SOUND MAPPING AND EMOTIONAL RESONANCE

How do we connect to a landscape through sound? How can sound be a creative medium for long-distance human connection? I asked 10 friends from around the world (e.g. Los Angeles, Brooklyn, London, Vancouver, Cologne, Raja Ampat Islands, and Copenhagen) to take part in a collaborative sound mapping activity by recording distinct sounds from places they found inspirational, and to supply an additional personal reflection (through voice).
       From these personal contributions, I then made a video to tell the full sonic journey taken by the group, working specifically with the devices of sound collage and video, in order to reveal any  unexpected relationships and juxtapositions between the responses.

Date: 2019
Client: Self
Class: Graduate Studio I (RISD)
Instructor: Paul Soulellis

︎Field Recording, Participatory Design, Sound Design

SPATIAL PERCUSSION THROUGH MOVEMENT

Spatial Percussion is an expressive musical composition tool which uses hand gesture to enable the real-time positioning of percussive sounds in spatial audio (ambisonics format). The project was born out of the desire to compose a spatially-located percussive beat through movement. All drum sounds were recorded manually. The project was programmed in Max/MSP.

Date: 2019
Client: Self
Class: Spatial Audio (RISD)
Collaborator: Arjun Shah
Instructor: Shawn Greenlee, PhD

︎Data Science, Sound design

SCULPTURAL AUDIO

Visualizing music through photography and paper folding. The images shown here were created using a wet paper folding technique, set overnight to dry in abstract forms, and then arranged and photographed.
        The song depicted is my own, called “It’s a Secret.” The foundation of the song revolves around a kalimba pattern that I played, manipulated, and layered with washed out, rising synth passages. The smooth, sloping forms of the paper draw attention to the music’s high dynamic range. The translucent parts of the image are evocative of the tracks lush, layered percussion.

Date: 2019
Client: Self
Class: Graduate Form II
Instructor: Tom Wedell         

︎Photography

OPEN ARTICULATIONS (RISD MFA THESIS) 

Open Articulations proposes new strategies for mapping, archiving, and understanding territories through a practice focused on mindful presence, play, and physical immersion. In making participatory archives of our experiences, it opens a collective space for multiple voices to be heard, allowing different points of view of a territory, and offering new ways of understanding a place and each other.
        The thesis introduces how these participatory design approaches could make environmental systems (such as food systems) more transparent and equitable by encouraging an unsmoothing and juxtaposing of human experiences.

Date: 2021
Class: Graduate Thesis II (RISD)
Primary Advisor: Paul Soulellis
Secondary Advisor: Aki Nurosi

Format: Book (Hardcover)
Pages: 196
Size: 8.46″ by 11.6″

︎Participatory Design, Social Cohesion, Innovation Design, Systems Thinking



︎︎︎Digital Version (PDF)

NATURE’S EGG

Nature’s Egg is my short-film response to the class prompt: “How do you make the perfect hardboiled egg?”

Date: 2019
Client: Self
Class: Design Studio (RISD)
Instructor: Tom Wedell, MFA
Sound: Olafur Arnalds — unfold 

︎Direction, Videography, Sound editing