PeopleofSuperintelligence

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Eric Millikin

Eric Millikin is an artist whose work uses AI in experimental visual art; he grew up in a working-class family in rural Michigan. He earned a BFA in Studio Art and Art Education at Michigan State in 1998, made activist art using AI while studying at VCU, and completed an MFA thesis in 2021 using AI for sound and live-generated video. He worked on Mecha/Magical Marine Materials during a 2024 CIRCA-IMET fellowship and created an AI robotic sculpture from reanimated oyster shells in 2025. He is an assistant professor of Visual Arts, Animation and Interactive Media at UMBC and leads Animation and Interactive Media.

Links
Website

Timeline

  1. 1998

    A Michigan State BFA

    Millikin grows up in a working-class family in rural Michigan. He earns a BFA in Studio Art and Art Education, with an English minor, at Michigan State University in 1998.

  2. 2019

    Activist art at VCU

    As a VCU School of the Arts graduate student, he uses video projection, artificial intelligence, vegetative tissue culture cloning, and occult experiments to address police brutality, economic injustice and politics.

  3. 2021

    An MFA thesis and AI art

    Millikin earns an MFA in Fine Arts, with a concentration in Kinetic Imaging, at VCU in 2021. For his MFA thesis exhibition Reanimator/Reflection, he uses artificial intelligence to create three works of sound and live-generated video. In CHARYBDIS-3, he creates a video vortex using artificial intelligence trained on endangered Virginia species and projects it onto a waterfall.

  4. 2021–2023

    Teaching at VCU

    He teaches as an adjunct professor at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts from 2021 to 2023, including courses in 3D computer art, creative code and electronics, augmented reality, and video projection mapping.

  5. 2024

    A marine-robotics fellowship

    Millikin receives UMBC’s 2024 CIRCA-IMET Artist-in-Residence Fellowship to work on Mecha/Magical Marine Materials.

  6. 2025

    An oyster-shell AI sculpture

    His 2025 work includes an artificially intelligent robotic sculpture made from reanimated oyster shells, part of his exploration of necrobotics, the use of dead organisms as robots.

  7. Since 2025

    Leading animation at UMBC

    Millikin is an assistant professor of Visual Arts, Animation and Interactive Media at UMBC. In 2025, he becomes point person and area head for Animation and Interactive Media in the Visual Arts Department.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 53% of people in our data with a known employment countryOur estimates of where AI careers are concentrated now and how countries’ shares of dated positions changed over time.
  3. 46% of living people in our data with known birth and employment countries work outside their birth countryOur estimate of cross-border careers in AI, from country of birth and the country of each current organization.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionOur estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Eric Millikin yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. About Eric Millikin — Eric Millikin ericmillikin.com. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. Eric Millikin - UMBC umbc.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. An activist artist’s quest for ‘spectacular’ failure - VCU News - Virginia Commonwealth University news.vcu.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. Reanimator/Reflection: Creating Mirrors through Time with AI, Sound, Video and Live-generated Art in the Dark Age of the COVID-19 Pandemic scholarscompass.vcu.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. Eric Millikin ericmillikin.com. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. Eric Millikin: Mecha/Magical Marine Materials – Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts – UMBC circa.umbc.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.