Chip Lord grew up in 1950s America, a place that has been a continual source of inspiration in his work as an artist. Trained as an architect, he was a founding partner of Ant Farm, with whom he produced the video art classics Media Burn and The Eternal Frame as well as the public sculpture Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, and the House of the Century, outside Houston. His work blends documentary and experimental practice and moves between video, photography, and installation. He often collaborates with other artists. Ant Farm Media Van v.08 [Time Capsule], a collaboration with Curtis Schreier and Bruce Tomb, revisits Ant Farm’s 1970 Media Van and brings it into the twenty-first century. The installation posits a “post-internal combustion vehicle” as a space for networking around a “Media Huqquh” and in the process creates a digital time capsule. An abiding interest in the culture of transportation systems inspired the photo series The Executive Air Traveler (1980), Airspaces (2000–2011), and the video installation To & From LAX (2010). Lord authored the book Automerica in 1977 and the car as subject also "drives" his MOTORIST, Easy Living, and The New Cars, 2012.

Lord’s work has been exhibited and published widely and is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; FRAC Centre, Orléans, France; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and BAMPFA. He is professor emeritus in the Department of Film & Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz, and lives in San Francisco.