Diagram showing the levels of subconscious thought that can be activated through creative efforts.

A 5-year stay in Geneva, Switzerland transformed my life and allowed me to experience another culture. I engaged in creativity classes with an amazing artist at the “Here and Now” studio. We did visual exercises that were designed to move you off of your dominant trait, and encourage circulation to the opposite pole. This movement and vibration is where you are exposed to new ideas.

My artistic education has taught me how the movement between conscious and subconscious thought can enrich the creative process. Great art resonates with many people because it connects with their similar experiences.

d’apres Raphael (Doña Isabel de Requesens y Enríquez de Cardona-Anglesola) (12×26″, acrylic on canvas)

“Jet d’Eau” Lake Geneva (18×24″, acrylic on board)

PHASE – a project to develop educational and entertaining metaphors for sound/visual/haptic interaction. The work relied heavily on signal processing in MAX/MSP. The culmination of this project was an installation at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

I was involved first as an intern to aid in the prototyping and later as a contractor to produce a documentary video of the installation.

The project consisted of two phases of equal importance. 1) To better understand the relationship between visual, sound, and haptic feedback. Several metaphors were developed to illustrate the richness of experience when these three senses are stimulated simultaneously. 2) The creation and installation of a musical composition game that would appeal to the general public. The ability to reach out and touch the physical terrain and to create musical feedback was of prime importance in this development. Technically, the development was done using a powerful music synthesis program (MAX/MSP) and a CG visual program (Virtools). The final installation required four dedicated computers to generate the real-time interactive sound, visual, force-feedback, and to spatialise the sound.

PHASE was collaboration between four French organizations:

• IRCAM – Institute for music/acoustic research
• CEAlist – software-intensive technologies
• Haption – force-feel systems
• ONDIM – 3-D graphics

This video excerpt is part of a 1-hour video that I produced for PHASE. The images and graphics in for the interactive game were made by the project designer.

PHASE Project site: PHASE

This was a series of paintings where there was no traditional support (no canvas or board). I accomplished this through what I call “pours”. This consists of pouring the paint onto a flat surface and then peeling off the paint when it has dried. The resulting piece can be viewed from both the front and back side, the latter picking up the texture of the surface it was on. Some of these pieces consisted of mixing paint into water and then freezing the “painting”. Some of these results were remarkable as the ice crystals combined with the pigment in unexpected ways. As with the pours, these pieces could be lifted out of their mold and viewed from all sides. The destruction of the ice pieces, either by breaking them or by melting them resulted in additional works.

Ethereal art – light art. I also experiemented with reflected light to create temporary pieces of art. These are enjoyable to do and can really only be shared through photo or video.

The artist’s mission is to create a unique voice that resonates with the specific experience of many.

live link: Flickr Flattened Gallery