My work ranges from documentary films to immersive experiences (VR), and location-based or interactive installations. I use the observation and simulation tools of our tech-saturated, accelerationist present to bring justice and complexity into focus. I love creating complex community-driven projects with a documentary essence and a performative presentation. I delight in working with teams and communities to build profound experiences that surprise and evolve.
I frequently adapt experimental photographic techniques to these purposes; computer vision, three-dimensional scanning, volumetric capture, and video game technologies. My projects have visualized broad or invisible concepts from video game addiction, the beauty and tensions of modern urban living, the inner workings of cyber warfare, or with Topography the ephemeral complexity of ecology.
An example is an immersive documentary experience and performance called Blackout (Tribeca, 2017). The project included multi-hour interviews with over forty New Yorkers and volumetric recordings made with custom software. Captured live during the festival, live production was presented as an ever-evolving cast in a full-scale minimalist installation of a subway car. Visitors donned virtual reality headsets to experience a nuanced, and surreal social landscape overflowing with the enigmatic intensity of New York. The generative experience presented a new cast and set of stories for each viewing.
I was the founder and lead artist at Specular, a now-closed design collective focused on speculative design practices, art, and technology development. The studio combined a critical art approach with high-level software development to build creative works and free tools. Specular’s works were shown in museums including MoMA, Museum of Art & Design, and film festivals including Sundance and Tribeca Film Festival. The outcomes of one of its tool projects became the world's first volumetric capture tool, preceding Microsoft, Intel, and others by half a decade. That tool – created initially for Blackout – became a software startup going on to raise venture capital to build a team towards developing software and creating innovative productions. Now called Depthkit and Scatter respectively, the company continues to operate as a small software and VR production company. I have recently left to focus on art, documentary, and education.
Awards include an Emmy award in Outstanding New Approaches: Documentary, two Webby awards among various festival awards for individual productions. Recent credits include Strata (ongoing), The Changing Same (Sundance, 2021), a magical-realist VR experience, Blackout (Tribeca Storyscapes, 2017), Styles & Customs VR installation with DIS Magazine (Carnegie Museum of Art, 2017). Other credits include Love Child (Sundance, 2014), and CLOUDS (Sundance, 2014).
I currently create transmedia documentary projects and films with my partner, Hannah Jayanti. The most recent is the feature Truth or Consequences (Rotterdam, 2020), a ‘speculative documentary’ film about the world’s first spaceport focusing on the town nearby. The project comprises a feature film, a local film festival, and a bespoke virtual cinematography tool, designed to virtually film 3D reconstructions culled from video footage and brought to life in virtual reality.
I teach graduate-level courses at NYU’s ITP, SVA, and Johns Hopkins. I have presented art or performance at the Museum of the Moving Image, Museum of Art & Design, MIT, Carnegie Museum of Art, and Eyebeam among others.