Harm’s broad practice includes software, sculptural assemblage, and collage. He investigates how algorithms can analyse digital archives to guide aesthetic decision taking. Using computer programming he deconstructs prevalent notions in art, such as intuition and expression.
His ultimate desire is to discover the reasoning structure of his own consciousness, with its implicit associations and assumptions. In this process he borrows ideas from psychoanalysis, the writing of Jacques Derrida, and Artificial Intelligence (which he studied).

He’s had institutional exhibitions at Museum Kurhaus Kleve, the New Museum in New York, MCA Chicago,The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, China, the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, and the Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam. In 2015 the MAK Vienna acquired Harm van den Dorpel’s work Event Listeners and thereby became the first museum to purchase a work of art using bitcoins.