After studying architecture at Carleton University in Ottawa and the Technical University of Berlin, he worked as an architect for several years in Germany. In 1997, he began a collaboration with composer Emmanuel Madan under the name [The User] and produced three major series of pieces entitled Symphony for dot matrix printers, Silophone and Coincidence Engines. Since 1998, their pieces and McIntosh's Ondulation series have been widely distributed and presented around the world. Thomas McIntosh has won two prizes at the Festival de Nouveau Cinéma et Nouveaux Médias de Montréal and an honourable mention at the Ars Electronica festival. McIntosh and Madan were nominated for the Nam June Paik Prize in 2004 and were finalists for the Quartz Prize in Paris and the Transmediale Prize in Berlin in 2010.