As an extension of previous work, this album combined remixed versions of my previous AI collaboration (recombined and composed within a DAW). These new works were then fed into Suno to create abstractions of the remixed pieces with varying effect. [Album cover courtesy of DeepAI, prompt: generation loss]
This VR virtual poem, built for the Meta Quest platform, uses Walt Whitman's 1855 poem "Eidolons" as a backbone for exploring metaphysics and modernity. Embedded within different environments that Whitman's ideas to historical and spatial reference points, the project seeks to offer users the temporal and spatial environment to think through their own relationship to impermanence and the misunderstanding of reality. (CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO WATCH VIDEO DOCUMENTATION OF THE APPLICATION)
Using Suno in tandem with my own lyrics, I experimented with AI generated audio to produce this album based upon the syncopation and chord structure I originally designed for each of the songs (though the key and some rhythm were adjusted). This is part of a larger series experimenting with AI content, but this particular album heavily emphasizes different workflows meant to create a range of folk and western sounds. As the first phase, the goal was to create versions of the songs that most closely resembled the original composition of the pieces. [Album cover courtesy of DeepAI, prompt: a silhouette in an endless mirror image reflection]
Using Suno in tandem with my own lyrics, I experimented with AI generated audio to produce this album based upon the syncopation and chord structure I originally designed for each of the songs (though the key and some rhythm were adjusted). This is part of a larger series experimenting with AI content, but this particular album heavily emphasizes different workflows meant to create a range of pop sounds. As the second phase, the goal was to create versions of the songs that deviated highly from their original design (most were written as folks songs). [Album cover courtesy of DeepAI, prompt: Silhouette and AI in mirrors]
Using Suno in tandem with my own lyrics, I experimented with AI generated audio to produce this album. This is part of a larger series experimenting with AI content, but this particular album heavily emphasizes different workflows meant to create a range of sounds. As the third phase, the goal was to inverse the music writing process by starting with a selection of random two word prompts (each of these are including in the song title). These prompts were used to cue the AI to create instrumental tracks, from which I wrote lyrics (based upon tone, rhythm and key), which were then resynthesizes into a final track (which has an additional title based upon the lyrics). [Album cover courtesy of DeepAI, prompt: robot hands playing piano]
Using Suno, I experimented with AI generated audio to produce this album based upon a series of text prompts. This is part of a larger series experimenting with AI content, but this particular album heavily emphasizes different workflows meant to soundtrack music. As the final phase, the goal was to create versions of the songs that most heavily relied on Suno as a platform (an instrumental baseline for analyzing other pieces). [Album cover courtesy of DeepAI, prompt: AI Music]
Set up as a virtual art exhibit, this interactive experience links the history of cinema (specifically the early immersive experience of Hale's Tours) with virtuality to think through how AI can aid us in interpreting real and virtual ideas of spatiality. Incorporating AI to builds 3D sculptures using photogrammetry, Hale's Menagerie projects early films on the 3D modeled scenes. Built for PC and Mac, users maneuver through the space using either keyboard/mouse or joystick controls. (CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO WATCH VIDEO)
The purpose of this study is to delve into the range of ways that acceptable public discourse and reconciliatory language impact Rwandan memorial space and its various stakeholders. The goal is to interrogate the dissonance between the more commonly researched practices of Rwanda genocide tourism industry (the curated and controlled narratives formulated within the national memorial and its satellite sites) and that of the banal, every day, and even disavowed sites (such as unmarked burial and crematorium sites) of genocide that carry an immense amount of meaning within local communities. By looking at national genocide sites, as well as their “forgotten echoes” strewn across the Rwandan countryside, it is clear that multipurpose (and multi-meaning) use of public/private space in Rwanda problematizes simplistic unificatory narratives used by the government and international community. (CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO VIEW THE ARTICLE AS A PDF)
This single incorporates a range of individual soundscapes that are used in the attenuated soundtrack of LUMEN (2022), in addition to other tracks meant for future spatial audio levels.
This interactive platformer technical demo, built in Unreal Engine, incorporates Live Link Face data from a mobile phone to gauge whether the user's eyes are open. When closed, the engine loads areas of the map that, with the aid of pulsing sound cues, allow for traversal. This is a proof of concept for potential future projects around the use of the human body as a controller. (CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO WATCH VIDEO)
As a companion to the album, OBSCURE PRECISION (2020), this collection of tracks further explores merging 8-bit audio aesthetic with clean tones. In this case the tracks diverge from the previous work in terms of embracing dissonance, various musical styles and dynamic range.
This EP contains two tracks from the experimental interactive game ALWAYS (2021). Based loosely upon Irving Berlin's "Always" (1925), which recently entered into the public domain, the tracks form the backbone of the game's attenuated audioscape. These tracks reconfigure Berlin's original score and lyrics as haunting transpositions around the theme of loss.
This interactive digital experimental project places the user as a virtual wanderer, navigating through a digital blizzard (replete with a composed multi-track attenuated audioscape), ALWAYS destabilizes traditional representational practices surrounding dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease through its design, tone and thematics. Users traverse the blizzard guided by a monologue that unravels a multi-tiered narrative spatially located throughout the environment. While users have a range of tools to guide them through the environment (including a flashlight and the trail they leave behind them in the snow), the level design forces them to question the reliability of their senses to successfully navigate the space.(CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO WATCH VIDEO)
The influx of European émigré filmmakers into the US film industry during the mid-1930s led to an exilic critique in Hollywood films. This study analyzes Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936) to explore the relationships between exile and trauma, engaging with issues of displacement, memory, the victim/perpetrator duality, and the loss of “home.” (CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO VIEW THE ARTICLE AS A PDF)
In looking at the history of U.S. military execution during World War II, this article explores the relationship between memory and psychological interference in the browser-based game Disavowed (2021). As an interesting example of the palimpsestuous negotiation between individual identity, narrativity, and cultural memory, Disavowed structures itself through the misremembering of an actual historical encounter. In such a way, it reconstructs a false history of events misconstrued within the memory of the game designer, put into dissonance with historical documentation of what “really happened” – an execution witnessed by tens of thousands of soldiers, but that seems largely erased from the record. The result is an interplay between the memories of veteran Theodore “Ted” Eaker, the public awareness of Private Eddie Slovik’s execution, and the journey to piece together what is a fractured, unreliable and racially problematic history of the practice of military execution.(CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO VIEW THE ARTICLE AS A PDF)
This application represents a foray into interactive critical documentary, in this case looking at the history of U.S. military execution during World War II. As an interesting example of the palimpsestuous negotiation between individual identity, narrativity, and cultural memory, DISAVOWED structures itself through the misremembering of an actual historical encounter. In such a way, it reconstructs a false history of events misconstrued within the memory, put into dissonance with historical documentation of what “really happened” – an execution witnessed by tens of thousands of soldiers, but that seems largely erased from the record. The result is an interplay between the memories of a veteran, the public awareness of Private Eddie Slovik’s execution, and the journey to piece together what is a fractured, unreliable and racially problematic history of the practice of military execution.(CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO DOWNLOAD AND PLAY)
These tracks are background loop audio for the interactive critical documentary DISAVOWED (2021). Specifically designed for particular real world environments, including the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France, an apartment in Los Angeles, and an airfield in World War II New Guinea, the tracks emote a range of affective tones to paint an audible picture of these historical spaces.
This album merges 8-bit audio aesthetic with clean and clear tones and instrumentation to explore imagined gamic space through texture and dissonance. Each track recalls historical game spaces (including the dungeons of SUPER MARIO BROS. and the raceways of F-ZERO), the compilation has been put together for an upcoming untitled project.
Producer Blake Edwards’ PETER GUNN (1958–1961) appeared on US network television at a time when Beat poetry and bebop jazz were just making their mark on American culture. While Peter Gunn didn’t represent a drastic shift in the reactionary values of US television, the series reconfigured radicalism and counterculture in ways that are reflective of deeper cultural contradictions. In order to explore these issues, this article seeks to explore the industrial and production history of Peter Gunn in relation to its use of bebop jazz, Beat poetry and its representation of law and order.(CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO VIEW THE ARTICLE AS A PDF)
There is little doubt of the fundamental impact of the 1994 Rwanda genocide on the country's social structure and cultural production, but the form that these changes have taken remains ignored by contemporary media scholars. Since this time, the need to identify the the particular industrial structure, political economy, and discursive slant of Rwandan “post- genocidal” media has become vital. The Rwandan government has gone to great lengths to construct and promote reconciliatory discourse to maintain order over a country divided along ethnic lines. Such a task, though, relies on far more than the simple state control of media message systems (particularly in the current period of media deregulation). Instead, it requires a more complex engagement with issues of self-censorship, speech law, public/private industrial regulation, national/transnational production/consumption paradigms, and post-traumatic media theory. This project examines the interrelationships between radio, television, newspapers, the Internet, and film in the contemporary Rwandan mediascape (which all merge through their relationships with governmental, regulatory, and funding agencies. (CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO VIEW THE FULL DISSERTATION AS A PDF)
Cooperative and competitive “real world” social environments have been at the heart of video games as far back as William A. Higinbotham and Robert V. Dvorak's TENNIS FOR TWO in 1958. In fact, the arcade was a community-building social space, within which (at a local level) players built social status and position based on head-to-head competitive gameplay, interpersonal relationships, and the inherent social capital of arcade cabinet top score lists. Though these misconceptions about gaming have been curtailed considerably, and most likely derive from a simple misunderstanding of the actual social history of video gamers, there is a certain degree of actuality to the limitations of video gaming as a social medium until quite recently in their technological development. CRIME CITY offers a clear view into the role of the social networks (real or otherwise) within social network gameplay. Of course, what constitutes a “real” social environment in the modern age lies fraught with the inadequacies of claiming anything in the digital age to be real. In order to better understand the manner by which preconstituted social networks relate to this particular subset of casual gaming it seems particularly useful to look at Jesper Juul's five casual game design principles as a means of further examining how CRIME CITY, and other social network-oriented games, have altered player relations to casual games. (CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO VIEW THE ARTICLE AS A PDF)
This study analyzes how social networks that form around the hosts of commercial talk radio shows can propagate messages targeting vulnerable groups. Working with recorded broadcasts from five shows gathered over a six-week period, involving 102 scheduled guests and covering 88 topics, researchers determined hosts’ and guests’ ideological alignment on the topics discussed most frequently—including immigration and terrorism— through a content analysis of on-air statements and website content. (CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO VIEW THE PAPER AS A PDF)
This article focuses on the 2010 film INCEPTION. As a filmmaker focused on minute details, with an analytic fervor that is difficult to understate, Nolans regimentation of the dream space is of interest. More to the point, the INCEPTION argues for a construction of dream space that is far separate from the traditional oneirological systems of the Freudian reflection of the subconscious, or even more recent experimental theories such as Jie Zhang's (2004) process of "continual activation." Instead, dream space is constructed and overseen as a parallel effort between the dreamer, the architect, and, to some extent, what can be construed as the oneiric intruder (a process the film refers to as shared dreaming). This is, in essence, the central theme of INCEPTION, in that the very experience of extraction, the encroachment into another’s dream, raises questions about the nature of individual independence in a utopic/dystopic future that such a thing as “inception” could even be possible. Most importantly, though, the invocation of the architect, along with their created dream spaces, very much operates to expand our understanding of "built space" within architectural anthropology as it relates to filmic space. (CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO VIEW THE ARTICLE AS A PDF)
This clip is from the short film WALTZ OF THE FLOWERS (2008), a photogrammed, hand-developed piece compositing 26mm and 35mm prints onto 16mm hi-con film stock, exposed using various light sources and then digitally manipulated. The film explores the discordant complexities of resistance and identity in U.S. culture; merging religious iconography, images of protest, and a reframing of Americana through the dimensional interplay of film print, stock, and light. (CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO ACCESS A CLIP)
The organization of the visual systems of colonial discourse is central to the overarching production of Kigali100 (2008). The argument posited by its production is that this ideological dialogue did not disappear with the end of colonialism, rather is informs our viewing of all cinema tied to “colonized” societies. This is clearly evident in the Rwandan context, in part because the legacy of Imperialism and Orientalism was directly responsible for the violence of the 1994 genocide. This paper and film will explore the false historiography that was perpetuated under colonial, then Hutu, rule, and the formation and realignment of negative forms of identity. In order to better frame this discussion, the thesis paper will explore the origins of colonial ideology in India, the development of Orientalism, and the historical context of Rwanda, as it relates to the formation of oppositional ethnic identities. The question that remains is whether or not it is possible to transcend the Semiotics of colonialism.
As an exploration of reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda, KIGALI100 brings together interviews with numerous filmmakers, musicians, as well as political and religious figures to interrogate the nature of forgiveness. This film raises questions about the efficacy of reconciliation and the manner by which it effaces ethnic identity in the Rwandan context. Due to the ethical implications for those involved and the nature of Rwandan speech laws, this film has been held from circulation.
The nature of the filmic dream, both as it pertains to the greater narrative understanding of the visual text, as well as how it serves to inform viewer identification, is complex and difficult to address. There is, indeed, a very specific visual language, which informs this greater understanding. And yet somehow, even though dream identification is a subjective phenomenon, we are all able to delineate between the dream and the “real”. Through a systematic process of distantiation, we are able to universally recognize the “dreamlike” effect of unconscious imagery, differentiating it not only from filmic reality, but from fantasy as well. In order to better focus this exchange, it is necessarily important to utilize psychoanalytic discourse as a means of dissecting both the passive and active components of dream viewership, as well as the process by which identification is maintained and subverted. These components also raise questions about the manner by which we are to interpret the subjective camera within the unconscious world, both as an omniscient perspective, but also as a part of the subjective point of view of the key anchor of unconscious identification. The question, though, is how are we able to identify the fantasy within the fantasy?