Creative Technology Field Notes

Humor, Failure, and the Art of Subversion with Jonah Brucker-Cohen

OVERVIEW Jonah Brucker-Cohen [https://coin-operated.com/] has spent over two decades turning familiar systems into subversive art. His method: take something everyone uses (a mailing list, a crosswalk button, a login screen) and break it in a way that makes you laugh, then think. Jonah walks through several recent projects that use public data to expose invisible urban realities, such as a crosswalk timer that delays your crossing based on the street’s accident history, a weather system that shows how temperature maps to neighborhood wealth, and a GPS app that routes you through the most dangerous parts of a city. Each one takes data we already have and reframes it as something you physically experience. We discuss the origin story of the Scrapyard Challenge [https://scrapyardchallenge.com/], a workshop series Jonah co-founded with Katherine Moriwaki [https://kakirine.com/] in Dublin in 2003. Jonah and Katherine taught non-engineers how to build sound controllers and interfaces out of junk. Their key finding: people with zero electronics experience took the biggest risks and made the most interesting things. The conversation closes with Jonah’s philosophy on what makes interactive art work: it should be immediately understandable, without a long artist statement required. He points to Blake Fall-Conroy’s Minimum Wage Machine [https://www.blakefallconroy.com/18.html] as a model for that clarity: crank it for an hour and it dispenses exactly minimum wage in pennies. ---------------------------------------- BIO Jonah Brucker-Cohen is an artist, researcher, and Associate Professor of Digital Media and Networked Culture at Lehman College (CUNY). His interactive works have been exhibited at the Whitney Museum, Ars Electronica, Tate Modern, MoMA, and Transmediale, among others. He was recently interviewed about projects that address artificial intelligence on the AI Futures for Art and Design [https://aifutures.substack.com/p/episode-3-when-machines-forget-a] podcast. ---------------------------------------- CHAPTER MARKERS * [00:00:00] — Introduction and overview of Jonah’s work * [00:01:03] — How frustration with static art led to combining technology and art practice * [00:03:21] — The appeal of failure modes and subverting systems * [00:04:24] — Infinite Factor Authentication: spoofing security culture * [00:06:15] — Crossing Algorithm: a crosswalk that knows its street’s history * [00:07:53] — Unequal Weather: mapping temperature to socioeconomic reality * [00:09:11] — Killer Route: a GPS app that routes through danger * [00:10:38] — Why humor works as an entry point for critical art * [00:11:37] — Scrapyard Challenge: building with junk * [00:16:00] — Alerting Infrastructure: the jackhammer that museums invite to destroy them * [00:18:02] — Average Citizen: a chair that counts down public waiting times * [00:20:00] — Favorite projects: Bump List, feedback loops, and cybernetics * [00:22:06] — Mike subverts his own podcast tools * [00:23:01] — Advice for artists who want to critically examine technology ---------------------------------------- RESOURCES DISCUSSED * Neural [https://neural.it/] — art and technology publication * Rhizome [https://rhizome.org/] — digital art and culture * Creative Applications [https://www.creativeapplications.net/] — creative technology projects ---------------------------------------- CONTACT * coin-operated.com [https://coin-operated.com/]

Light, Code, and Improvisation with Manuel Palenque

Manuel Palenque [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mpalenque/] shares how he got his start building projection mapping systems when the technology was brand new, what it’s like to design content for dome projections, and why the technical constraints of light and contrast matter more than most people realize. He talks about how AI tools like GitHub Copilot have expanded his ability to work across platforms like Unity, Unreal Engine, and web-based 3D, and explains his philosophy of using AI to build tools rather than generate results. Manuel also discusses his work with the DATARAIZ [https://dataraiz.io] lab, where he and his collaborators are rebuilding the spirit of hacker spaces and open-source communities to bridge art and engineering. The episode closes with the story of one of his favorite projects: a light installation on a powerline tower that has been standing and evolving for over 14 years. TOPICS COVERED * Getting started with creative technology: Learning vvvv [https://vvvv.org], building custom systems for audiovisual performances, and riding the early wave of projection mapping * AI as a tool-builder, not a result-generator: Using GitHub Copilot and VS Code to unlock platforms like Unity, Unreal Engine, and THREE.js [https://threejs.org] for web-based VR and AR, and building tools rather than just generating images and video * Live performance and the thrill of pressing the button: Why Manuel gravitates toward live events where the show depends on systems he built, and the balance between engineering and improvisation * Dome projections: The technical challenges of contrast and brightness, designing for exploratory vs. fixed-point-of-view experiences, and creating a real-time collective interactive dome installation where audience members controlled visuals via QR codes on their phones * The Buzludzha Monument [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzludzha]: How an abandoned brutalist communist-era dome building in Bulgaria inspired Manuel’s artistic work * Projection mapping a building: Logistics of light contamination, why abstract content and forced perspective work better than narrative characters, and why projector power is the biggest constraint * Festival vs. public audiences: How attention span, client expectations, and narrative length shift depending on the setting * Working with tech companies: Why even tech-savvy clients are still surprised by creative technology: “people haven’t seen it all” * DATARAIZ lab: A Buenos Aires initiative rebuilding the hacker space spirit, bridging artists and engineers, and running workshops on interactive technology and dance * Teaching immersive technology to dancers: Helping non-technical creators understand what’s possible with motion tracking, projection, and sensors * The case for “less” in immersive tech: Using immersive experiences to get people off their phones and into shared, real-life interactions * Tecnópolis powerline tower: The Coloso at Tecnópolis [https://www.tecnopolis.org.ar] project, built on a power line tower that has been standing for 14+ years GUEST BIO Manuel Palenque [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mpalenque/] is a creative technologist and visual artist with over 15 years of experience specializing in immersive audiovisual experiences and interactive installations around the world. He has taught at universities and cultural institutions worldwide, and has led projects in places like Tokyo, Hong Kong, Berlin, and the United States.

Double Take Moments: Designing for Surprise with Josh Corn

Josh Corn [https://doubletake.design/] traces his path from architecture and theater consulting into experience design, and how that background shapes the way he builds physical, interactive systems. He explains why he tends to describe himself as an “experience designer,” and how he thinks about technology as a means to shape behavior, attention, and feeling rather than as a deliverable by itself. We focus on the practical side of building real-world installations: working early with architects, defining spatial and operational requirements (access, storage, serviceability), and coordinating with contractors and outside vendors when fabrication needs to happen at scale. Josh uses The Sloomoo Institute as an example of how interactive environments get translated into mechanisms, workflows, and maintenance plans-and why those constraints have to be treated as first-class design inputs. Josh also talks about teaching physical making (3D printing, laser cutting, machining, casting) and what he looks for when students prototype. He describes where AI tools and LLMs help (ideation, quick visualization) and where they mislead (mechanical plausibility, “renderings” that imply mechanisms that can’t work). The conversation closes by connecting his design practice to stage magic and to research on “wonder”, including how “double take” moments can be designed intentionally. ---------------------------------------- BIO Josh Corn is an experience designer and creative technologist with a background in architecture, theater design/consulting, industrial design, and electrical engineering. He runs Double Take Labs [https://doubletake.design/], where he develops physical, interactive installations, often in collaboration with architects, contractors, and specialized vendors. He also teaches hands-on making and prototyping, and draws on stage-magic principles to shape audience perception and attention. ---------------------------------------- BOOKS * Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear [https://jimsteinmeyer.com/product/hiding-the-elephant/] * Wonder, the Rainbow, and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences [https://median.newmediacaucus.org/caa-conference-edition-2015-new-york/introduction-technologies-of-wonder-affective-responses-in-a-posthuman-world/] ---------------------------------------- CONTACT * Website [https://doubletake.design/] * Email [josh@doubletake.design]

Human Scale: An Architect’s Path to VR with Aishwarya Balagopal

Aishwarya Balagopal traces her path from architecture into creative technology, starting with an early fascination for how people move through (and feel inside) spaces. After growing up in Mumbai and later studying façade design at the University of Southern California, she talks about how “human factors” in the built environment—scale, light, material, and perception—became the foundation for how she now thinks about immersive experiences. From there, the conversation follows her pivot into UX and then XR/VR during the COVID era, when she wanted a creative outlet that still aligned with her strengths as a spatial thinker. She breaks down why architecture skills can translate well to immersive design: comfort with 3D thinking, attention to proportion and sightlines, and a habit of designing for real-world constraints. She also shares lessons from building XR work for cultural and museum contexts, where storytelling, accessibility, and “presence” matter as much as polish. The second half goes deep on VR as a practical learning medium. Aishwarya discusses her work with Virtual Apprentice on workforce training—especially scenarios where embodied practice and repetition matter (e.g., interpersonal dynamics and procedural training). She also describes a research-driven project focused on helping students with autism learn engineering concepts, and how that thread led her toward building her own VR learning tool aimed at supporting students with learning challenges. ---------------------------------------- BIO Aishwarya Balagopal is the founder of Edlyxr [https://www.linkedin.com/company/edlyxr/] and a VR product designer and creative technologist with a background in architecture and spatial design. Her work spans immersive learning and training experiences, including VR workforce education and museum-focused XR projects, and she brings an architect’s attention to human perception, scale, and environment into the design of 3D interfaces. ---------------------------------------- LINKS * Edlyxr [https://www.linkedin.com/company/edlyxr/] * Virtual Apprentice [https://www.virtualapprentice.net/] * The Poe Museum [https://poemuseum.org/] * Museum of Science Fiction [https://www.museumofsciencefiction.org/] CONTACT * LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/aishwarya-balagopal-ash-a1b95b95/]

Stage Crew Engineering with Pete Doherty

Pete Doherty [https://peterdohertys.website/] unpacks the behind-the-scenes work that enables experiential projects to run. Pete frames creative technology as experience-making: building the kind of systems that power museum installs, gallery pieces, location-based entertainment, and other tech-enabled environments where the audience is meant to feel something. From there, Pete shares a high-stakes red-carpet build with Fake Love: a wall of Windows hybrid devices used to showcase fan-submitted “light side / dark side” performances at the debut of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The conversation highlights what success looks like in these moments: coordinated playback across a fleet of devices, networking reliability under pressure, and the practical reality that creative ambition often depends on careful operational engineering. Pete then describes an ambitious multi-vendor integration: the Meta Store (circa 2020), built as a physical showcase for metaverse product demos at Meta’s Burlingame campus. We revisit the “stage crew engineering” theme: DevOps for reproducibility and recovery and using infrastructure-as-code to rebuild quickly. The episode closes with a peek into Pete’s prototyping preferences (Elm and its fork Gren) and candid notes on where AI coding tools help, and where niche stacks still stump them. ---------------------------------------- LINKS * Pete’s website [https://peterdohertys.website/] and case studies [https://peterdohertys.website/case-studies.html], including the red carpet wall * Creative Tech Tips and Tricks [https://peterdohertys.website/blog-posts/creative-tech-tips.html] * Pete’s LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/pdoherty926/] * Terraform [https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/intro] and Terragrunt [https://terragrunt.gruntwork.io/] * Elm [https://elm-lang.org/] and Gren [https://gren-lang.org/]