114 Hemiplegic Migraines

Transforming a chronic disease into a durational performance: 114 Hemiplegic Migraines documents each attack in 2024 with a photo illustration.

No Body is an Island

No Body is an Island is a virtual world created inside Animal Crossing. The piece reclaims the ‘island getaway’ central to the game as an anatomy diagram at land art scale. The player, themself a smaller version of the larger body, can climb inside their own skull, walk along their own spine, and investigate their own organs. But this isn’t the culturally privileged and idolized bodies laid out in Grey’s Anatomy. This body is broken and repaired, disabled and healing, transgender, fat and black. This is a marginalized body. But so too is the small self, the avatar which navigates the space. There is no outsider here. There is only self exploration of body/landscape.

The title, No Body is an Island, is taken from John Donne’s 1624 poem 'No Man is an Island' which begins (updated from the Olde English): “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main” and ends saying “any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Each texture (on the square floor tiles and stacked umbrellas that make up the body) was drawn pixel by pixel in Animal Crossing’s in-game drawing app.

Anyone can visit the piece in Animal Crossings by using the dream code: DA-2449-0971-7638.

Prosthetic Memory

Prosthetic Memory is an ongoing experiment in self-augmentation combining handmade journals, daily videos, and a custom AI. With the journal laying flat on a desk a camera captures its pages. The AI compares this feed to its model, determines which page is showing, and projects an associated video memory on the desk nearby. Created to replace the artist's long term memory which was damaged by a childhood brain injury, Prosthetic Memory explores questions like:

-When memories are external, mediated, and public what is the difference between how they are experienced by their creator and an audience?

-Do our assumptions, fears, and uses for AI change when data and machine learning models are created by individuals and families at personal, instead of corporate, scale?

-Given our increasing exposure to algorithmic interventions, how do our identities and perceptions shift when we see ourselves and others through that lens?

The first iteration of Prosthetic Memory, captured in the documentation provided, created a bridge between the physical and virtual components of the memory. In upcoming iterations an age-malleable recreation (deep fake) of the artist will appear on a screen above the notebook, reading from its pages, and, using NLP and sentiment analysis, pointing the user to other pages and videos with similar events or feelings.

Version 1.0 was first exhibited at the Recoding CripTech show at SOMA arts in 2020.

The project was awarded a STARTS Prize 2020 Honorary Mention. 

While AI was a hot topic in the art and wider world as we slid into a new decade, it was often conceptualized as distant, strange and uncontrollable. Prosthetic Memory makes it extremely intimate. It is, to quote mathemusician Vi Hart "a chunk of myself I’ve externalized and personified as “other” in order to experiment with my perspective and my desires."

This project was first exhibited at the Recoding CripTech show at SOMA arts in 2020 and awarded a STARTS Prize 2020 Honorary Mention. 

While AI was a hot topic in the art and wider world as we slid into a new decade, it was often conceptualized as distant, strange and uncontrollable. Prosthetic Memory makes it extremely intimate. It is, to quote mathemusician Vi Hart "a chunk of myself I’ve externalized and personified as “other” in order to experiment with my perspective and my desires."

Masking Machine

Masking Machine is a wearable AR apparatus and performance which brings audience, artist, and algorithm face to face. It was inspired by a photography series of the same name.

Masking Machine, documented here performed at the YBCA Bay Area Now 8 opening.

Self Portrait in a Chair

Self Portrait in a Chair is a gif animation of a diffuse rotating cloud hovering above a line drawing of a chair. It was the culmination of a series of drawings featuring abstractions of bodies among various furniture.

Look Inside Place

Look Inside Place is a virtual world and unwinnable game. The viewer explores the world as an androgenous anatomical figure drawing. As you explore you discover a world map from a collage of children’s books scientific cut away elevations. The world at first seems innocuous but soo you discover that things are not quite right but as you explore black text begins to crowd the screen and smog your view.

Plain Fake Loading Bar

Plain Fake Loading Bar generates unique loading bars but nothing ever loads. The viewer simply waits and waits with no answers, satisfaction, or relief, an experience akin to the frustration of waiting but never receiving help from doctors when you have a complex disability. It was the first piece BlinkPopShift created in collaboration with Steve Sedlmayr.