Mediated Communication

A Man

A Man is a steel sculpture that, in form, exists somewhere between home appliance and monumental obelisk. A small illuminated display reveals an aleatoric poem in 3 line stanzas. The poem itself is comprised of Google search results for the phrase “a man” and alternates, in tone and theme, between eulogy, tribute, caricature, and indictment of an imagined man constructed by algorithms, trends, page ranks, and the shared attention of the Internet.

This Form of Accounting, The Action of Exchange

This Form of Accounting, The Action of Exchange is a large LED stock ticker that displays a collection of 68 haikus in a long, continuous scroll. The haikus were written by using Markov chains to generate text based on both Amazon’s 2017 SEC filings and Marx and Engel’s “The Communist Manifesto” (1848). The contrast (and unexpected similarities) in the form and content of the original texts is revealed in the poems, reflecting a traditional haiku theme of juxtaposing two contrasting subjects. Likewise, the scrolling action of the stock ticker display seems to recall the traditional presentation of haikus on paper scrolls.

UTV

UTV is a guerilla TV station explores ideas related to broadcast and technology mediators by re-transmitting the Twitter monologues of its neighboring Chicagoans on UHF channel 14-½.

This piece was part of the exhibition Ill Communication at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. The curator, Joe Jeffers, asked the six invited artists to respond to the show’s theme by creating two works for two rooms in the gallery – one that functions as a system’s interface and the other as its output. In the case of UTV, the interface takes place on the Internet, the digital processing and re-transmission occur at the desk installation at the gallery, and the output is in the form of an over-the-air TV broadcast.

Observatory

An observatory designed to collect data for audio transduction of satellite positions. The finished composition is an homage to Charles Dodge’s Earth’s Magnetic Field, but with data based on human-made celestial objects instead of the Sun. Created at the Harold Arts Intensive Residency, the observatory’s form and materials are inspired by the vernacular architecture of the residency’s rural Ohio region.

Some of my photos from the residency

Generative Connections

An ongoing experiment in which I employ an AI-driven generative design process to create objects that function as the negative space between two human bodies. As the bodies reach for each other, withdraw from each other, or otherwise physically interact, the physical forces at play are identified and quantified. The AI system uses this information to develop material forms representing those forces. As a resident at both the Autodesk Technology Center and Haystack Labs (a residency at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts that brings together artists, designers, and researchers from MIT), I created 3D-printed prototypes of some of these objects. I intend to find ways to realize these complex forms in other materials, such as iron and porcelain, through mold-making and casting processes.

Psst

A technologically mediated social experiment, exploring uninvited communication between strangers, takes place in a public restroom. The instrument employed in this investigation takes the form of a mischievous device, designed to create micro-interventions into the washroom routine of visitors by occasionally knocking on the wall that separates it from its neighbor and making a “psst” sound.

40 Faces

40 Faces is a reflection on the ways in which design and handwork are mediated by computation and digital fabrication. I began this investigation by looking at the Utah Teapot, which has a long history in the realm of 3D computer graphics. I decimated the faces that describe the form as much as possible while still retaining its function as a teapot. I then produced a physical expression of the model in steel. In a laser-cut tesselated chapbook I describe the object’s 40-year journey from manufactured object to hand-drawn sketch to virtual model to hand-made object.