He studied Transmedia Art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and completed his post-academic studies at the Jan van Eyck Academy at Maastricht in The Netherlands. He is co-founder of the Institute for Transacoustic Research. He has been teaching at the University of Applied Arts Vienna since 2007, where he was the first visiting professor for the artistic research doctoral program (2016-19), and is currently lecturer and board member of the Applied Performance Laboratory. He is also Senior Artist at the University of Arts in Linz.

As an artist, performer and researcher Nikolaus Gansterer is deeply interested in the relational field between diagramming, thinking and action. Across forms of installations and performances he traces the translatability of phenomena of perception into an artistic environment. In his transmedial work, he focuses on mapping ephemeral and emergent processes unfolding their immanent structures of interconnectedness, questioning the imaginary threshold between nature and culture, art and philosophy. Gansterer’s fascination with the complex character of diagrammatic figurations resulted in the book Drawing a Hypothesis – Figures of Thought, (Springer, 2013) on the ontology of shapes of visualizations and its use in contemporary art and science. From 2014 – 2018 Gansterer was leading the artistic research project Choreo-graphic Figures – Deviations from the Lines (de Gruyter, 2017) developing innovative systems of notation between the lines of drawing, writing and choreography. Gansterer is currently key researcher of Contingent Agencies (Hatje Cantz, 2025) across-disciplinary research project on experimental diagramming of atmospheres and a key researcher of the Shaken Grounds project inquiring into precarious presences, both funded by the Austrian Science Fund.

Gansterer’s work has been presented amongst others at the Research Pavilion, 58th Venice Biennial; the 14th Sharjah Biennial; the 12th Havana Biennial; the 4th Athens Biennial; Albertina Museum, Vienna; Secession, Vienna, Kaaitheater, Brussels; Villa Arson, Nice; Drawing Lab, Paris; Siobhan Davies Studios, London; TanzQuartier, Vienna; ICA, London; Berliner Festspiele; Cranbrook Museum, Detroit.