hello and thank you for visiting my site! :) on this page i explain some of the background of myself and my artistic practice. my initial background in life (middle school through college) is in computer science. i worked with CodeDay (fka StudentRND) to help facilitate overnight coding education events called "hackathons" throughout high school, among other events through the ChiCode organization that i helped advise. i initially specialized in programming language design, writing a shell language called ergonomica which evolved into a variant of lisp for command-line use. i presented this at pycon in 2017 and talked on podcast.__init__ about it.
in college, i studied reservoir computing in the Biologically Inspired Neuro-Dynamical Systems (BINDS) Lab at UMass Amherst. i designed hardware using arduino-compatible boards to perform signal processing experiments in exotic computing materials (e.g., PZT crystals). i co-authored Machine Learning with Correlated Quantum Matter: An Example Using Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) which summarizes our research in performing machine learning using reservoir computing on a physical computational substrate.
the approach i took in studying chaos theory for the purposes of my research in reservoir computing has deeply inspired my artistic practice. the title of my final exhibition at hampshire college was "a chaos manifesto", a room of recycled audio technology linked together in a decentralized web of cables serving as a decentralized system feeding back on itself, evolving over time as it picks up sound from visitors or dials are changed, and as electromagnetic feedback in the surroundings subtly prompts the projectors linked by fragile RCA splitters to reject the video signal fed to them through a boombox and across the room. i juxtaposed this chaotic system with a bed on the floor, and a fridge overflowing with soylent and medicine bottles -- since this exhibit was meant to symbolize my room. as an autistic person, my fascination with technology is deeply tied to my identity, which draws me to imagery exemplefied in donna haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto (pdf, audiobook).