John P. Bell is a software developer and artist specializing in understanding online culture and computational media. His work includes directing the Dartmouth Resources for Emerging Arts and Media (DREAM) Studio, acting as Associate Director of the Media Ecology Project, and teaching as a Lecturer in Film and Media Studies. His research focuses on collaborative creativity and has produced everything from utilitarian semantic web publishing platforms to aggressively useless installation art. With nine others, he was the co-author of an 85,000-word long book about a 38-character long computer program exploring how a simple generative artwork helped democratize access to technology during the early days of home computing. Dr. Bell's research in arts, media, and digital humanities have been funded by organizations including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, as well as Dartmouth multidisciplinary research centers ranging from the Neukom Institute for Computational Science to the Leslie Center for the Humanities and the Hopkins Center for the Arts.

Most recently, Bell has written on topics including the implications of generative artificial intelligence for the creative and academic industries, creating open culture resources for extended reality platforms, and the use of computational processes for quantitatively analyzing time-based media.