Parallel Tones
Upstate Art Weekend
@ Neuland
High Falls NY 2024
Parallel Tones is a generative light and sound sculpture. This installation consists of a series of interconnected works powered by the same generative, aleatory seeds and cascading data streams. Music triggers shifts in light and the works evolve together, one slow breath at a time.
Viewed from either end, this piece resembles a classic abstract painting, but allows the viewer to pull the layers apart and experience real-world color mixing, revealing a range of colors beyond what can be seen on canvas or computer screen.
As a musician and abstract painter for several decades I have always thought in “synesthetic” terms reaching for ways to create powerful interactions with sound & light. My process uses generative techniques with connected nodes, networked systems and specific compositional choices, allowing for controlled randomness within refined boundaries.
Parallel Tones
v2 Motion Reactive
Variations of this evolving work have been shown @ Satellite Art Show Williamsburg Brooklyn 2024, Upstate Art Weekend @ Neuland High Falls, NY 2024, & Subjective Art Fest @ LUME Studios Tribeca, NYC 2024.
This latest piece from my Parallel Tones series consists of six LED strips hung behind a single layer of translucent fabric, paired with six corresponding motion sensors. The composition is altered with the viewer’s movement as each trigger causes the corresponding LED strip to change colors and adjust the length of illuminated pixels, creating an artificial sense of depth.
This iteration features modified code that randomly chooses light strips to fade out. This added a surprisingly dynamic new element as the shadows cast by the unlit strips create subtle additional gradations. As with much of the work I've been making recently, I consider this both a finished piece and a prototype for scalable / site-specific / architectural installations. Controlled by a self-contained microprocessor, once installed, this piece can run indefinitely and the code can be updated wirelessly.
To make sure motion is accurately detected only directly in front of each of the 6 motion sensors, I made several rounds of improvements to 3D printed parts. Starting with a simple tube I was getting many false triggers. Luckily Blender let me get virtually small and climb inside to see what was causing this. Reflections from the side of the tube were making the image sensor think it was seeing motion in front of the lens when objects were actually off to the sides. I changed the design several times to minimize any reflected light bouncing off the tube resulting in more consisting head-on triggers.
Interested in building something similar in your space? Let’s talk!
Amphora Projects
Waterforms @ 1Hotel, Surfcomber, Sagamore Hotels, South Beach, Miami, Art Basel / Miami Art Week 2024
Amphora Projects, the creative collaboration of artists Aaron Alden and Frankie Batista, examines the beauty and expression of water as both subject and medium. Their work focuses on immersive, aqua-kinetic video installations that capture water in ultra high frame-rate slow motion, revealing a world of energy and transformation.
Water’s expressive, interdependent movement serves as a mirror to human experience - dynamic, interconnected, constantly evolving, and limited only within the boundaries of the space and time it occupies.
This exhibit was created to shine a light on the environmental efforts of Blue Action, VolunteerCleanup.org, Resilience Creative, The City of Miami, and The City of Miami Beach with tech contributions from Luxedo.
Weather Brush
Data visualization
Hudson Valley NY
A weekly weather forecast visualized as digital generative art.
>INSTAGRAM
One full week’s weather is represented (left to right) showing 10 weather stations along the Hudson Valley from Albany to NYC (top to bottom). The motion resembles one large brush stroke, but is made of 10 sections independently responding to hourly temperature, wind, precipitation, and barometric pressure.
Read more about this project on TouchDesigner’s showcase site.
Thanks to the Derivative team for featuring me!
For TouchDesigner-ers, Here’s a look at how the document was built. There are 4 main Components: Weather API collection, Data Cleaning / Parsing, DAT to CHOP, Then painting. It’s an insanely complicated file and I’ll be making efficiency improvements to the Data side as I push ahead.
Noise Fields
Generative
p5.js sketch
Exploring ways of drawing with code (p5.js) to see how subtle changes in just a few variables can lead to dramatically different results and endlessly produce interesting variations. These were all generated by the same simple set of coded instructions with only a couple numbers altered. Sometimes minimal and constrained, resembling my abstract paintings from the 90’s / early 2000’s, nodding to Rothko, Motherwell, Richter etc. And then glitched, chaotic, dynamic but still poetically structured. So exciting to see how responsive and expressive it can be. I was planning to release this on FXHash with adjustable user params. But we’ll see… everything is pretty dismal in web3 these days. Either way these explorations are helping to develop bigger ideas (that I can’t mention yet) turning data into art.
Kinetic Mirrors
@ Volvox Labs
Volvox Labs
Brooklyn NY
TouchIn 2024
Volvox Labs invited me to be a guest artist for TouchIn 2024 in their Brooklyn Studio. They let me take over their existing kinetic installation of 5 LED panels and 5 columns of motorized mirrors. I created an adaptation of "All of the Colors All of the Time" and built a brand new audio analysis patch that can autonomously adapt to any music (a live feed from the DJ in this case) find the rhythm of a track and use the beat to push the work forward in sync.
To control the motorized mirrors I programed a variety of patterns from beat-driven waves, “sample & hold” patterns (where a random position is chosen and the other mirrors align in sequence), and movements based on 5 audio frequency bands. A counter listens for 16 beats and then moves on to the next pattern. The result is an endlessly evolving generative kinetic work where mirrors reflect chromatic refractions, like a life-size kaleidoscope.
Really amazing experience. So happy to be invited to come play with this team of legends. The TouchDesigner meetup was absolutely epic, the room was full of so many of my heroes and everyone was so friendly and excited for what we are all building. Everyone there became instant friends and I look forward to seeing everyone again soon.
Thank you Volvox, Derivative and TouchDesigner community.
p5.js + Pen Plotter
Axidraw SE A1
Building a new p5.js project around a simple structure of parallel lines, offset by overlapping noise displacements. Subtle tweaks to the variables result in a variety of distinct styles/genres. I’m thinking of making this a user-controllable release.
Fragmented Depictions
Photogrammetry / 3D Modeling
A new series of photogrammetry scans transformed into 3D space. This series explores enigmatic forces of light and dark, and existence within multiple simultaneous states of being.
Fjallsárlón
Recursive Reflections
@ LUME Studios Tribeca NYC
curated by Clay Devlin
Frieze 2023
Fjallsárlón was created from neural radiance field (NeRF) video files captured during drone flights over Iceland’s lesser-known glacier lagoon and the tongue of the enormous Vatnajökull glacier. This piece is a compilation of several individual video loops, taking viewers on a journey through exploded 3D geometry. While 3D photogrammetry and LIDAR rapidly integrate into our daily lives, I enjoy using the quirks and artifacts of this technology to showcase dramatic deconstructed landscapes. The fractured icebergs are remnants of centuries past. Here, they are incorporated into current discussions surrounding technology which is evolving in ways we cannot yet fully understand—perhaps contributing to positive evolution or perhaps signaling irreversible destruction.
Waveforms
S¿bjective Art
@ LUME Studios Tribeca
NFT NYC 2023
curated by Raina Mehler,
Director @Pace Gallery.
Waveforms is an endlessly evolving generative digital work developed to imitate my own style of IRL acrylic paintings. Created in TouchDesigner.
Landscaper
CADAF 2022
Crypto & Digital Art Fair
@ WEB3 Gallery 5th Ave NYC. Curated by Elena Zavelev & Andrea Steuer
Landscaper is a generative art project which constructs infinite topographic outcomes. The works are a collaboration between the artist, the viewer, the computer, and random “forces of nature”. Using physical controls to adjust certain pre-selected variables, viewers @ CADAF 2022 in NYC influenced the outcome of numerous iterations until they discover their perfect piece of this infinite world. Final works are available on objkt.com.
Alien Elements
Unreal Environment built from IRL landscapes turned to 3D objects.
This project is the culmination of many experiments taking drone footage I shot in Iceland, converting the videos to 3D geometry using NeRF photogrammetry, then bringing them into Unreal Engine. I first intended to use the glaciers only as natural additions to an arctic environment but ended up keeping some of the original photographic textures, mixed with glass, gold and copper metallic materials. The result is a world of crystal clouds formed from…alien elements.
Midjourney
Architecture
& Design
Experiments
My opinions on AI change every day. I’m learning to code with ChatGPT which feels like an absolute super power. I worry about the negative impact of AI models trained on other people’s work and the likelihood of it irreversibly changing things we can’t possibly fully understand. But maybe it also cures cancer? How long will it be until we can talk to birds? For now, I’m cautiously optimistic for what it can do to help my workflow, widen my creative vision, teach me new skills, and pump out pretty jpegs of sci-fi / hypermodern gold architecture.
Performance VFX
TouchDesigner VFX
I’m working on a variety of nutballs video effects for general use but specifically for collaborations with live performers. This is one of the more insane ones. This is just about the only thing in my recent work I didn’t film. This is footage from the amazing choreographer Sabrina Lonis. The nutballs music is mine though!
