The Luminous Arts Podcast
Robb Pope
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The Luminous Podcast is a discussion series featuring artists, designers, and engineers active in the new media art scenes. Join the host Robb Pope, founder of Digital Ambiance and accomplished light artist, on a journey exploring the landscape of modern visual arts. The guests range from VJ’s to Sculptural Artists, Lighting techs, VR Designers and everyone in between. The discussions featured on the podcast are an honest, in-depth look at the lives and challenges facing today's most accomplished and respected voices in the new media, immersive, and visual arts scenes.
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May 17, 2022
David Glicksman, Luminous Podcast Episode 026
Hey guys, welcome back to the Luminous Arts! I spend the next hour and a half talking to a good friend of mine, David Glicksman. He’s the Director of Creative Technology at Gensler’s DxD department in LA. They’re doing some really next-level installations in some of the world's most impressive architectural projects. David’s an incredibly creative guy and he’s been part of the scene from the beginning. He started with VFX and motion graphics and moved into the digital placemaking industry a few years ago when he took the helm at DxD. Our conversation is great and we get into the weeds about what it means to be truly creative and an artist in this industry. I loved this conversation and I bet you will too!
Links & Social Media
Vimeo
Instagram
IMDB
LinkedIn
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Apr 21, 2022
Nathan Lachenmyer, Luminous Podcast Episode 025
In this episode, I sit down with my friend Nathan Lachenmyer to talk about his work as a creative technologist. He started his career at MIT, in my hometown of Boston, which is actually how I met Nathan in the first place. Nathan is a super talented creator and he’s worked on some iconic installations at the Dana Farber Institute and the Tate Modern. His work with kinetic sculptures early on informed some of his more recent work incorporating machine learning with robotic free-floating artificial life forms at the Tate. Pretty wild stuff!
It’s very cool to talk with Nathan about how his career has progressed since finishing school. Our conversation was so natural and easy, we both know so many of the same people. It’s an interesting dive into some unique parts of the New Media Arts Scene and I think that you’re going to love listening to us jam!
Links & Social Media
Websites:
https://sitara.systems/
Instagram:
@sitara.systems
Twitter:
@morphogencc
@SitaraSystems
LinkedIn:
LinkedIn Featured Projects
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Mar 2, 2022
Christopher Bauder, Luminous Podcast Episode 024
Christopher Bauder, the founder of White Void, was one of the people that I had in mind when I started the Luminous Arts podcast. I was in Berlin for the Touch Designer Summit when I first saw his work. It was a performance called Skalar and it was being shown in an old abandoned transit station. It was just crazy to me that thousands of people would gather to watch a performance centered around lighting and visuals. The music was just a supporting element, not the focus of the show. Whitevoid, which is the name of Chris’s design company, creates some of the most amazing lighting performances I’ve ever seen. They combine kinetic lighting, lasers, and music in a totally unique way. It’s like he’s using light as a fluid to fill a 3-dimensional space.
Our conversation wanders, like conversations here tend to do. We start by talking about our youths and how growing up in the techno scene in Berlin shaped his artistic path. Both of us spent our early years exploring the techno scenes in the places where we grew up, which led us to experimenting with the visual arts. Even though we grew up at different times and on different continents, there’s a lot of shared experience between us that was really interesting to explore. I’d been waiting years to have this conversation and I’m excited for the next time Chris and I can meet in person. Links & Social Media
Websites:
Kinetic-lights.com
Whitevoid.com
Christopherbauder.com
Instagram
@chritopherbauder
@whitevoid_berlin
@kinetic_lights
Facebook
@whitevoid.studio
@kineticlights
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Oct 12, 2021
Bill Galusha , Luminous Podcast Episode 023
Bill and I started to circle each other off of the Shiny list about a year and a half ago. He’s an OG head in the new media arts scene and he’s worked with some of the most iconic groups and projects in our community. Bot and Dolly, Future Forward, Nonotak, Obscura, GMunk, VT Pro, Leviathan, he’s been around the block and literally knows everyone doing anything cool with tech art. Just recently we started working together in a professional context and I thought it was about time we did an episode together. You should check this one out if for no other reason than to listen to us gossip like old grandpas and reminisce stories from the heat of battle. I consider Bill a good friend at this point, someone who really understands the game and I can talk to about the challenges that I face putting together crews and running my company. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did, it’s a good one!
Links & Social Media
Portfolio Website
Instagram
LinkedIn
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Sep 6, 2021
Nicholas Perillo, Luminous Podcast Episode 022
Nick is the creative mind behind one of the most impressive works of kinetic new media arts I’ve seen. The piece is called morph and it’s truly a genius mix of form, motion, light, and sound. I saw the work come through my social media feeds and immediately wanted to get in touch.
Our conversation was mostly about the creative process, I wanted to understand how Morph went from concept to reality. Hired by a curator from Austria to produce the piece for a gallery show in a renovated castle, the final setting for this piece could not be a better contrast to their high-tech installation.
His co-creators, MindBuffer, developed the software used to drive the light, motion, and sound and are geniuses in their own right. I definitely look forward to meeting them as well. They all came together in Berlin and worked out of a maker space called MotionLab to finish the build.
Definitely check out their portfolio page before you listen to this episode so you get a sense of the project we’re talking about. Hope you enjoy the episode, I know I did! Links & Social Media
Portfolio Website
Instagram
Facebook
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Jul 27, 2021
Tiffany Trenda, Luminous Podcast Episode 021
Tiffany Trenda is a new media fashion artist based out of LA. We met each other through my friend Anouk, another new media artist active in the fashion-tech scene. I was curious how the conversation would go. We spoke on the phone about a week ago and our conversation was really flowing. That totally continued through this episode.
She’s spent her artistic career creating a physical narrative through performances using handmade costumes and tech-infused clothing. She never shows her face and encourages the audience to interact with screens that are attached to her body.
Her work is really unique and super compelling. We talk about performance art in the time of Covid, bridging the uncanny valley, how NFT’s apply to physical new media art, and of course, the singularity.
Check it out, I know you’ll love this one! Links & Social Media
Portfolio Website
Unseen, virtual performance
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May 31, 2021
Luke Taylor, Luminous Podcast Episode 020
Welcome back to the Luminous Arts! This time I’m talking to my friend Luke Taylor from all the way over in Australia. He’s the lead engineer for Advatek, the company that makes the Pixlite line of LED controllers. We’ve been using his hardware for years, giving them shit when we need new features and working with them to keep the needs of the light artist front and center in their development process. This episode is a nerdy one, so be forewarned, we get into the weeds!
We talk about how his company formed and the path he’s taken as a developer working in the pixel control world. Sorting through the myriad of pixel technologies can be a dizzying process, but his company does a great job demystifying it for amateurs and professionals alike.
We talk about the fundamental ways that artists use LED controllers to tie their installations together, what kinds of features are important and matter to people, and the line between controller and pattern engine.
It’s a fascinating if not a totally geeky conversation, and I’m stoked we finally got to connect and have a good chat.
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May 4, 2021
Shlomo Zippel, Luminous Podcast Episode 019
Welcome back my artist people! In this episode I’m talking with Shlomo Zippel, a developer turned light artist based out of the Bay Area. We’ve kind of been in each other’s orbits for years but we’d never actually met in person. Recently I started dating a friend of his, and that prompted me to get in touch. He was one of the original contributors to the software and hardware driving the Tree of Tenere and he’s been in the scene for the past 10 years. I figured we’d have a lot to talk about!
Recently Shlomo’s been working on launching an experiential art space here in San Francisco. Kind of in the vein of Meow Wolf and Team Labs but with a decidedly light-art/Avatar-esque feel to it. He’s putting a unique spin on the concept of immersive art installations and collaborating with some amazing local light artists.
Simultaneously he’s developing an LED controller that he wants to take to market soon after his art space launches. It’s really software that he’s developing to run on a variety of microcontroller platforms. It incorporates a really capable pattern engine and it works in a fundamentally distributed manner. Like you would deploy lots of them into an installation and they work like some kind of LED hive mind. The swarm of controllers collectively spread the processing power out across the entire fleet of devices meaning there’s no need for a massive and expensive server sitting at the center of the installation. It’s a super cool concept and I loved geeking out with him on how this type of system could change the way artists think about their installations. It’s a great conversation, yet another amazing artist/engineer doing crazy things with technology. I think you’re going to dig it!
Photo credit: Eleanor Preger
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Mar 30, 2021
Toshi Hoo, Luminous Podcast Episode 018
Toshi and I have been friends for almost 20 years. I met him on a beach in Cape Cod during a psytrance party. He was an established VJ in the Boston scene and I was just trying to figure out how that whole world worked. He brought me into the fold and taught me about the software and the methods that people were using to mix visuals live to electronic music.
We’ve stayed in touch throughout the years, both moving to the Bay Area, both pursuing our own careers, watching each other grow and mature on our own respective paths. When he agreed to do an episode of the Luminous Arts I was stoked and even though we couldn’t sit down in person it was so good to catch up.
Toshi is an amazingly deep thinker and a very intelligent guy. Our conversation was fun because it let both of us go deep on some really important topics relating to the ethics of the use of technology. He works for the Institute for the Future, a non-profit focused on just that. He runs a department there that allows him to explore, among other things, the various ways that VR can be used to generate positive change in the world.
I think you’re going to dig this conversation. It winds its way through the world of immersive new media art, through the role of social media in society, and into our responsibility to help shape the world using technology. Let’s dive in!
Links & Social Media
Website
Institute for the Future
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Mar 9, 2021
Joshua White, Luminous Podcast Episode 017
This is a really special episode for me. Joshua is one of the pioneers in the performance visual arts scene. He was one of the first to project live visuals on stage and since I was 18 years old I’ve known about his work as one of the pioneers of visual music. When I was vjing professionally back in 2005 I got a chance to meet Josh and work with him at Alex Grey’s Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. I wanted to go deep with him then and get into his story but there just wasn’t time. This year I reached out and asked him to do an episode and he agreed!
We had an excellent conversation about how he came up in the scene during the 60s and the influence that San Francisco during the Summer of Love had on his artistic development. He tells me about the cultural atmosphere that allowed his work to flourish and what it was like to make a name for himself during that time. It’s a really cool recounting of the bicoastal counterculture during another period of national upheaval and it’s hilarious how similar things were.
It struck me how some of the paths he blazed to make a living creating new media art are the same paths I see myself and my peers walking. It was cool to reflect on the generational differences and similarities between us and get his perspective on the state of new media arts today.
So check it out, I think you’ll dig our conversation and maybe it will help to put your own work and career path into a new perspective!
Links & Social Media
Portfolio Website
Instagram
Wikipedia
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Feb 10, 2021
Richard DDT Trapani, Luminous Podcast Episode 016
Good morning people! In this episode, I sit down with my longtime friend Rich Trapani, or Rich DDT as residents of the Bay Area know him. Originally out of my hometown, Boston, he’s made a name for himself out on the West Coast running an immersive new media salon called Lovetech. It’s a dance party slash multimedia arts expose where tinkerers, artists, and other participants can hang out, socialize, and expose each other to new types of tech, grab a drink, or get down on the dance floor to some of the scenes most innovative producers. It’s been happening for about 10 years now until Covid threw a wrench into the live nightlife scene.
Rich is really active in the new media arts scene and was one of the artists selected to produce custom work for the new Meow Wolf property in Vegas. He’s spent time working with Illuminate the Arts and Anticlockwise producing permanent placemaking features. We talk about the state of immersive theater and how COVID might fundamentally change the…
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Nov 10, 2020
Bob Bonniol, Luminous Podcast Episode 015
Welcome back, everybody! This episode is with Bob Bonniol, the founder of Mode Studios in Seattle, and a longtime inspiration to me. He’s a legend in the live show production industry, being at the forefront of new media technologies as they made their way onto the stage. Coming up in the Theatrical world, he was an early adopter of projection mapping and the use of complex control systems to achieve new effects that pushed the envelope on Broadway and later in the concert touring world.
Our conversation was a short one but a fun one. I’ve been waiting a while to have a chance to talk with Bob and it was fun to just sit back and see where things went. Evidently, we’re both big fans of futurists because that’s exactly where this conversation ended up! I’ll let you listen and we’ll get right into it. Hope you enjoy!
Links & Social Media
Portfolio Website
Instagram
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Sep 8, 2020
Sofia Aronov, Luminous Podcast Episode 014
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Luminous Arts Podcast! Today I’m talking with Sofia Aronov, an Italian experiential designer and new media artist living and working in NYC. I met Sofia on a trip to Brooklyn back in 2019. She was working for Fake Love, the experiential advertising company by The New York Times. In January 2020, she became Senior Experiential Designer in the Experience Team of PepsiCo Design and Innovation Center. Originally from Milan, she’s had a very international journey to get to where she is today. Like me, she’s obsessed with creating interactive installation art and using technology to communicate in unique ways.
We have a great conversation about how our work has changed since COVID, how the creative process is adapting to life in isolation, and how we can all stay connected despite the shift in the social paradigm. We only had about an hour to talk and I think we both could have kept going for a lot longer. It was a great conversation and I’m definit…
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Aug 19, 2020
Steve Lieberman, Luminous Podcast Episode 013
Hey everyone, welcome to the 13th episode of the Luminous Arts Podcast! Steve Lieberman is a longtime friend and inspiration of mine. He’s a lighting designer who’s work is world-renowned in the festival stage and high-end nightclub arenas. I met Steve back in the early 2000s when I was working with Vello Virkhause at the Ultra Music Festival in Miami. Since then we’ve kept in touch and I’ve always been inspired by the work that he does.
I really enjoyed this conversation as it was a rare opportunity for me to talk about the art of stage lighting design. Steve gets it, he’s been doing it for 25 years and that’s the world I came from when I was younger. Using light as a medium is kind of an arcane artform, and there are very few people that I have the opportunity to talk to that are steeped in the practice. Steve is a true creative and his work is at the pinnacle of the stage design industry. This is one of my favorite conversations to date and I think you’ll like it too!…
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Jul 7, 2020
Forest Stearns, Luminous Podcast Episode 012
Forest and I have been friends for almost 12 years. We were talking about art projects before I started Digital Ambiance and before he was an Art Director at Deviant Art down in LA. He’s a prolific illustrator and street artist who’s skills with a paintbrush, spray can, and tablet are unparalleled among the many artists I know. He is based in Oakland, where he leads DRAWEVERYWHERE STUDIOS on a range of creative collaborations.
We’ve had the opportunity to work together a number of times, but most closely on the fleet of Galactic Jungle Art Cars we built for Burning Man back in 2015.
More than just a good friend, Forest is a truly remarkable person. After his first big break, post MFA, designing for DeviantArt, he leveled up his passion for the facilitation of community building and switched lanes out of the “art world” and into the realm of science and technology. On an adventure in the woods, his path crossed with the founders of an SF aerospace firm called Planet Labs. He…
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Jun 25, 2020
Mark Slee, Luminous Podcast Episode 011
In this episode of Luminous Arts, I talk with Mark Slee, the creator of LX Studio, the software behind the Tree of Tenere. He’s an accomplished producer and light artist who runs an art gallery out of San Francisco. We’re both quarantined in separate corners of the world due to the Coronavirus, with Mark in Montreal and me in the British Virgin Islands. Fortunately, remote podcasting is a thing and our connection was solid, so hopefully, it’ll sound pretty good.
We talk about the role of art in different parts of the world, how he became involved with Symmetry Labs, how he developed his software and other things. I’ve been looking forward to talking with Mark for a long time as he’s a prolific artist in the Bay Area community and light art scene. He’s a cool guy, and it’s a great conversation. I really think you’ll dig it.
Originally Published - April 1, 2020 This episode of the Podcast is with Gabriel Dunne, an interactive multimedia artist and code wizard who’s be…
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May 5, 2020
Timo Lejeune, Luminous Podcast Episode 010
Well, that was an excellent conversation. I just finished a long episode of the Luminous Arts with Timo Lejeune, a light artist based in the Netherlands. His group, Lumus Instruments, combines light and music in integrated performances using a custom software stack that he’s creating. One part sculptural lighting artists, one part music producers, he’s creating really unique installations that synchronize the lighting and the music by creating both from the same software. The main outlet for his work is the art festival scene in Europe and we have a great time talking about our experiences with festival culture and how light art is represented in that world, and the various ways to make your way as a light artist. Timo is a super cool guy and I’m looking forward to hanging out in person! Hope you enjoy listening to the podcast as much as I enjoyed recording it and reach out to him if you like his work (Links are below).
Links & Social Media
Website
Instagram
Youtube
Facebook
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Apr 1, 2020
Gabriel Dunne, Luminous Podcast Episode 009
Hey everybody! This episode of the Podcast is with Gabriel Dunne, an interactive multimedia artist and code wizard who’s been a staple of the Bay Area New-Media Arts scene for more than a decade. He’s one of the original members of the OOOShiny list, a gathering place and discussion forum for some of the most prolific new-media artists worldwide. This group is actually how I tapped into our community here in the Bay and it’s one of my favorite resources to find people doing interesting things with technology.
We have a really good conversation and dive deep into some of the social issues affecting the Bay Area arts community. We talk about how the scene has evolved and changed over the decade-plus he’s been involved in creating art here and how his career as an artist has evolved. This is a great episode, one of my favorites thus far, and I really think you’ll enjoy listening to it.
Links & Social Media
Website
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Feb 12, 2020
Keith Anderson, Luminous Podcast Episode 008
Keith and I met for the first time during my trip to Vegas this year for the LDI Conference. I learned about his work as a VJ in the festival scene years ago and at Burning Man this year he started dating one of my installation techs! When they both moved to Vegas together so that Keith could take a job-creating custom visuals for Melt Creative, I knew I most likely had a place to crash during LDI (and a new podcast episode!)
We start the conversation out with some details about where Keith’s journey as a concert visualist began and we wind our way through various topics like how the VJing scene has changed and evolved over time, what it’s like working as a full-time festival VJ, and where he sees things going in the future.
This was a great conversation and I’m stoked that Keith and I finally got to sit down and talk!
Links & Social Media
Melt Creative
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Nov 19, 2019
Tyler Kicera, Luminous Podcast Episode 007
Hey everyone, welcome to the Luminous Podcast! This week I did my first remote episode of the show, which actually went really smoothly. I sat down (across the country) with Tyler Kicera, Senior Director of the Kinetics Department at Tait Towers. They’re responsible for some of the most incredible kinetic stage designs and permanent installations in the world, including the London 2012 Olympics, U2, Queen, & Rodger Waters world tours, all of Deadmouse’s ridiculous stages, The Wynn in Las Vegas, and so many more absolutely bonkers installations. Tyler and I were supposed to present this year at LDI on a panel discussion on architainment and feature design, but it kind of fell apart at the last minute. Oh well. We decided he should definitely do an episode of the podcast so we could get to know each other and at least talk for a bit. We had a fascinating conversation and we got into some great side topics about some of his other passions, road racing in Spec Miata competitions, maint…
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Sep 30, 2019
Rebeca Sanchez Pastor, Luminous Podcast Episode 006
I met with Rebeca while she was in the country consulting on a new nightclub design in Las Vegas. Her company, LEDs Control is a very prolific LED feature design firm and has a lot in common with Digital Ambiance. She’s a Mexican native, Barcelona-based entrepreneur who started in the lighting industry in 2001 as a self-taught student of lighting control software. She performed as a light jockey in entertainment venues and events across Mexico. In 2005 she moved to Barcelona and studied architectural lighting Design in the IED (Instituto Europe de Diseño) and UPC (Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña). She positioned herself as an architainment content creator (programmer). Her curiosity and entrepreneurial spirit drove her to found LEDSCONTROL in 2009. Her main goal was to provide lighting control services for LED installations in public spaces, buildings, and entertainment venues. Over the past 14 years, the team has grown as well as the kinds of projects that the company works o…
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Aug 19, 2019
Matthew Ragan, Luminous Podcast Episode 005
Hey everybody, today Matthew Ragan joins me for a beer here at the Lumen Labs and we talk all about his life and career in the world of projection mapping. He’s a Touch Designer Wizard who started out doing live performance art at Keen State back in the early 2000’s, then during his masters program at Arizona State he hosted a popular Touch Designer Tutorial vlog. Working closely with Derivative Software he developed a host of teaching materials geared at educating a new generation of users in advanced techniques. His vlog and expertise ended up catching the attention of the guys over at Obscura Digital who scooped him up right out of school. He’s worked with them for the past few years, recently taking on the role of their lead software developer. Anyone who’s paying attention to the world of projection mapping knows how important Obscura is to the scene and how they’ve raised the bar for new media installations in places all around the world. Matt takes us through his time…
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Jun 16, 2019
Scott Draves, Luminous Podcast Episode 004
My friendship with Scott goes back to before I moved to the West Coast. He’s an artist & programmer that made his name coding phenomenal generative artwork. His most well-known piece, titled “Electric Sheep”, started as a self-evolving algorithm, gaining traction in the Motion Graphics community before becoming a phenomenon unto itself. Seeing the potential in crowdsourcing the processing that created the generative patterns, he created a system allowing users to vote on the visual characteristics of each pattern and allowed the most successful art pieces to “mate” with each other, creating offspring with similar traits based on that of its parent patterns. In this way, Scott's art evolves and progresses with a life of its own.
Today I sat down with Scott in the offices of his new employer, CTRL-Labs, a company working to bridge the human-computer divide with a new type of user input device that taps directly into the nerve impulses in a user’s wrist. Doesn’t get much mo…
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Jun 16, 2019
Christopher Schardt, Luminous Podcast Episode 003
In this episode I sit down with Christopher Schardt, creator of the Firmament LED installation and a prominent light artist. He’s spent much of his artistic career making pieces for display at the Burning Man Festival and we ended up spending much of this episode discussing the intricacies of making light-art installations for that venue. Our discussion moves from the politics of creating art on the Playa, how he fits into the overall Burning Man scene, and where we see Burning Man Art headed in the future. It was an interesting conversation with a true veteran and we had a lot of fun drinking beer and talking about our respective experiences. Hope you enjoy!
Links & Social Media
Website
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Mar 18, 2019
Cynthia Cardenas, Luminous Podcast Episode 002
Welcome to episode 2 of the Luminous podcast. We just finished up the Smode master classes here at the Lumen Labs. There were so many cool people here from all over the country to learn all about this amazing new platform. Tonight I got to hang out with Cynthia Cardenas, a performing visual artist based out of Nashville Tennessee. She tells me about the Nashville new media arts scene and her ongoing collaboration with one of the composers and instrumentalists with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. With a background in music herself, she walks me through the VJ scene in the south and we talk about her background as an artist, the challenges that she’s dealing with as a woman in the scene, and the artistic process as it applies to live performing visual artists.
Links & Social Media
Instagram
Futureman New Village Orchestra Work
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Mar 18, 2019
Brian Pinkham, Luminous Podcast Episode 001
Brian is a brilliant LED programmer who uses microcontrollers to create embedded systems that drive light patterns across the light-art installations he builds. He’s had his work displayed at festival installations around the world including Galactic Jungle at Burning Man, Carrie Thompson’s Portal, and Helianthus Enormae with Fez Gaetz.
Links & Social Media
Website
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