This interactive “Soundscapes” project was programmed in C++ on the Arduino Uno, and was (to my great excitement) installed at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago during a “Tuesday Evening” event.

Our soundscapes were a series of visually responsive processing scripts that collected live audio feeds from arduino sensors planted around the city, and used the resulting audio to generate an interactive experience. Each live audio feed location was interpreted, and then generated pulsating circles of light depending on length and loudness of the collected sounds. These were mapped onto a hand painted representation of the land mass around us (Chicago and the surrounding suburbs)

Fun fact - the area right outside my apartment, where I planted my arduino microphone, was the loudest. Out of everywhere we mapped in the entire city…. lol.

This show was curated by Eric Leonardson, in collaboration with Lindsey French.

This tiling system was inspired by the cellular structure of cork. As certain species of cork have five sided cells, the tiling system was designed to encapsulate that organic form and is very versatile in its pentagonal nature.

I generated this design with parametric modeling in Grasshopper and Rhino; Rhino is a 3D modeling program, and Grasshopper is a node based parameters plugin. I experimented with various constraints (largely voronoi based) to generate a 3D form that felt close to the natural expression of cork. Once I found params that I was happy with, and generated the final form seen here, I also added a boundary to the edges of the “cell fabric” so that the tiling system could become more modular.

Biomimetics, as I think of it, is rooted in the belief that the natural world around us is the purest place to look for solutions to the newer human-made issues we have created. If made with the correct materials, the goal for this project would be to create a sound-reducing surface; cork has some incredible abilities to trap sound waves, believe it or not. I could see a form similar to this being produced from appropriate materials, and applied to ceilings or walls in noisy buildings, both to harness noise reduction and the beauty of science around us.

Now, if only I had the lab equipment to force cork cells to grow into this shape - that would really be something! ;)

The tiles can be arranged endlessly, to either cover a vast wall in perfect pattern or deviate from uniformity and grow into an organic form.

The design for these ceramic Hexapiece tiles was inspired by the microscopic formations of Kaolinite (clay). The form is derived from singular kaolinite particles, which in whole are hexagonal, though the particles rarely maintain perfect shape for long. Hence the missing chunk of the hexagon (in liu named Hexapiece) which like kaolinite creates an endlessly versatile particle - a wide variety of either conforming or non-conforming patterns.

In short, this self-referential piece is both a functional tile object and an ode to clay.

Production Process :

Ideation and Cellular Research ---->

Hand Sketching ---->

Rhinocerous Modeling ---->

CNC Prototyping --->

Plaster Pour and Form Refinement ---->

Plaster Slip Cast Mold Creation ---->

Slip cast ceramic molding and clay press molding ---->

Kiln Firing ----->

Final Form 

In application, these objects would make a perfect water-permeable outdoor ground cover. Water permeability is an increasing environmental issue - covering land with non-permeable concrete and asphalt leads to large volumes of toxic runoff shuttling towards the natural ecosystems in rivers and lakes where it shouldn’t be, and away from the land where it should have originally hydrated the soil and plants could help break down the toxins.

I built arduino sensor systems and collected data to interpret and create a "Balloon Mapping Chicago" exhibition alongside Lindsey French's Sensing the Landscape course.

By attaching cameras and arduino sensors for carbon dioxide to weather balloons, we captured images and data about air quality in the area. The project culminated into an installation at SAIC that showed the statistics and resulting images.

This group collaboration, lead by Lindsey French, centered on data retrieval and logging environmental stasis of the South Shore Chicago area before its construction into the up-and-coming Chicago Lakeside Development.

Biomorphism and biomimicry are elements that I love to explore from both a designer’s perspective and an artist’s perspective. These adobe vectors are rooted in biomimicry; while they are a simple exercise in visual design, their inspiration come from cellular structures. In the order they are featured :

1 - A triad of cork cells

2 - A single component from the radula of a mollusk (anatomical mollusk feature)

3 - A single platelet of fruit fly exoskeleton

Each separate cellular structure was inspired by SEM imaging technology. I drew and adjusted these vectors in adobe illustrator.