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Tahir Hemphill is a creative technologist whose practice investigates the role systems play in the generation of form, and the role collaborative knowledge production plays in the enrichment of communities. Tahir uses computational analysis to draw out what is usually unseeable in the semantic structures within large bodies of archival text. Coming of age in the 1980s, Tahir divided his time between practicing different elements of hip hop culture and exploring cyberspace with a dial up modem.

Today, Tahir considers Community-focused Open Source to be the theoretical framework that supports these two early educational influences, and it fuels the tension between his reverence for traditional models of scientific inquiry and the critical reflection he applies to creative technology projects. As a result, Tahir’s work straddles art, technology, and archival research. The frameworks that support these influences are synthesized into his current creative pursuits at the Rap Research Lab, a community-based creative technology studio that uses a hip hop framework to develop new ways for people to engage with data and culture. The Rap Research Lab catalyzes critical discourse through the production of VR, AI, and community data projects. To do this, Tahir leads cross-functional teams of artists, radical educators, narrative designers, software developers, and researchers who explore rap music as a text to pressure notions of identity, race, gender, class, place, and justice in our modern era. Rap Research Lab builds on hip hop’s legacy as a transformative and innovative genre that revolutionized global cultural practices by pioneering new, 21st century digital forms by harnessing big data, artificial intelligence, robotics, natural language processing, and social networks to create opportunities for cultural research, creative competition, individual expression, and collaborative problem solving. With wide use, Rap Research Lab platforms reconstruct how the public understands, visualizes, and engages data networks, and ignites interest in STEM careers.

Tahir is the 4th Chair in Education at the Library of Congress, inaugural UMBC Faculty Diversity in the Arts Fellow, 2019 Verizon 5G EdTech Challenge winner, 2019 Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund in Film and Media Studies Fellow, 2018 LACMA Art + Technology Lab Grantee, 2017 Autodesk Pier 9 Artist-in-Residence, 2016 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Behavioral Science Resident, 2016 Spotify Media Artist-in-Residence, 2015 National Endowment of the Arts Art Works Grantee, 2012 Fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, 2012 Creative Capital Awardee, and 2010–2012 Eyebeam Artist-in-Residence. Tahir’s work is featured in the Talk to Me exhibit at MoMA which explores design and the communication between people and objects.