Gallery Exhibitions + Creative Works

ERNEST // An Emotionally Aware AI

ERNEST is from an era prior to ubiquitous data collection, so it needs you to help train the Happiness Model™ so it can learn what content makes people happiest.

ERNEST uses computer vision to detect your face, and then reacts to you based on your facial expressions. He’s learning to understand emotions and how various pieces of content can affect your emotional expressions. But while we’re training a Happiness Model™ with ERNEST, how else might this technology be applied despite the good intentions of its creators?

Through ERNEST we hope to open a dialogue around the ethics of gathering the data used to train and validate models, the places bias can creep into these models, the gap between intent and real-world applications of these models, and the tensions around augmenting or automating decision making using imperfect models.

ERNEST served as the lobby installation at IDEO San Francisco during October & November 2018, and is now a semi-permanent part of our office as of July 2019.

ERNEST was exhibited at the San Francisco Art Institute Fort Mason Gallery for CODAME Intersections event on November, 2018, as part of the 50th anniversary convening of Leonardo / The International Society of Arts, Sciences and Technology.

On August 22, 2019 ERNEST was exhibited at The Exploratorium After Dark: Artificially Intelligent in San Francisco, CA.

In November/December 2019 ERNEST was shown at the Tabačka Kulturfabrik + Kasárne Kulturpark in Košice, Slovakia as part of the Art+Tech Days festival.

This project was primarily developed by myself + Matt Visco, with a bunch of support from IDEO.

Read more about ERNEST on the IDEO Design Blog

• No Beards Allowed: Exploring Bias in Facial Recognition AI
• 7 Experiments That Push the Edges of AI and Design

SONDER @ The Laundry, SF

We encounter thousands of souls each day in passing. We may not notice them or acknowledge them, but each of them has a story. A life just as complex and full as our own. What if we could step out of ourselves and increase our awareness of the multitudes around us?

SONDER was a group immersive+interactive exhibition at The Laundry in San Francisco’s Mission District that aimed to create such a space. It was created by the Anywhere Collective, and I was fortunate enough to contribute. The event debuted to a packed house, with tickets selling out over a week ahead of the show.

We all seek moments that feel a little less lonely. To know that we aren’t crazy; that there are others like us out there, hoping to make time stop for just a second. It is these moments that create the fragile filaments that weave us together, as we reach across dark chasms for flickers on the other side. It is you, shiny people, that make this, this.

I worked on building out a room-scale rear-projection tunnel, utilizing three projectors showcasing visuals processed in real-time using WebGL, all synced to an immersive multi-speaker surround soundtrack (shown at 0:06, 0:33 and 0:40 in the video above). I was also able to exhibit the Peeephole which I had build previously.

The Peephole

The PEEEPHOLE debuted at the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts Creative Code Showcase on March 30, 2016 in San Francisco, CA.

The peephole is a device that lets us see without being seen. Much like the internet. Yet even when our glances are innocent it’s something we’d rather keep private.

By publicizing the viewer’s private act of viewing, he will be forced to confront his own sense of privacy, both online and off, as well as the simultaneous thrill and shame of voyeurism.

Built using:

• Raspberry Pi
• Custom built GPIO “Pi Hat”
• Python codebase
• Twitter API
• Reclaimed Victorian medicine cabinet + hardware

Loud Tate: Code, Tate Britain, London, UK

Some of my glitch works were shown at the Tate Britain, London during the Loud Tate: Code event on November 8, 2014.

I glitched one of the Tate’s classic works, Peter Monamy – Ships in Distress in a Storm (1720-30), but rather than simply tear it to pieces I wanted the original title and feeling of the work to remain relevant. So many glitch works destroy the source material, however I aimed to take more of a remixing approach.

Surreal Salon, Baton Rouge Gallery of Contemporary Arts, LA

iMac Photo Booth #Selfie Emailed to 1994 was selected to show in the Surreal Salon 7 @ the Baton Rogue Gallery Center of Contemporary Art – a monthlong show taking place in January 2015. A sheer-gloss print on a 12×12 aluminum panel makes this a rare occasion where a digital-centric work looks more interesting in real life!

Check out the write up of the show featuring my work in The Advocate.

SF Open, 111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco

I showcased four pieces at a group show @ 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco in 2015. All of these pieces used algorithmic digital manipulation techniques.

• iMac Photo Booth #Selfie Emailed to 1994 (ASCII/ANSI technique)
• So Close Self Portrait 00 (Google Deepdream Neural Net)
• So Close Self Portrait 01 (Pixelated / Vecortized)
• Steeples (Pixel-shifted glitch)

The opening night on Friday August 21, 2015 attracted quite a crowd!