Boozbot

The birth of BoozBot opens a fresh chapter at the intersection of technology, human interaction, and the science of personality. BoozBot converses with the wit and wisdom of your favorite corner barkeep, pouring drinks, monitoring sobriety, and engaging patrons one-on-one.

Boozbot was built with Jeff Crouse. My roles was to build the robotic systems in the face and beverage delivery. Jeff and I co-developed the concept and personality.

Boozbot is available for hire at your next birthday, bachelorette, or similar party.

Empress Kiki's Intergalactic Cocktail Party

Empress Kiki's Interagalactic Cocktail Party is an irreverent, whimsical, and bizarre adventure through the esoteric underbelly of New York City filled with aliens, magic, and the occult.

During the event, players solve clues along an elaborate treasure hunt, interacting with embedded game actors, and calling in to a networked phone system. As the game progresses, players create increasingly elaborate costumes and characters for themselves. The game culminates in a costumed themed party for all players and cast, to live out their newly found selves!

Empress Kiki was played at Come Out and Play. Video promotion of the game was featured on the MTV HD Screens at Times Square. The game was co-developed with David Boyhan

Too Smart City

Too Smart City is a set of three street furniture pieces that come to life with embedded intelligence and robotic systems. The Smart Bench is a gorgeous two-person seater that recognizes vagrancy and is capable of lifting people up and dumping them off. The Smart Sign displays the latest legal codes on its glossy video monitor, pointing at and addressing people as they walk by. The Smart Trashcan is a sleek metal bin that analyzes what is being discarded. Throw the wrong trash away, and the Smart Trashcan throws it right back at you.

Too Smart City was created with JooYoun Paek and received a commission from the Architecture League for the Towards the Sentient City exhibition.

Fizzbee

Fizzbee allows users to tag and create interactive stories based around using their own photographs. I was involved in a variety of Flash programming tasks, including embedded dynamic Youtube control, and an interactive help system.Fizzbee website

Urban Bingo

The everyday becomes game pieces to find and collect in this mash-up between city tour and classic bingo!
Urban Bingo website more

Mobile Technologies Group

To pursue research in mobile technology, I founded the Mobile Technologies research group at Georgia Tech. Since 2004, our group has created several applications utilizing wireless devices.MTG website

Faux-to

The Faux-to booth takes on an innovative twist to event photography, creating photo animations which are projected live at the event, and available afterwards online. This was built in conjunction with Sauvage Studios.

My role: Developed the revolving platform system, enabling multiple subjects to be photographed from multiple angles. Wrote custom software that enabled rapid photographic image manipulation and cropping, followed by stitching the image into an animation.

Client Praise:

Fauxciliate presents a tremendous opportunity to reach an artists fan base in a unique and highly effective way. The personalization and delivery allows an artist and brand to stand out amongst the competitive clutter online. I have yet to see anything else like it.
Chris Boghigian - Manager, Digital Marketing - RCA MUSIC GROUP

The surprise element of Fauxcialite’s faux-to booth is incomparable. It was the highlight of the evening as everyone gathered waiting to take and watch their picture animations.
Joseph Hodges - New York Marketing Manager - FUZE BEVERAGES

Underground

An elaborate party that I directed for Eyebeam's quarter annual MIXER parties. The theme was an invocation of the NYC I find between the cracks: Gotham meets Fraggle Rock, where everything is possible.

I concepted and led design on the event which included over 30 embedded actors and dancers, elaborate set designs, 10 different artists, and 5 musical acts. Every part of the evening was thematically linked, and often synchronized to provide an arc to the entire party.

Underground was an enormous critical success, with numerous praise from the press, including New York magazine listing me as part of the NEW SATURDAY NIGHT!

Any Where BUT HERE!

Any Where BUT HERE! (AWBH) projects people into a better party than where they currently are. Using a slew of costumes, phony cardboard props, and some sophisticated vision recognition software (AWBH) allows people to pretend that they are engaging in the event of their dreams. After taking their photos, participants can use the custom software to upload and message their friends about the "awesome" event they are at.

AWBH is intended for events, and as such, questions the function of party photography to privilege superficial mementos over more profound experiences. AWBH was built with Jeff Crouse and was supported by Eyebeam

SigCHI 2007 - Short Paper

Visualization Method for a Social Navigation System WigglestickSlang for a divining rod used to drop media at specific spots, have their location visible to approved friends, and find their way to desired places. Intended for the urban pedestrian, Wigglestick features some differences in information visualization approach from existing way finding systems.conference paper

IHeartArt

IHeartArt is a website, mobile site, and a web service for sharing pictures of art found both in public spaces and in private galleries or museums. Users upload images from their phone through email, add commentary, and tag and categorize images. This process enables discussion about art to occur through the photographs people take and the comments they make. IHeartArt was built for and is run by Ant Farm Interactive.website

Citizen Dispatch

Citizen Dispatch is a software application for soliciting and organizing media (photos, audio, video, etc.) from the general populace for news agencies. News editors add requests for content, which are accessible via mobile phone based on the user's current location. The system handles all archiving and tagging, enabling seamless integration into the publication and media library.

PictoHunt

A mixed reality version of image matching for the Nintendo DS. Using wifi access points to determine location, the DS brings up an image of the user's area. The user must look both at the image, and the physical world to determine what the differences are. Accepted to the Pervasive Games Conference 2007

Shark!

Shark! is a 4-player game played on a shared display in which participants attempt to eat smaller fish and other players while avoiding obstacles and the dreaded shark. This game converts the touch tone sounds made by any phone into instructions for a computer system, allowing any telephone to become a game controller. Shark! was originally displayed at Living Game Worlds 2006. Shark! was featured in an article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on September 28, 2006

Wigglestick

Wigglestick is a GPS based application enabling users to drop media at specific spots, have their location visible to approved friends, and find their way to desired places. Intended for urban pedestrians, the visualization mimics a radar, in which the distance and angle of an object represents its current relation to the users physical proximity. Wigglestick was presented at IEEE Pervasive Computing 2007 and SigCHI 2007Pervasive Computing Paper

Bocce Drift

In Bocce Drift, the traditional game of Bocce (kind of Jeu de Boules) breaks out of the sandpit and makes the entire city a course. Players take turns throwing the jack as they follow the jack and bocce balls down city streets.

Hit! or Sh!t

it! or Sh!t is a media delivery system that recommends media that the user is likely to enjoy based on submitted ratings, and also creates networks between the users based on both real-world connections and statistically-generated ones. One of ten winners in the mtvU Digital Incubator.

Pervasive Computing 2007 - Workshop Presentation

Wigglestick: An Urban Pedestrian Mobile Social Navigation SystemThe following paper examines ongoing work on Wigglestick, a mobile way-finding service for the urban pedestrian. It enables users to tag media at specific spots, make their location visible to approved friends, and find their way to desired places. Its usage of the divining rod as a metaphor for the development of the mobile application has encouraged a minimal abstracted visualization approach and a social navigation system based on user-generated location tags. conference paper

SigCHI 2007 - Short Paper

Visualization Method for a Social Navigation System WigglestickSlang for a divining rod used to drop media at specific spots, have their location visible to approved friends, and find their way to desired places. Intended for the urban pedestrian, Wigglestick features some differences in information visualization approach from existing way finding systems.conference paper

Dirt Party

A Dirt Party is a gathering where the guests are scrutinized during the course of the party using resources from the Web. The results are presented to the other guests in a variety of ways. The first Dirt Party took place at the Eyebeam 10th Anniversary Benefit, where the output was a series of dynamically generated tabloid covers.

Pervasive Games 2007 - Short Paper

Pervasive Gaming with the Nintendo DS A paper on creating pervasive gaming using the affordances of the Nintendo DS. The paper focuses upon techniques employed by the authors to use WiFi signals to determine accurate positon.conference paper

International Computer Music Conference 2006 - Poster

Mobile Networked Music Demonstration: Sequencer404 This paper describes the demonstration of an application for multi-user control of a musical sequencer through telephony and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP). Participants phone into a central server and through the use of the numeric buttons of their device, control the rhythm and pitch of their selected instruments, collaboratively generating a musical composition.conference paper

Mobile Music Workshop 2006 - Presentation

Sequencer404: A Networked Telephonic Composer This paper describes an application for multi-user control of a musical sequencer through telephony and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP). Participants phone into a central server and through the use of the numeric buttons of their device, control the rhythm and pitch of their selected instruments, collaboratively generating a musical composition. the current tempo, slows it by five beats per minute (BPM), tapping faster does the opposite. conference paper

Pixellation

Pixelation is similar to the parlor game Telephone, where an original sentence is whispered around a circle of friends and radically changes its meaning over time. The difference is, with Pixelation, you're taking pictures with your cell phone, and sending them across a continent to create something similar to visual Jazz.

Storyscape

Commissioned by the City of Atlanta, Storyscape was installed in parks stretching five miles of the city.Using their mobile phones, users can access and record stories at specific locations. This process allows for communities to form and share narratives about the places that are meaningful to them.press more

Expressive AI

Working under Dr. Michael Mateas I implemented ABL (Artificial Behaviour Language) as the mind controlling Sony Aibo 210s in an emergent dramatic performance. In the performance the robotic dogs reacted to each other and the audience, shifting their emotional state accordingly. This in turn, resulted in different stories emerging. more

Operation Clyde

A multiplayer video game, where the players control their ghost avatars by calling the game's telephone number, and using the number pad as a controller. Operation Clyde was presented at the Living Games Symposium in May 2005

Character Maker 4.3

Dr. Janet Murray's software which allows students to build Eliza like characters and have conversations with them was first built in 1991 at MIT. For Dr. Murray, I rewrote the software from being server based to downloadable and run on any computer. This software was used in the Introduction to Compputational Media Course, and presented to Will Wright at the Living Games Symposium. download

Mob Games

Scavenger hunts and Capture the Flag games utilizing cell phones. These games were developed to explore how people use mobile technology to interact in distributed groups under pressure.project page

Future Force Warrior

Conducted tests on the biometric psychophysiological responses to stimuli in a wireless virtual reality environment. A large portion of these tests were for DARPA's Future Force Warrior, under Dr. Dylan Schmorrow. Additionally, we created various entertainment applications of biofeedback, including a track car racer using GSR, a virtual character that responds to how much attention you are giving it, and a game where you float around just by thinking.

Elevation Elevator

This neurofeedback game trained the player to use their mind to move up and down on an elevator. Initially, the player would make very slight movements, and be unable to control the direction they wished to move. In an average of fifteen minutes they would gain the ability to consciously control their movement.

Super Stunt Speeedway

Players have to control their stress levels in order to vary the speed at which their slot car would travel. This was accomplished by measuring the players GSR (Galvanic Skin Response) and using the data to change a digital potentiometer.

Attention Bunny

Using an EEG, my CMU research team were able to detect how much attention the player was actually paying to the virtual bunny character in our environment. The bunny attempted to interact with the player and maintain their interest, however, would eventually wither away if the player became disinterested.

Augmented Reality Gaming Table

This table utilizes the University of Washington's AR Toolkit to create physical controllers for 3D environments. In AR Dice, 3D monsters emerge out of the players dice and battle each other for dominance. Cannon Fodder is a game where players must work together to save their castle by aiming their cannons to fire upon the encroaching Goblin Army. The entire AR Gaming Table system, and its 5 games were created for under $100. A poster of this project was presented at the AR Toolkit Conference in Tokyo, Japan.project page

Turtle Image Uploader

Developed for the Turtle Expedition who maintains a vast and ever growing library of images from their travels. The software accepts all formats of images, compresses them, converts them into the standardized format for both the enlarged and thumbnail versions, uploads them to the appropriate location on the web site, and updates the SQL database with the images copy. This software is available for display upon request.

Retro Robot

A scavenger hunt where players explore a physcial space (5th Floor, Pittsburgh Technology Center), augmented using Ekahau's wireless location tracking system. Up to 5 players explore their locations, finding virtual items (weapons, food, and treasure,) collaborating and sabotaging each others efforts, while attempting to win the game by rebuilding their personal space ship. project webpage

A. Love Life

A.Love-Life is a robotic art project that explores the implied emotions of artificial replication. It used ooPic micro-controllers to run the artificial life program, and nitinol, which is a memory alloy, to move the joints of the robots. project page more

Multimedia EBook

Developed for the Cutting Corporation, this JAVA based player synchronizes audio and images to text, allowing users to quickly navigate through a multi-leveled transmedia experience. The software switches from Ebook display to an audio player at the page the viewer is reading at. Further, the multimedia ebook "flips" pages of the book while playing the audio. I also created a system of digital rights management which ensures that all of the content is protected from being copied. The multimedia ebook is currently patent pending.

Telepresence

Shared Dreaming is a telepresence art piece in which brain readings from a sleeping person generate video manipulations in an art gallery, while the gallery participants generate music played under the dreamers pillow. project page more

Full Spectrum: Interactive Theatrer Initiative - 2003

The Interactive Theatre Initiative of the Entertainment Technology Center asked me to create a video background for their play, Full Spectrum: A Techno Theatre Experiment, which was performed in New York City at the Ensemble Studio Theatre between March 27th-29th 2003.

mEbooks

Following the success of multimedia emails, I began working on an application which synchronized various media to text, allowing the user to switch between text, audio, and graphics. The current version, written in JAVA, is patent pending. Below is an advertisement created for the Naval Institute Press.

The Cinema Guild

My first freelance job was filled with many wonderful challenges and lessons. During my tenure as the webmaster, I organized and redesigned their entire site, implemented streaming video, and an ecommerce section. More importantly, I learned the importance of designing for the non-technical community.

Appleseed Audiobooks

This Flash based site was created for children aged 4 through 10 to use, and is designed with hidden entertainment within it, enticing the children to roll and click with their mouse.

Chernobyl

Chernobyl was a 3-month art piece performed in the subways of New York City, consisting of accordion, violin, and a large yellow "boom box."

Multimedia Emails

These are low bandwidth animations to be sent to the Time Warner mailing list promoting upcoming products. I created this prototype, and helped pitch it to Time Warner, resulting in a contract to develop monthly emails and a new website. more

Cutting Rich Media

I worked in a team of 5 to design and create this website to help launch the multimedia department of the Cutting Corporation. While, I have come to abhor sites created solely in Flash, the general design is quite good, and I still enjoy the music I composed for it.

20th Century Living Room

The Living Room was displayed at Art-O-Matic in Washington DC in 2000. The piece, which recieved critical acclaim, was a diorama of a northern american living room, presented in the style prevalent in ethnographic museums, such as the Smithsonian's American History museum. press

The Turtle Expedition

This site details the travels of The Turtle Expedition, who drive their 4-wheel drive vehicles across the world. The site recieves an average of 200,000 hits per month, and has an active mailing list of over 300. launch site

Passion: Deconstructed - 1998

14 crew members. 63 actors. Thousands of feet of 16mm film. Aaton cameras with Zeiss lenses. 4 years of film school. $10,000 in credit cards. 1 pretentious script. I learned a hell of a lot in making my senior film. more

Photography

A third of my collegiate studies were in photography, and I have used nearly all analog techniques from Cyanotypes to polaroid transfers to 8x10 negatives. This training has given me a strong sense of visual design and composition.

Documentary on the Meat Industry

This is the closest, I have been to doing news coverage, where every second of tape counts. While trying to compose shots, I had to look out for hooks, puddles of blood, and chain saws. I chose this portion, because it is the most powerful single shot in the whole piece, and conveys the message I was attempting without any edits. Warning: This is very graphic more

Building Virtual Worlds

In Dr. Randy Pausch's Building Virtual Worlds course, working in groups of 5 students, I created 4 virtual reality worlds. These worlds were fully immersive 3D environments utilizing a head mount display, and we built our own physical interfaces, including a full size drum kit.