TOMB OF MY YOUTHFUL HEART’S DESIRE
- 2022 - 9.5” W x 12.5” H x 2” D (FRAMED RELIQUARY) - VARIABLE, APPROX. 12’ W x 12’ L x 10’ H (INSTALLATION) -

Printed Circuit Board, Reclaimed Wood Frame, Silvergleam Solder, Magic: The Gathering Trading Card (Glacial Chasm), Personal Computer Subwoofers, Projection, 3.5mm Patch Cables, One Spot Power Supplies, Custom Electronics

In my youth I saw only beauty, until Glacial Chasm broke my heart.


“When I was 14 years old I was a semi-professional Magic: The Gathering player. It was the most dedicated and focused I’ve ever been on anything. I believed in the game with the kind of monomaniacal fervor that only youth makes possible. It was the final round of SCG Open Dallas, with thousands in prize money and a first place trophy on the line. I was playing the final game of the match, and I had my opponent on the ropes. I attacked with all my creatures, presenting lethal damage. But then, the judges stopped the game. In my haste to seal my victory, I had not sacrificed Glacial Chasm, a card which states players cannot attack. I received a technical rules violation for attacking with it in play. The penalty was game loss and disqualification from the tournament. An event which should have been the crowning achievement of my career was instead a devastating blow. I lost heart and my focus suffered. Mixed with the inevitable process of growing up, I began to view my passion as a dead end. I turned my back on Magic, putting this truest of all desires away with other childish things, until now.”

Tomb of My Youthful Heart’s Desire is an installation piece built around a series of custom electronic reliquary objects, each of which functions as a generative heartbeat audio synthesizer, with the card Glacial Chasm entombed in solder amid the circuitry. Heartbeat audio is synchronized with a projection of original 2009 press footage from the final tournament match, speeding up to a frantic pace and eventually breaking when the final game loss is delivered, creating a requiem for the loss of a passion that only youthful innocence could sustain.

BLIND CHOIR
- 2022 - 49” W x 25” H x 7.5” D -

Printed Circuit Board, Wooden Frame with High Voltage Wood Burning. A 16-piece choir of high voltage plasma speakers, singing generative harmonies that organically shift and modulate over time.

The blind choir hovers aloft, each voice a small spark of the divine. The singing swarm, a sound strange and deadly.


Blind Choir consists of 16 plasma speaker wasps, each of which generates a high voltage arc at audio rate to create harmonically pitched sound from the ionization of air particles. The wasps are controlled by a central hive element that runs a generative composition program to organically modulate harmony and spatial patterns over time in an infinitely evolving process. The choir frame makes use of a high voltage wood burning process wherein electricity finds the path of least resistance in the material to create organic capillary patterns, mimicing the signal flow outward from the hive.

DIPTYCH OF SAINT GEORGE AND SAINT DEMETRIOS
- 2022 - 19” W x 11” H x 2” D -

Printed Circuit Board, Reclaimed Wood Frame. A sample and hold control voltage generator.

Slayer of dragons and slayer of men, spill ruby blood on ashen ground.

BLIND LEGIONS
- 2021 - 34.5” W x 18” H x 2” D -

Printed Circuit Board, Reclaimed Wood Frame. A swarming behavior modeler, flanked by dual chargeable trigger event generators, controlling two bug zapper outputs.

The insects rush toward the point of frenzy, blind legions, caught in a momentum of their own making. Larvae twitch in waxen cells, bathed in a honey-colored light, while chitinous wings cut patterns in the pheromone laden air. Drawn ever forward, they fall into the roiling vortex, to die amid bolts of lighting and the smell of ozone.


Blind Legions uses the behavior of circuitry to convey an apocalyptic narrative: the story a catastrophic event brought about by civilization wide momentum and exponentially increasing rates of change. The central swarming behavior model charges two meters on each side panel via it’s activity, which in turn produce a rising control voltage, increasing the speed and activity of the swarm. As the meters charge the swarm builds to the point of frenzy, until the charging is complete, at which point two bug zappers trigger in sequence, an apocalyptic event that reduces the swarm to its pre-civilizational level.

GREAT WURM
- 2020 - 23.5” W x 13.5” H x 2” D

Printed Circuit Board, Reclaimed Wood Frame. A 10-stage clock divider, flanked by two clock-synced Shepard tone generators, one ascending, one descending.

The Great Wurm swallows its own tail, encircling the ray of creation, from the unified atom within to nothingness without. On either side sits a knave, crushed by the weight of the world and the cruel moon, observing an angel’s fall from grace.


Great Wurm is part of the modular icon series, an ongoing experiment in the use of the PCB (printed circuit board) as a medium for visual art. Pieces within the series serve a dual function, both as purely aesthetic objects and as fully functional modular synthesis equipment.

Great Wurm uses the Shepard tone (an audio illusionary technique used to create the impression of an infinitely ascending or descending pitch) as an illustrative means to analyze historical viewpoints on progress and the passage of time. It contrasts the secular post-enlightenment viewpoint of time as an ascent (towards greater technology, prosperity, and understanding), with the medieval viewpoint of time as a descent (away from the cultural heights of the classical world, the spiritual heights of the early church fathers, and the material heights of the Roman empire), both alongside a more impassive, wide angle viewpoint of time on a divine or cosmic scale.