Once a digital something is created, it's almost impossible to destroy. It can't be moved or deleted, only copied or overwritten.

From the moment you click that "Post" button, there's no going back. Your data spreads across the globe and through the sky, distributing and cloning itself into the magnetic voids of the digital universe. Copies are made again and again through creation and collection, active and passive.

Data cannot be held or viewed, only commanded and manipulated. It is a series of actions and their consequences, immutable truths that govern every aspect of our modern lives. It exists in its static form as ones and zeroes, truths and falsehoods, written within the nooks and crannies of recordable surfaces. In transit, data is a wave or a pulse; a vibrating chain of nothingness, traveling through the sky and stars to both nowhere and everywhere in particular.

As the world enters the post-digital age, technology has been absorbed into every aspect of our lives. My thesis is an exploration of how we interact with these technologies, how they interact with us, and how we (as a society and as individuals) interface with our digital counterparts.

Architecture has always been the craft of creating the built world, the world we as people inhabit. Today, however, we inhabit more than what we can see, more than what we can touch, taste, or hear.

Each of us has a digital surrogate, a proxy that exists inside a world we can physically inhabit: a world of computer networks spanning the globe (it even has reaches among the stars). The architecture of these places are designed by programmers and the like, people that create the logical structures that hold up the digital world around us.

I'm infatuated with the worlds these people create; complex networks of connected files and folders, data and information. Like built architecture, they're composed of structures, facades and logic. Unlike architecture, they don't have a history going back millennia. The digital worlds we affect and inhabit are brand new, and more importantly, constantly changing from innovation and their very nature. I work in the place between the worlds of the built and the digital, the worlds we inhabit physically, and the world we inhabit with our proxies.

These are a series of experiments trying to define that place in-between, the interface between bits and atoms, brain, finger, and digital pulse.

animations

I don't take meandering paths with my work, at least not the kind you'd usually find in architecture: the path of the Flâneur. I still do wander, of course, but my wanderings are more directed. I am a spaceship.

I am a spaceship exploring the heavens above, being pushed, pulled, and spun around by celestial bodies around me. I have a vector, a heading toward my ultimate goal, but that heading is always dancing between the force of gravity and of thrusters.

Moments of decision arise along my path, moments where I must decide which way I should turn, which path should I take to avoid crashing into a sun, or to land on a mineral-rich moon. Moments of decision arise where I must decide whether I should should turn around to refuel, or to keep going past the point of no return.

haiku

stream some tweets all day

analyze syllable count

randomly combine

spaceGrab

spaceGrabSite

thesisBoard

Poll Twitter every two minutes for the top-most trending phrase. A single stream of data enters as an input, and is translated it into multiple streams of information as an output.

Screen. Put pixels on a monitor.

Print. Never ending loop.

Speak. A monotone robot.

Blink. No one understands you.

liveCities

Stream physical coordinates from Twitter, and put them on a map. Analyze, connect, ring a bell, forget.

classyQuotes

personalComputing

I'M A COMPUTER. (AND SO ARE YOU)

We normally associate the cold, unfriendly idea computation with PCs and the like, but you and I are computers too.

I WANT YOU TO WRITE MY THESIS QUESTION.

You are now a small part of a human computational device -- admittedly, your small contribution probably won't matter much, but a crowd of popular opinion might.

YOU HAVE TWO OPTIONS:

You can add a new question (by editing an existing one), or vote on already submitted questions. Do both if you want to!

WELL, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

interfaceQuestions

djangoDiagram

songwriter

cymatics

Cymatics, the study of visible sound vibrating upon a surface.

Watch it dance and move, sirens wailing in the background.

Should I shrink, or should it grow?

epicenter

upDownBall

voiceTrace

Sound has two dimensions, until I give it more.

Melodies and vocal oddities are meaningful controllers. Pitch goes up, ball goes up. Pitch goes down, ball goes down. Louder, bigger. Quiet, small.

In stereo: location of sound in space translates to location on a screen.

cavePlotter

I've done so much, yet so little. This is only a waypoint. A place to refuel.