Research

My research work began shortly after I earned my master’s degree in visual studies at MIT. I was invited to join MIT’s Laboratory for Advanced Technology in the Humanities as an interactive producer.

Research at MIT

I directed three interactive documentaries for LATH on the languages and cultures of France, Japan, and the United States. Shot on location, these projects combined cinéma vérité and interactivity to allow viewers to explore a neighborhood in each country. The documentary vignettes exposed audiences to the real language and culture of each neighborhood, while the interactivity and textual overlays made it possible for students to dig deeper into the story. Two of the interactive documentaries, Dans un quartier de Paris and Star Festival, won major awards and were published on CD-ROM and broadband.

Research at Botticelli Interactive

The work we were doing at LATH was eventually spun off into a new media company called Botticelli Interactive, which I co-founded with Shigeru Miyagawa and Ellen Sebring. In addition to turning Star Festival into an early interactive television series for broadband, we developed the first interactive kiosk to combine full-screen video with touchscreen interactivity on a major work of art. Developed for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Titian Kiosk won major awards and gave visitors a new way to explore Titian’s Rape of Europa.

Research at Peace River Films

After seeing my work on Dans un quartier de Paris, John Borden of Peace River Films, one of the pioneers who developed movie mapping at MIT’s Media Lab, invited me to work on a variety of projects underway there. These included Interactive NOVA: Animal Pathfinders — the first interactive videodisc based on a NOVA program. It was a co-production of Peace River Films, WGBH, and Apple. In addition to developing a 60-seat interactive theater for the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey, I also participated in an experimental shoot sponsored by Apple’s Multimedia Lab in Monterey Bay, California. Highlights included a video triptych of a rodeo.

I continue to take advantage of new technologies and workflows, and attend Apple’s Creative Summit each year in Cupertino.