I am a lapsed machine learning engineer turned artist. While pursuing a career in music information retrieval in the early-2010s, I developed an interest in generative and interactive art while moonlighting with creative coding toolkits like Processing and openFrameworks. Inspired by deep learning, I began combining these two interests through an art practice that I shared online. I started giving workshops on creative AI in 2015, helping to popularize GANs, neural style transfer, and other "generative AI" techniques.
More recently, I've been focused on developing AI tools for creatives, creating autonomous agents that make art, and building a physical community for people to learn about AI, art, and technology in a holistic and affordable way.
As a kid, my first true love was simulation games like SimEarth. In high school, I started programming and intensely studying emergence, dynamical systems, genetic algorithms, and artificial life. In college I studied applied mathematics, and discovered machine learning through an interest in recommender systems, publishing one paper on the topic under Cynthia Rudin. I shifted to music information retrieval and was an assistant researcher to Juan Pablo Bello at NYU until 2013.
During this time, I gravitated towards more artistic and interactive applications of machine learning, influenced by projects like Wekinator, PLOrk, and CataRT. I also began making generative art using creative coding toolkits like Processing and openFrameworks. Inspired by Deepdream, I combined my generative art and machine learning practices and began to study how to generate images and video using neural networks.
Sometimes I build installations for people to experience and interact with AI. Some notable places I've exhibited include Ars Electronica (Linz), Sonar Festival (Barcelona), Art Center Nabi (Seoul), Futurium (Berlin), Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Toronto International Film Festival, Copernicus Science Centre (Warsaw), QUT Art Museum (Brisbane), Eyebeam (Brooklyn), and Zorlu Center (Istanbul).
Between 2015 and 2021, I maintained ml4a, a collection of now-outdated tutorials and code for applying machine learning towards art and creativity, along with a book explaining how neural networks work, and various lectures.
During this time, I developed a workshop practice on the subject, giving over 100 independently-organized workshops in countries all over the world. I wrote about that experience here. A no-longer maintained log of my workshops can be found here. I give fewer workshops now, but if you'd like to organize something, get in touch.
I also taught 6 semesters at NYU, and recorded many of my classes.