Media Design - mobile app / audience analytics / interaction design

Atlas Drugged: Tools for Tomorrow

NYU Skirball 2024 

The benzedrine rants of Ayn Rand meet Artificial Intelligence meet electoral politics in ATLAS DRUGGED (Tools for Tomorrow), The Builders Association’s newest, technologically dazzling work. - NYU Skirball

Working over about 2 years we developed a mobile app that tracked the audience into 5 different “Political Personality Types” based on their answers to 16 questions, delivered via their phones. Audience members earned “Builders Bucks” during interactive game show scenes interspersed throughout the show and then chose to invest their earnings in either a “tech fund” that rapidly increased in value, or a more earnest “pension fund” that struggled to increase in value. The sum of the audiences’ economic decisions determined if the “Evil AI” trained on Ayn Rand’s writings or the “Noble AI,” secretly trained on conversations with a retired old lefty, won the presidency of the USA. This was an extremely successful show – if unfortunately, a bit too prescient.

In this highly technological show (like being inside a computer), it’s both fascinating and scary to watch as the technicians take pieces from Ayn Rand, Mr. Rogers, Dolly Parton, Glenda the Good Witch of the North, and Taylor Swift, add in fascist totalitarian ideas, and blend them into the ultimate political candidate that, with our blessing, becomes our Big Brother world. It’s all too close to home.
— David Walters, Front Row Center

More Info & Code to take the quiz!

Company Website for the show

Media Design - mobile app / dual screen system

I Agree to the Terms

NYU Skirball Season / Streaming from MITU580 2022 

I Agree To The Terms was developed by The Builders Association in collaboration with a community of microworkers who perform "Human Intelligence Tasks" for micro payments on Amazon's "Mechanical Turk" platform.

We developed a mobile website, modeled on social science research conducted on the platform, where the audience competed with each other with respect to the accuracy and speed of their answers. The show was performed on Zoom with the audience simultaneously using their phones to access the app and compete with each other, so they could feel a bit of the euphoria and dread these workers face everyday in this automated workplace.

Designed for and about the internet, the production needs to be experienced online and is a prime example of remote theatre at its most innovative and engaging. Imbued with humor, I Agree To The Terms confronts the dark horrors of capitalism without any semblance of preaching. It’s digital theatre at its best: profoundly human. — Laura Hess, Arts Editor, No Proscenium

Read more on my Current Research page

Company Website for the show, with video

Media Design - multi screen / multi city streaming event

10 Stories: A Decameron by the Builders

Streaming via Twitch 2020 

During the pandemic The Builders gathered old collaborators from around the world and shared stories from their touring past. I created the system to bring it all together as a dual screen system for viewing the event. 

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Projection Design

SEMELE 

by George Frideric Handel

Pittsburgh Opera 2019 

Textaline backed art-deco screens designed by Cary Xu served to both catch the imagery and allow the conductor, orchestra and performers to be selectively revealed. We used an existing staircase to position Semele for her ascention into heaven, and her eventual immolation by fire as she is granted her wish to see Jove in his true godlike form. 

She sings: Ah me! Too late I now repent.....

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Media Design - Augmented Reality Development

ELEMENTS OF OZ - The Builders Association

Workshop @ Montclaire State University Jan 12-17, 2015.
Premiere in September 2015 @ Monclaire State University - Peak Performances
3-Legged Dog Art & Technology Center 2016
Shanghai Interactive Theater Festival 2017
NYU Skirball Center 2019

We developed a smartphone "app" that generated augmented reality imagery and spatialized sound (tornado, flying monkeys, munchkins laughing, etc.), as well as played back synchronized videos, creating both an intimate and immersive experience for the audience. During development we came to see the phones "as Oz" - something we use everyday, but whose operations we can't explain, and which we are even legally prevented from "looking behind the curtain" to understand.

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Video Designer

Karlheinz Stockhausen's Originale

Re-Staging of the 1964 Perfomance Event
The Kitchen, New York – Nov - 8, 2014

Curated by Nick Hallett for Darmstadt: Essential Repertoire.
Co-produced by The Kitchen and Goethe-Institut.

A restaging of the 1964 "musical theater" event, (protested and participated in by various Fluxus artists), based on Stockhausen's score using contemporary performers and musicians. Directed by Caden Manson and Jemma Nelson (Big Art Group), with Video Design by Larry Shea and Kevin Ramser.

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Interaction Designer

Julia Scher's Predictive Engineering

Presentation for Archival Recording
Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University – Sept 2014

A recorded presentation with artist Julia Scher on the creation of the 1998 interactive surveillance installation Predictive Engineering 2 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The recording will be used to help restore Predictive Engineering and prepare for the next iteration of this ongoing artwork.

SFMOMA Website 

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Interactive Projection Installation

WaterWerk

Everybooty - NY Pride Party @ BAM Fisher Hall: June 27th, 2014

Interactive Stairwell Video Projection Installation

People's motion up and down the stairs reveals images from the history of the Lesbian & Gay rigths movement, swirling up from underneath an endless flow of rushing bubbling water.

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Projections Designer

Junket

by Mike Albo

Directed by David Schweizer;
The Culture Project, NY, Dixon Place, NY 2014
Development: New York Theater Workshop Summer Residency 2013

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Projections Designer

Grounded

by George Brant

Directed by Jenn Thompson
City Theater, Pittsburgh PA

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Projections Designer

Company

by Stephen Sondheim/ George Furth

Directed by Ted Pappas
Pittsburgh Public Theater, PA

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Technical Designer

Revolution

Projection artwork by Matthew Weinstein

Battery - powered mobile “Soap-Box” projection device
New York, NY

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Projections Designer

Thurgood

by George Stevens

Directed by Ted Pappas
Pittsburgh Public Theater, PA

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International Teaching

Media in Performance Workshop

Estonian Academy of Music & Theater / Baltic Film Academy
Tallinn, Estonia

Conducted a two week workshop with 35 students from 4 different institutions in Estonia in a unique collaborative intensive group skit based format, leading to final presentation is several venues around the city.

Funded by: the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and the Fulbright Specialists Roster, US State Department

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Video Sculptures

Depeche Modes of Production

Mixed Media Sculptures
(lasercut acrylic, monitors, projectors, 3D video)

Loveland Gallery, Provincetown - MA

Funded by: The Frank-Ratchye Studio for Creative Inquiry, The Berkman Faculty Development Fund, and a S.O.D Faculty Development grant.

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Projections Designer

Monster in the Hall

by David Greig

Directed by Tracy Brigden
City Theater, Pittsburgh PA

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Projection & Interaction Design

Angels in America

Directed by Jed Harris
Chosky Theater, Pittsburgh PA

This work involved the development of a new experimental 3D capture technique as well as custom coded software for actor tracking video projection.

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Experimental Film

Hydrophilia

(Hi8 remastered to digital video - 4 min, 1995/2003)

Featured in:

Strange Attractors

DVD/ Book by Encyclopedia Destructica- Pittsburgh, PA

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Video Projection Installation

Stereoscopic Utopian Video Projections

• 2010 Floating World - LMCC “Swing Space” Exhibition Governors Island - New York

• 2010 Bring To Light - Festival of projection art Greenpoint - New York

This was the culmination of a 6 month residency on Governors Island in New York Harbor.

Kinetic Sculpture

Space Time Modulator

(mixed media)

• 2010 Floating World - LMCC “Swing Space” Exhibition Governors Island - New York
• 2010 MIX - NY Queer Experimental Film Festival Theater for the New City - New York

This was also created during the 6 month residency on Governors Island in New York Harbor.

Video Document:

Video Projection Installation

Mal Amis

2010 MIX - NY Queer Experimental Film Festival Theater for the New City - New York

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Experimental Film

Pilgrim’s Progress

(9 min, 2007) – digital video

2009 Salon Artistique - Group Show Amsterdamn, Netherlands
2008 CineMental - Brattle Theater
2007 Mix 20 - NY Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film/Video Festival

Funded in part by: The LEF Foundation Moving Image Fund

Click to Watch the Film - 9 min

Video Projection Installation

Water Water Everywhere

Outdoor Video Projection - (Digital Projection, Speakers)

2008 MIX - NY Queer Experimental Film Festival South Street Seaport - New York

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Camera and Editing (support)

The Yes Men Fix the World

Directed by The Yes Men

US & Europe

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Lighting Design / Special Effects

Love is a Battleship

Dazzle Dancers Performance & Costume Retrospective

Deitch Projects - New York, NY

Short Experimental Film

Jouissance

Short Experimental Film

Land of the Lay

Short Experimental Film

Routine Maintenance Fitness Challenge

Short Experimental Film

Superabundance

Short Experimental Film

Quest

Video & Effects Designer

3 women in Indecision 

- a new play by Mike Albo Kraine Theater - New York, NY

Interactive sound sculpture for gardens

Well Wishing

Video Surveillance Consultant

Michael Joo Circannual Rhythm (pibloktok), 2002-05

installation view at the Bohen Foundation with Remote Sense (alpha Helix) in left foreground; three-channel video projection (nine images), continuous loop, approx. 25 min., dimensions variable 

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift of The Bohen Foundation, 2006

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