I’m Sage Jenson, an artist and computational researcher working with artificial life, simulation, and complex systems.

I build systems in which large numbers of simple elements interact through shared environments: particles leave traces, fields accumulate memory, and local interactions become large-scale structure. I’m interested in how these systems organize themselves, and in how we can develop an intuition for them—how their behavior can become material for images, instruments, performances, and ways of thinking.

I begin with scientific models and push them somewhere less prescribed. I build simulations, rendering systems, and interfaces that let me inhabit parameter spaces over long periods of time: learning what a system tends to do, finding unusual regimes, and developing ways of steering it without eliminating its autonomy.

An early project exploring Physarum polycephalum later crossed back into science. After encountering my simulations online, researchers at UC Santa Cruz adapted the approach into a three-dimensional model for tracing the cosmic web. The resulting research used slime-mold behavior to help locate the large-scale filamentary structure connecting galaxies and was subsequently featured by NASA.

I treat simulation as a live medium. For 25 Ambient Church shows featuring Laraaji, Ana Roxanne, James Ferraro, James K, Objekt, and others, I developed an end-to-end software instrument for site-specific projection mapping and performance, including real-time simulations, architectural mapping tools, gestural interfaces, and workflows for adapting to unfamiliar spaces. Rather than presenting predetermined sequences, I perform these systems live, continuously steering emergent behavior in response to music, architecture, and the evolving state of the simulation.

This work grows out of a broader experience bringing computational systems onto some of the largest stages in contemporary culture. I’ve developed visual and simulation-driven work for productions involving Kendrick Lamar & SZA, Nine Inch Nails, Lady Gaga, Swedish House Mafia, The Weeknd, Robert Rich, and Max Cooper, alongside architectural installations.

My background also includes computational design with Neri Oxman, spatial reconstruction at DJI, mathematics and computer science at Oberlin, acousmatic composition at IRCAM, and thirteen years of violin performance. Across these contexts, I’m interested in what happens when scientific models become not simply representations, but environments we can inhabit, manipulate, perform with, and learn from.