Sam Z Mao is a designer, artist, and researcher working across interactive media, industrial design, and systems thinking.

His work operates at the intersection of critical inquiry and technical construction. The through-line is not medium or industry but a consistent preoccupation with how systems — algorithmic, institutional, perceptual, industrial — shape what people are allowed to see, feel, and become.

He is drawn to the edges of those systems: where categorization breaks down, where interfaces reveal ideology, where a material or a tool carries more history than its function suggests.

Born in Beijing and based in New York, he is currently pursuing a BFA in Interactive Media Arts at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, with a minor in Business of Entertainment, Media, and Technology.