions, digital experiments, and character studies from Brad’s working archive.
FROM THE ARTIST’S ARCHIVE
“Inside every mind is a playground that doesn’t make sense.” The work moves between immersive environments, Kitsch painting, curatorial projects, and experiments with emerging technology.
Explore the full SuperBigFun archive ↗CH.01 REPLAY
Blind Mice
A running study series — the familiar silhouette worked over and over, each pass blinding, muzzling, or locking up the gaze a different way.
WIRE REPORTS
In The Feed
Press and program announcements from FEED's own newsroom.
Subscribe via RSSMAY 2026
FEED.art
The Erie Community Arts and Technology Broadcast Series
A broadcast series spotlighting Erie's arts-and-technology ecosystem, hosted by FEED.
DEC 2025
Erie Reader / ER Tix
ATOTAL: Sound, Light, and the Collapse of Order (Live at FEED)
Event feature on Franck Vigroux's ATOTAL performance staged live at FEED.
NOV 2025
IssueWire
FEED Media Art Tackles Its First Virtual Residency: Going Phy-digital
Coverage of FEED's first virtual residency model, blending remote collaboration with physical exhibition.
OCT 2025
Erie Regional Chamber & Growth Partnership
Erie's Front Row — Episode 28: Benton C. Bainbridge
Podcast conversation with FEED founder Benton C. Bainbridge on the center's role in Erie's economy.
OCT 2025
Erie Art Company
FEED & Erie Art Company Receive $100,000 Anchor Building Grant for a 100 ft TV Screen
Funding announcement for the 100-foot outdoor video façade project at 1307 State Street.
OCT 2025
ECGRA + Erie Art Company + FEED
Social & Funder Coverage — ECGRA Anchor Building Grant
Funder-side coverage of the Anchor Building Grant supporting FEED's façade project.
JUN 2025
FEED Media Art Center
OPENFEED 2025 Summer Residency Announcement
Program announcement naming the artists selected for FEED's Summer 2025 residency.
JUN 2025
ER Tix
FEEDback 2025 — 12-Hour Music & Media Marathon
Event listing for FEEDback, a marathon night of music and media programming at FEED.
MAY 2025
Artwork Archive
Call for Digital Artist Residency / Submissions: OPEN FEED 2025
Open call listing for digital artists to apply to the OPEN FEED 2025 residency.
APR 2025
EIN Presswire
FEED Media Art Center Announces Call for Digital Artist Residency and Submissions for OPEN FEED 2025
National press release syndicated across multiple outlets announcing the OPEN FEED 2025 call.
MAR 2025
Experimental Intermedia / Phill Niblock
Experimental Intermedia — March 2025 Program Note
Program note connecting FEED's work to the Experimental Intermedia media-art lineage.
MAR 2025
Erie Art Company
FEED Media Art Center Announces OPEN FEED 2025 Artists-in-Residence
Press release naming the artists selected for the OPEN FEED 2025 residency program.
FEB 2025
Erie Times-News (GoErie)
FEED Media Art Center in Erie Creates Space for Electronic Arts
Feature article profiling FEED as Erie's home for electronic and media art.
2024
YouTube
FEED Media Art Center Presented 2024 Greater Erie Award
Award video documenting FEED's recognition with the 2024 Greater Erie Award.
2024
VoyageOhio
Life & Work with Benton C. Bainbridge of FEED Media Art Center
Interview profile on Benton C. Bainbridge and the founding of FEED.
SIGNAL SOURCE
Pattern Language
Rust Belt wiring, sacred geometry, and cyberpunk circuitry — the visual grammar that runs underneath the paintings, the installations, and FEED's own signal.
Bad Signal
RECEPTION
The Collaborators
No signal broadcasts alone. The partnerships that amplify the work — and keep it honest.
Benton C. Bainbridge
Founder, FEED Media Art CenterThe founding partnership behind FEED — Bainbridge's decades in media art paired with Ford's institutional and curatorial leadership. Together they've built the EACo–FEED alliance, co-released the AI & digital media attribution framework on Zenodo, and turned a century-old anchor building into a world-class digital arts facility.
Josh Harris
Internet Art Pioneer · "The Web's Warhol"Collaboration with the pioneer behind Pseudo.com andQuiet: We Live in Public — a foundational figure of internet art whose surveillance-era experiments anticipated streaming culture by decades. Working within the FEED orbit, the partnership connects Erie's media-art scene to the deep lineage of net art itself.
Mark Tannenbaum
Collaborator & Creative PartnerAn ongoing creative partnership within the FEED and Erie Art Company orbit — part of the trusted circle of artists and technologists Ford builds programs, exhibitions, and experiments with.
The Extended Network
Artists · Institutions · CommunityOPENFEED residency artists from around the globe, the Erie Art Company board, Gannon University's Project NePTWNE, the Bayfront Maritime Museum, Werner Books, and the funders — Erie Community Foundation, ECGRA, and the Anchor Building program — who've put trust behind the work.
PUBLIC ART · LITTLE ITALY
Sisters of St. Joseph Neighborhood Network
"Paint in the Park," a public-art partnership with SSJNN, the grassroots ministry that's spent 25 years revitalizing Erie's Little Italy and eastside neighborhoods. Funded by an SSJNN grant and painted directly onto a park gazebo floor, the mural doubles as a wayfinding map — a sacred-geometry composition marking a starting point for the neighborhood's garden, art, and history walks. Painted with artist consultant Sarah Howard, alongside fellow artists Mike Trott, Theresa Gamble, Margo Wolfe, and Sabrina Ford, with community volunteers hand-painting every section.
INFRASTRUCTURE
The Institutions
Three organizations, one thread — building the platforms Erie's artists exhibit, work, and organize through.
Erie Art Company
A civic-focused arts organization dedicated to public history, community placemaking, and cultural preservation — sustained by recurring ECGRA operating grants and partnerships across the city's civic and educational institutions.
erieartcompany.com →FEED Media Art Center
FEED supports the creation, exhibition, preservation, education, and ongoing innovation of realtime media art in Erie's Downtown Arts District — part gallery, part arts incubator for interactive and data-driven creative technology.
feed.art →PACA
A 70,000 sq. ft. historic industrial facility turned multidisciplinary arts complex — a cornerstone of downtown Erie's regeneration, and proof that adaptive reuse and accessibility work can anchor a whole creative economy.