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I've just completed the second version of the set for Tahni Holt's dance piece "Endless Ocean Endless Sky" or as I call it EOES. This is exactly the same as the first one with the exception of being a few feet longer. The next performance is coming up in April and there are plans to bring it to San Francisco next fall. I've been lucky to have two great spaces to build each of the inflatables. The central space at the Knowlton School of Architecture at OSU and the Nave ...

In one of my other roles as technical co-chair of the upcoming ACADIA 2008 conference, I've recently put together a conference website. Still lots more content to come, but this is a start. The conference title is Silicon + Skin: Biological Processes and Computation. We are interested in looking at the range of ways designers and researchers have extracted principles from biology to create new materials, forms, and processes. We have a great line up of keynote speakers (which will be released soon). I'm also really excited to be working ...

In a response to one of my New Year's resolutions to update this website more regularly, here are a few images of the some the projects I'm working on in my limited free time. This first project is a collaboration with Andre Caradec of SUMARCH and Neil Schwartz of Schwartz and Architecture for a staircase railing milled from 2" thick material. The project explores differential views as one moves up and down the stairs. One of the desires was to create a perforated surface that does not rely on a ...

It's been a long time coming, but I have finally found the time to update the site from flash-based to wordpress-driven. It may not be as "flashy" but wordpress is so much more convenient for day to day use and updating. Flash is interesting and pretty, but beyond that it isn't so useful. This site will allow me to update the site much more often as well as allow more feedback with the world. Let me know what you think. An archive of the older site can be found here. ...

A quick update on the life of the inflatable project for Tahni Holt’s dance performance (previously know as “Antarctica”). You can watch a video of the performance here. The performance went really well and I enjoyed checking out PNCA (the location of for the performance). Images above by Joel Thorsen

An exhibition at the F.U.E.L Collection in Philadelphia opened this weekend that includes 4 Matsys projects. The premise of the exhibition, curated by Marc Fornes (theverymany) and Skylar Tibbits (sjet), was to gather together work of artists, designers, and architects for whom the writing of software is central to the production of the work. The projects are shown in two representations: the traditional visual collection of renderings, photos, and drawings; as well as the actual code that was used to produce the work. The list of people involved is quite ...

The inflatable iceberg made it safely to Portland and is now being put through its paces with dance rehearsals for the upcoming show in October. Here are a few photos of it in Tahni's beautiful studio.

I finished the set design and construction of the large inflatable for the Antarctica Project. The structure is about 20'x40' when it is deflated and when inflated is closer to 15' in diameter and 35' long. It is composed of two layers of 4mil polyethylene that have each been creased to add structure and the desired effect of ice cracking. I'm driving to Portland today to deliver it to the choreographer. The performance should be sometime in the fall. Above: Cracked ice folds Above: This photo only shows the single layer ...

Another long overdue update: These are images from a quick project I did in February for a dance performance organized by Norah Zuniga Shaw. The table top serves as the projection screen for a video by Norah. The table is made from around 200 paper cells that progressively become more irregular from bottom to top. You can see my earlier, and much larger, c_wall project in the background. This is an early rendering when I thought white might be the way to go. Black seemed to hide the projector and computer at ...