NOTE: this list of collaborators is not exhaustive. We have worked extensively with certain well-known figures in the performing arts, whose websites provide ample bios and descriptions: see Trisha Brown, Merce Cunningham, Bill T. Jones, and Robert Wilson.
In addition, other collaborators who have worked with us on single projects are credited in the corresponding sections of this website.
Susan Amkraut + Michael Girard (PhD) are software developers and multimedia artists whose thinking has exerted an enormous influence on our work. Their Character Studio software provided the means for creating such works as Hand-drawn Spaces, Ghostcatching, BIPED, Pedestrian, and Arrival. Their own artistic/research collaborations include the internationally acclaimed animation Eurhythmy (1990) which won top awards at Ars Electronica in Austria and at the Imagina Festival in Monaco, and Menagerie (1992), a virtual reality/behavioral animation installation, which was shown at the Pompidou Center in Paris. A far-ranging exploration of the roots of Girard and Amkraut’s work may be found in the Girard-Amkraut conversation on this site. For more information, see the Tumbling Sparks website.
Dan Goldwater is an engineer who has collaborated with us on Horizon and on other projects in development. He has extensive experience in the software, hardware, chip and networking industries. Working with Goldwater are his colleagues at SQUID:Labs. They have considerable expertise in a wide range of technical fields — from chip design and electronics to robotics, materials, embedded systems and manufacturing — and have developed novel and diverse technologies for a wide range of applications including printed electronics, lens molding, electro-spun metallic nanowires, self-sensing ropes, and many others. For more information, see the SQUID:Labs website.
Nat Johnson (MFA) is a filmmaker and director of photography who has assisted and collaborated with us on several projects including Enlightenment, Point A to B, and Housebound. A significant portion of Nat’s work explores the physical nature of ecstasy, particularly, how the body behaves during ecstatic religious experiences. Nat has shot and directed award winning films in a wide range of genres — contemporary multimedia, documentary, narrative, and experimental. For more information visit his website, www.you-yours.com.
Terry Pender (Doctor of Musical Arts) is a composer, musician, and sound designer whose interests range from contemporary multimedia-based works to bluegrass and the mandolin. He has crafted extraordinary sound scores for such works as Pedestrian and Arrival, assisted in the creation of Inkblot Projections, Trace, Enlightenment, and Housebound. Pender has composed for NPR, national network television, and the Whitney Museum of American Art; his works have been performed nationally and internationally. Recently Terry created a new interactive dance project with schoolchildren at PS193 in Queens in conjunction with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company and CityCenter. Terry’s music is published by Plucked String, Inc. He teaches at Columbia University, where he is the Associate Director of the Computer Music Center.
Ben Pugh , working under the name Tribeca Project Management, oversees complex projects, productions, festivals, and events. He has managed the York Millenium Mystery Plays, the 2003 Hikkaduwa International Parade in Sri Lanka, and the international Bradford Festival (with an audience of 140,000 over a span of just three days), among many other projects. Pugh is one of three curators of York’s SightSonic Festival, in which role he presented Pedestrian and Arrival; he also served as technical director for Recovered Light, for which he designed that work’s permanent installation at the York Minster.
Marco Steinberg (M.Arch., B.Arch., BFA) is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the Harvard School of Design, where his current focus is on developing approaches to improving outcomes in stroke treatment within the healthcare industry. Steinberg has helped design many of our installations, including Hand-drawn Spaces, Ghostcatching, Pedestrian, Arrival, Flicker-Track / Verge, and Trace, 2002)., and did the architectural design for Horizon. His publications include Prototype for a Plywood Wheelchair , Material Legacies: Bamboo and Immaterial/Ultramaterial (ed T. Mori), Digital Design and Manufacturing in Architecture (with Schodek, Bechthold, Griggs and Kao: John Wiley, 2004), and Patient Transport Module: Stroke PTM feasibility study . He is the co-founder of the “New Technologies in Architecture” conference and publication series at the GSD.