When visitors enter Whorl’s installation space, their presence activates a lush fabric of abstract flora.
Contribution: Experience design, interaction design, software system.
Whorl was created in collaboration with David Glicksman and Damon Seeley.
Exhibition History:
Whorl, UCLA’s Interpretive Media Laboratory (IMLab) at the Los Angeles State Historic Park, 2014 — present
Aurora is an architectural scale installation that responds to the presence of visitors with realtime computer graphics.
Aurora employs 47,000 LED RGB lights diffused by 600 curved plastic panels.
Contribution: Experience design, interaction design, computer-vision system.
Aurora was created in collaboration with Electroland and was installed in 2013 in the lobby of the DirecTV corporate headquarters in El Segundo, California.
Utopia Parkway is an improvisational dance performance that integrated realtime generative graphics into the work.
Contribution: Projection design, visual design, graphics authoring system.
Utopia Parkway was performed at the Mendenhall Performing Arts Center in Northampton, Massachusetts and at the Irey Theater in Boulder, Colorado. Both performances ran in 2012.
In Aether, the movement of people in the space is represented on two 3x4 meter LED displays as soft white clouds that stir brightly colored forms.
Contribution: Conceptual design, experience design, computer-vision system.
Aether was created in collaboration with Electroland and was installed in 2012 in the lobby of the Gotham Apartments in New York, New York.
Cunningham MinEvents explore Merce Cunningham's concept of indeterminacy. Choreography, lighting design, sound, and costume design are created independently and only brought together at the time of the performance.
For this MinEvent a realtime reactive graphics system responded to the dancers; turning their bodies into "brushes" and serendipitously creating a painterly composition through their performance.
Contribution: projection design, realtime graphics, computer-vision system.
This Cunningham MinEvent was performed at the Mendenhall Performing Arts Center in Northampton, Massachusetts in 2011.
Navilandia was a community art intervention situated in Parque Patricios, an economically challenged neighborhood in Buenos Aires. I was invited to create a technologically appropriate geographic information system (GIS) to enable community groups to construct interpretive digital maps of their participation in the intervanetion. I then used these maps as source material for an online artwork.
The Navilandia intervention was staged in 2012.
Morse is a sculpture constructed out of three sheets of perforated steel. Morse displays the first message sent via telegraph, "What hath God wrought?" Precision cut by a computer control water cutter, the sheets are designed in such a way that the message is legible from select angles and illegible from others.
The visible rusting of the steel adds visual interest while emphasizing the sculpture’s construction methods.
Exhibition History:
Art + Science, Escondido Municipal Gallery, Escondido, California, 2011.
The Oresteia, a modern theatrical production of the Greek tragedy, uses computer-vision systems and projected particle-systems to create a manifestation of the oracle.
Contribution: Oracle set design, visual design, realtime computer graphics.
The Oresteia was performed at the Austin Arts Center in Hartford, Connecticut in 2011.
Guinness Folly presented visitors to Hollywood Boulevard with a playful reflection of themselves and those around them.
Exhibition History:
Hollywood Boulevard near Highland, Hollywood, California, July — November 2010. (Commissioned)
Pulse is a 40-meter long LED-light facade which displays illuminated patterns in response to vehicular traffic. It is in active dialogue with California's car culture.
Contribution: Realtime animation, computer-vision system, lighting control.
Pulse was created in collaboration with Electroland and was installed in 2009 on the facade of the Los Angeles Fashion Center in Los Angeles, California.
According to Jewish mystics, correctly uttering the seventy-two-part unspeakable name of God can animate a golem; it is also said to cause immediate death in an impure speaker. In The Ineffable, animate Hebrew letters and vowels struggle to reconstruct the lost pronunciation of this powerful name, but only in the presence of humans.
Exhibition History:
Reflecting the Sacred, El Camino College Art Gallery, Torrance, California, 2009.
Too Jewish-Not Jewish Enough II, Finegood Gallery, West Hills, California, 2007.
Too Jewish-Not Jewish Enough, Gotthelf Gallery, San Diego, California, 2005.
Too Jewish-Not Jewish Enough, Bell Gallery, Los Angeles, California, 2004.
In Mira, virtual fish and other creatures are projected onto a table which is transformed into a giant multitouch display. Touching the creatures triggers video, sounds, and animations.
Contribution: Experience design, interaction design, realtime animation, computer-vision system.
Mira was created in collaboration with Electroland.
Exhibition History:
MIRA 2008, Xiaman, China, 2008.
MIRA Pool, Xiaman, China, 2007.
Drive By is a 73-meter LED interactive light installation that tracks passing cars and alternates between two modes: alphanumeric letters that read out famous lines from Hollywood films, and abstract letterforms that follow cars as they pass by.
Contribution: Realtime animation, computer-vision system.
Drive By was created in collaboration with Electroland and was installed in 2007 on the facade of NoHo Commons in North Hollywood, California. Drive By received an Honor Award from the Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD), 2008.
The Blogger Project is an experimental theater production written and directed by Tony award winner Mel Shapiro. Prompted by the show's script and game-like concept a video game engine creates a uniquely fluid world of media for the live event.
Contribution: Projection design, realtime graphics, graphics control system.
The Blogger Project was created in collaboration with UCLA's Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance (REMAP).
The Blogger Project was performed at the Freud Playhouse in Los Angeles, California in 2006.
Imageability explores connections between an individual’s mental maps of Los Angeles and the city's history. Individuals interactively browse a large database of historical images and text through drawing their "map" of Los Angeles.
Contribution: Experience design, interaction design, software systems.
Imageability was created in collaboration with Jeff Burke, Jonathan Snipes, and Fabian Wagmister
Exhibition History:
Grand Opening, Los Angeles State Historic Park, Los Angeles, California, 2006.
In Drafting Poems, an artificially intelligent system reacts to user stimuli and creates meaningful poetry.
Exhibition History:
Remote, ACM Multimedia, Santa Barbara, California, 2006.
Leonardo II, ACE2006, Los Angeles, California, 2006. (Awarded Silver Medal)
Last: Design | Media Arts MFA Thesis Exhibition, New Wight Gallery, Los Angeles, California 2002.
The Target Interactive Breezeway is a public art installation whose ephemeral interaction can be meaningfully experienced by the throngs of tourists visiting Rockefeller Center's rooftop attraction.
Contribution: Experience design, interaction design, realtime graphics, lighting control.
The Target Interactive Breezeway was created in collaboration with Electroland. The Target Interactive Breezeway was installed in 2005 at the “Top of the Rock” in Rockefeller Center in New York, New York.
Ecce Homology is a physically interactive artwork that visualizes genetic data as calligraphic forms. Ecco Homology was created in collaboration with Ruth West, Jeff Burke, Cheryl Kerfeld, Tom Holton, JP Lewis, Ethan Drucker, and Weihong Yang.
Contribution: Experience design, interaction design, computer-vision system, systems integration.
Exhibition History:
R. West, J. Burke, E. Mendelowitz, J. P. Lewis, and C. Kerfeld, “ACTG to Calligraphy: Genetic Visualization for Ecce Homology,” in Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (INFOVIS’06), 2006.
SIGGRAPH Art Gallery, LA Convention Center, Los Angeles, California, 2005.
Within: From the Verandah: Art Presence and Buddhism, Fowler Museum, Los Angeles, California, 2003.
Little Red reminds us of technology's dual nature - its potential for both repression and liberation. By repurposing technologies used for censorship, Little Red is anti-censorware.
In Little Red, the Grimm fairytale of Little Red Riding Hood is progressively typed out across the top third of the screen. Letters from the story organize and rearrange themselves into censored obscenities below.
Exhibition History:
Rewind, New Wight Gallery, Los Angeles, California, 2006.
Second Natures, New Wight Gallery, Los Angeles, California, 2006.
Dot-matrix, Apeejay Media Gallery, New Delhi, India, 2005.
Little Red, Telic, Los Angeles, California (solo show), 2003.
The Bush Soul is a series of artworks that explores the role of humans in a world populated with artificial life. The Bush Soul employs a PC-based real-time 3D software system that supports an immersive panoramic virtual world.
Contribution: User experience design, Interaction design, Behavior-based AI, virtual physics, and event based scripting language.
The Bush Soul was created in collaboration with Rebecca Allen, Loren McQuade, Pete Conolly, Jino Ok, Damon Seeley, and Daniel Shiplacoff.
Exhibition History:
Second Natures, New Wight Gallery, Los Angeles, California, 2006.
ACM1: Beyond Cyberspace Exhibition, San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, California, 2001.
SHIFT-CTRL: Computers, Games and Art, Beall Center, Irvine, California, 2000.
Art Futura, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo, Seville, Spain, 2000.
Ground Zero-Future Art, The Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose, CA, 2000.
Life Science., Ars Electronica Center, Linz, Austria, 1999.
Materiale/Immateriale, Cento Trevi, Bolzano, Italy, 1999.
Art and Aesthetics of Artificial Life, UCLA Center for Digital Arts, Los Angeles, California, 1998.
SIGGRAPH Art Exhibition, Orlando Convention Center, Orlando, Florida, 1998.
Doors of Perception 5: Play, Netherlands Design Institute,
Amsterdam, 1998.