Aurora Organ
2009
An interactive lighting installation with a Ruby DMX control suite, developed in collaboration with Camille Utterback.
Six columns of light hang in an atrium surrounded by a mezzanine with a glowing railing. When passers-by touch the railing, its color flows into the corresponding column where it plays with the light added by other users.
The lights change according to a series of algorithms that model physics and decision making. The control suite features an MVC-like architecture, a highly-readable DSL interface, and some simple graphics processing.
a poem curiosity
2010
A study of human/computer interaction and aesthetics in a poetic context.
The user types while the computer attempts to interpret their words by parsing and sampling one of two poems.
Camille Utterback: Video Installation CMS
2008
A Web interface allows librarians at the Lewis Library and Technology Center to upload children's drawings into Camille Utterback's interactive video installation Text Rain.
The system features an intuitive drag-and-drop interface comprised of two independently scrollable panes. Once librarians have uploaded images they can add text to the image, which is arranged by an algorithm written to Camille's aesthetic requirements. The system then sends the new content to the video installation using an integration server designed to dovetail with the pre-existing software with minimal modification.
Between Shadow and Light
2011
A dance collaboration directed by Joy Cosculluela & Iu-Hui Chua and performed at Mountain Home Studio. I scored and performed a solo dance piece that evolved into a duet with Charlie Eddy.
Photos by Eric Koziol
Video Wall at Pivotal Labs
2012
Realtime data visualization of Pivotal Labs' operational data. Six TVs display artistically rendered information about the status, size, and location of Pivotal's projects. Designed in collaboration with Jessica Miller.
The visualization is driven by a single Mac Pro with two triple-head video cards. Significant OpenGL hackery had to be done to enable display across the video cards at an acceptable framerate (60FPS). An embedded OSC server allows remote control of the wall using an iPhone/iPad app.
Performance Scores
2010 - 2012
Scores for dancers developed for a research group led by Anna Halprin. Some scores are static images developed in Photoshop, while others are interactive and/or generative works produced using OpenFrameworks. Unfortunately, the more video-oriented scores don't traslate well to this rather technologically-limited portfolio.
Chakratron Voting
2009
The Internet becomes karma-manifest through a four-foot-tall, glowing, fortune-dispensing Buddha built by Scott Gasparian.
I implemented the Web interface allowing users to vote for fortunes.
The premise is simple: a Web interface that allows users to vote for fortunes extracted from a Magic 8-Ball. The complicating factors are that it has to interface with the Buddhabot (governed by an Atmel ATMega16), a webcam, and be easily deployable on a cheapo shared host (no Ruby support, no root access).
To meet these idiosyncratic needs, it supports a simple RESTful-ish HTTP API designed for use with curl; it has a zero-configuration webcam FTP interface; and it's written in PHP using a dead-simple SQLite backend.
Spirit of Place
2009
Anna Halprin created Spirit of Place as a tribute to her husband, Larry. The performance was presented at Stern Grove, which was designed by Larry.
I danced as a member of the ensemble and provided supporting vocals.
Photos by John Kokoska
Threshold Hack
2011
Software edits and processes a video of a dance performance into an infinite stream of new compositions. The score for the computer (the software) was developed in a recursive process with the score for the dancer (the choreography)—each iteration of the dance suggesting new algorithms, and each new algorithm proposing new resources for the performance.
The core of the software is an optical flow algorithm that analyzes pixel-by-pixel differences between video frames in an effort to perceive the dance. The understanding of dance gleaned by this process is utterly superficial and provides a useful anti-pattern to work against in a search for human dance under the debris of progress.