Featured projects






Personal Projects (2010–2012)
Peek in Pi, 14 March 2012
Searching for numbers in the digits of π (mobile app, online site, interactive installation)
The Fortune 500, September 2011
The rise and fall of companies and their subjective editorial rankings.
Frankenfont, started 2005, finished in 2011
A reconstruction of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein using parts of incomplete fonts found in PDFs from the internet.
Personal & Commissioned (2004–2009)
An interactive installation for watching the evolution of Darwin's On the Origin of Species.
Specious, 2008–2009
The initial sketch that led to the traces project; an interactive comparison of six books and a million words.
All Streets, 24 April 2008
A map of cities and mountains, compiled from 26 million segments of road.
Emrun, December 2007
Sketches for an illustration based on the publicly available Enron email data set.
Sequences of human DNA aligned with about a dozen other mammals, created as an illustration for Seed Magazine.
First Civil War War, December 2006
Masthead image created for William Safire's On Language column in the New York Times Magazine.
Deprocess, 13 October 2006
An update to disarticulate, created for the 2006 Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial to be shown alongside Processing.
High Priority, 2 April 2006
Illustration for New York Magazine's “High Priority” feature in April, 2006.
Nature HapMap Cover, October 2005
Cover for the journal Nature, announcing the completion of the first phase of the HapMap project.
Humans vs. Chimps, October 2005
An illustration of how the gene FOXP2, believed to be connected to language, differs in humans versus chimps.
Distellamap, August 2005
A look at how code and graphics comingle in Atari 2600 game cartridges.
What baseball teams are spending their money well, and how does it change over the course of the season?
Disarticulate, December 2004
Uses a similar method to dismap to interpret Casey Reas' articulate piece. Created as a large format print commission.
Ph.D. Projects (2000–2004)
Dismap, November 2003
Poster of the entire code from a Nintendo cartridge, linked together to show how it operates
Mario Soup, July 2003
Nintendo game cartridges reveal a beautiful soup of the thousands of elements that make up the game screen.
Revisionist, July 2003
The evolution of code history over dozens of revisions, seen simultaneously.
Depiction of the civilian casualty count in the Iraq War
Deconstructulator, March 2003
A deconstructed Nintendo emulator that shows how sprites and sprite memory are handled while a game is being played
Large format (9 x 18 feet) print of all the known and predicted genes in the human genome
Chromosome 21, January 2003
Installation depicting thirteen million letters (one quarter) of human chromosome 21, colored by their use
People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both
Genome Valence, March 2002
A later adaptation of the Valence project that visualizes biological data, and was created for the 2002 Whitney Biennial.
Strippy, March 2002
A three dimensional genome browser seen in Ang Lee's Hulk.
Shop Activity, October 2001
Large-scale (72 x 24 inches) print using machine shop security camera data to reveal usage patterns
Bagel, June 2001
Explanation of the rendering engine that eventually became the graphics portion of the Processing API.
Chromosome 14, May 2001
Poster depicting all the genes of chromosome 14 in the human genome
Atmosphere, 23 April 2001
Video documentation of the atmosphere project
Chromosome 22, April 2001
The A, C, G, and T letters of human chromosome 22 shown in a three pixel font
A redesign of traditional diagrams of the genetic code to clarify and highlight patterns in the data. Includes an interactive version that depicts how the code works.
The biologist's calculator: a genome browser that runs on a handheld device.
Combination of several different representations of haplotype data into a single interactive tool.
Implementation of the CAST algorithm to cluster microarray data, developed for a class project
N-Dimensional Goodness, December 2000
Sketch working out typography in n-dimensional space, created while developing the Atmosphere project for a MoMA exhibition
Print Studies, October 2000
A series of visual studies; large format print pieces looking at repetition, form, and structure of data.
Masters Projects (1998–2000)
Tendril, November 2000
A web browser that constructs typographic sculptures from the text content of web pages
Colloquium Posters, December 1999
Series of posters designed for the 1999-2000 Colloquium Series at the MIT Media Lab
Simulation of mixing two immiscible fluids, such as oil and water.
Valence, March 1999
Valence is a set of software sketches about building representations that explore the structures and relationships inside very large sets of information.
Anemone, 1999
Using organic information design to visualize the changing structure of a web site, juxtaposed with usage information.
Zipdecode, 1999
I was curious about how the numbering works for postal codes in the states.
Fugpaint, December 1998
An antagonistic painting tool.
Color Spinner, December 1998
Assignment for Numeric Photography course.
Natural/Unnatural, November 1998
Assignment for Numeric Photography course depicting the Fall colors at the Media Lab.
Directional Paint, October 1998
Assignment for Numeric Photography course.
Assignment for Numeric Photography course.
Video Pieces, September 1998
Several video experiments with video input from Fall of 1998.
Undergrad Projects (1993–1997)
An Alphabet Book, December 1995
A collection of history, ideas, and rambling about typography from Junior year of undergrad design school.
Paper Airplane, November 1993
Instructions on how to make a paper airplane, from freshman year studio during undergrad.