John Sanborn (born 1954) is a key member of the second wave of American video artists that includes Bill Viola, Gary Hill, Dara Birnbaum and Tony Oursler.

In the late 1970s Sanborn was one of the artists-in-residence at TV Lab at Thirteen/WNET, an experimental environment started by the Rockefeller Foundation and Nam June Paik as a playpen for video artists to create works for broadcast television.

[28] He created performance-based video works for the PBS series "Alive from Off Center" including "Untitled" with Bill T. Jones,"Fractured Variations and Visual Shuffle" with Charles Moulton,[29] "Geography | Metabolism" with Molissa Fenley, "Luminare" with Dean Winkler and music by Daniel Lentz,[30][31] and "Endance" with Tim Buckley.

[32][33] "Sister Suzie Cinema"[34] created for "Alive TV" with Lee Breuer and Bob Telson won several awards, including the 1986 Mayor's Medal for the Arts in New York City.

[40] In the 1990s Sanborn worked in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, developing technology based entertainment start-ups ( imoviestudio, The Wireless Fan Club), interactive movies ("Psychic Detective") and some of the first web-based interactive content ("Paul is Dead")[41] – as well as a sit-com for Comedy Central ("Frank Leaves for the Orient")[42] and pilots and scripts for Columbia Tri-Star, USA Network, MTV, MGM ("Stargate SG1"), and the National Lampoon.

A project launched by LaFong (Sanborn's partnership with writer Michael Kaplan) was "Dysson," an interactive story where the audience was injected into a murder mystery via e-mail and chat bots.

While Sanborn was working in Silicon Valley, he continued making media art, including a collaboration with pianist Sarah Cahill "A Sweeter Music.

[53] The work premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival in 2002 and was reviewed by Variety, "Avant-garde in form yet poignant, funny and accessible, normally acerbic experimental filmmaker John Sanborn's short feature "MMI" unites the political, the personal and the philosophical in one deft package.

[62] Sanborn is collaborating with New York-based composer Dorian Wallace on a series of media operas, intended to be installed as multi-channel works, as well as performed live.

Choreographer Robert Dekkers uses metaphoric movement in a parallel framework, integrated by Sanborn into a three-screen projection system to describe the emotional toll of Tony's journey.