Louis Hock was born in Los Angeles in 1948 and raised in Nogales and Tucson, Arizona. He began making films when he was studying psychology and poetry at the University of Arizona, graduating with a BA in Psychology in 1970. In 1973 he received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He joined the University of California, San Diego in 1977 and works as a professor the Visual Arts Department.

Hock's artwork - films, video tapes, installations and public media events- have been exhibited in solo shows at numerous national and international art institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants including the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Film Institute, the Rockefeller Foundation, and California Arts Council (2002).

Upcoming exhibitions include a permanent video installation at the Tom Bradley International Terminal of the LAX and a video installation based on the 1979 cinemural, Southern California, at the Getty Center as part of "Pacific Standard Time" in 2011.