Bell began developing software to support digital humanities and art at the University of Maine's Still Water lab in 2003.

Bell has argued that the principles and methods used in the development of Open-Source Software can be applied to other areas of creative production.

[2] He applied this theory in the production of The Pool, an online project design workspace conceived of by Jon Ippolito, Owen Smith, Joline Blais, Mike Scott, and others that was described by the Chronicle of Higher Education as a "new avenue for new-media scholars to do their jobs.

[4] The book's publication renewed interest in the 10 PRINT program and prompted ports to other languages,[5] coding tutorials,[6] and generative artwork[7] based on the simple pattern it creates.

[9] Bell designed the third generation of the tool, again applying software design principles to art by re-envisioning the variable media paradigm to treat an artwork as a system of modular components with defined interactions and parameters that was inspired by object oriented programming patterns.