Lior Ben-Gai

This sentence could be Lior Ben Gai’s motto. It took him no less than a decade to find his way, given his atypical career path and its many happy accidents. Almost without diplomas, but almost an architect, trainer, adventurous freelancer, lecturer, Lior is literally a jack of all trades!
He has shown curiosity, optimism, and audacity; those attitudes led him to his research PhD in digital arts.

His work focuses on the universe of computer programs: a language in the form of a series of numbers and symbols. For anyone who experienced mathematics as a nightmare at school, the mere sight of a code could make you wince.This has actually been the case once for young Lior, who collects bad grades in maths, causing him to drop out of high school before taking his degree.

However, this event does not prevent him from thinking about his ideal profession, a discipline that could satisfy his technical side and stimulate his creativity. At the age of 22, Lior finally graduates and turns to architecture, full of hope. He excels in some classes, and fails in others, mixing feelings of satisfaction and frustration; he feels an unexplained interest for blueprints, 3D modelling, and digital tools. After 2 years of study, he quits architecture, and starts to animate Adobe Flash courses.

To deepen his knowledge of the software, he enrols himself in the training courses, but gets into the wrong group, and ends up in an advanced level course. This mistake turns out to be a real revelation because at the end of the 2 months of training, Lior finally knows what he wants to do: computer programming.

Now a freelancer, he is developing his skills, taking on all sorts of assignments, and learning on the job. He adopts a bold method: he accepts all proposals, and then trains himself to the new elements he will be confronted with during the project. For 5 years, he takes on a series of jobs in which he positions himself between technical and creative work.

It is only in 2014 that he finally has the courage to apply to Goldsmiths University in London; he begins a Master's degree during which he discovers an article by C. Langton on Artificial Life - it is love at first sight. He decides to dedicate himself to it by continuing his studies in PhD. He reconnects with maths by understanding its true, more abstract nature; it's not just about calculation like we learn in school, but rather about converting values from a numerical world to a real world, and vice versa. Lior needed a framework in which to thrive, and finally finds it here. Moreover, he is encouraged in his decision to stay at Goldsmiths when, overnight, he is offered a position as an associate lecturer which he keeps for 3 years.

All these years of teaching have allowed Lior to gain confidence. Rather than seeking recognition, he chooses to defend and advocate for programming literacy.

Lior now lives in Tel Aviv, where he flourishes as a digital artist. He continues to work on his PhD remotely, while teaching at Shenkar University - Engineering, Design, Art. In parallel, he is collaborating on an outdoor Science Museum project for the Weizmann Institute, with a team of scientists, artists, programmers, and designers. Their main challenge is to bridge the gap between scientific facts and the physical experience of visitors. Lior then gets involved in his favourite field: the creation of a programming language for the general audience, all age groups. This last project is a high note; it brings together all the criteria, skills and knowledge acquired during these 10 years of joyful capharnaüm.

Although painful, his decision to quit architecture was certainly the best one of his life at this stage; by freeing himself from the conditioning of studies, Lior was able to accept himself as a generalist (without specialisation), to privilege and to be enriched by the experiences he had.

As the perfect self-taught man, if Lior could give us one piece of advice, he would say "Whatever you learn, any experience; never goes to waste".