Ozge Samanci is a media artist and graphic novelist. Her areas of interest include media arts, interactive art, installation art, emerging technologies, AI, VR, XR, fabrication, critical making, creative coding, environmental studies, comics, and graphic novels. Her recent interactive art installations have roots in the natural sciences and explore the tendency of human beings to perceive themselves above all ecosystems.
Her interactive installations have been exhibited internationally at venues such as NOVA – RIO Biennial of Art and Technology at Museu do Amanhã, SIGGRAPH Art Gallery, ISEA, WRO Media Art Biennale, FILE Festival (Electronic Language International Festival), Science Gallery, The Tech Museum of Innovation, Currents New Media, Athens International Festival of Digital Arts and New Media, Ibrida Festival, Fondazione Dino Zoli Arte Contemporanea, and Piksel Electronic Arts Festival.
Her graphic memoir, Dare to Disappoint (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), has been translated into six languages. Her second graphic novel, Evil Eyes Sea (Uncivilized Books, 2024), won the 2026 Max and Moritz Prize for Best International Comic, was named one of The Guardian’s Best Graphic Novels of 2024, and received the 2025 Cartoonist Studio Prize. The book has been translated into French and German. Her drawings have appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and Slate.
Samanci has received the Berlin Prize in 2017, when she was also the Holtzbrinck Visual Arts Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. She was honored with the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Alumni Award (2020) from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Artist Fellowship Award in Media Arts (2023) from the Illinois Arts Council. Her work was the subject of a short documentary on France’s ARTE television program Invitation au voyage, broadcast on September 2, 2026.
Education
- PhD, Digital Media, Georgia Institute of Technology
- MA, Communication Studies, Ohio University
- MA, Film and Television, Istanbul Bilgi University
- BA, Mathematics, Bogazici University
Works
- AI Bytes Terra, 2026, Conversational AI Art Installation
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VastWaste, 2022, Data-driven Projection Art and VR installation
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You are the Ocean, 2018, Brainwaves Driven Projection Art Installation
Publications
Books
- 2024 Fall, Evil Eye Graphic Novel, Uncivilized Books
- 2015, Dare to Disappoint (autobiographical graphic novel), MacMillan: Farrar Straus and Giroux
- 2004, Animasyonun Onlenemez Yukselisi (The Irresistible Rise of Animation), Istanbul Bilgi University Publications, Istanbul
Journal Articles
- 2022, Ozge Samanci, Stephan Moore, Jenni Hutson, Jonathan Davis, Wren Gotschalk, Jack Burkhardt, Rachel Kantor, Liza Salvi, VastWaste, SIGGRAPH '22 Art Papers in Special Issue of Leonardo, MIT Press.
- 2019, Ozge Samanci, Adam Snyder, Gabriel Caniglia, Fiber Optic Ocean, SIGGRAPH '19 Art Papers in Special Issue of Leonardo, MIT Press.
- 2018, Ozge Samanci, Gabriel Caniglia, You are the Ocean, SIGGRAPH '18 Art Papers in Special Issue of Leonardo, MIT Press.
- 2018 Ozge Samanci, Adam Snyder, Fiber Optic Ocean, Merging Media for Data Representation, VISAP 16-17 Special Issue, Leonardo Journal, MIT Press.
Peer Reviewed Conference Papers –Published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Machinery (ACM) Press and IEEE Xplore—-
- 2019, Ozge Samanci and Gabriel Caniglia, You are the Ocean: Interactive Installation, C&C '19 Proceedings of the 2019 on Creativity and Cognition pp. 414-421
- 2017, Ozge Samanci, Adam Snyder, Fiber Optic Ocean: Merging Media for Data Representation, IEEE VIS, VISAP 2017, IEEE Xplore
Awards and Honors
- 2026, Max and Moritz Prize Best International Comics
- 2024, Cartoonist Studio Prize
- 2023, Artist Fellowship Award in Media Arts, The Illinois Arts Council.
- 2022, Finalist for the Wolinski Prize
- 2020, The Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Alumni Award, Georgia Institute of Technology
- 2017, Berlin Prize, American Academy in Berlin
- 2016, Dare to Disappoint, Middle East Book Award
- 2016, Dare to Disappoint, 30th Annual New York Book Show
- 2015, Clarence Simon Award for Teaching and Mentoring
Courses
- Interactive Arts Studio
- Filmmaking with Emerging Technologies
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Critical Making
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Drawing for Media
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Virtual and Alternate Reality Storytelling
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Computer Code as Expressive Medium