Jeff Ong

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).

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 jonger4 at gmail.com.