Museum Work
Zimoun @ MOCA Busan
Zimoun’s installations are masterclasses in hypnotic, large-scale electromechanical motion. As a production assistant for a handful of his projects, I spent a lot of time testing how different materials—like metal washers or spinning strings—can make sounds when activated by DC motors. It’s a process of constant adjustment to find the right 'character' for each component so that thousands of small, repetitive movements come together into one cohesive organism.
I also got very good at tying very tiny knots.
Two of the pieces I worked on were displayed as part of the SOUND-MINIMALISM exhibit at MOCA Busan, South Korea.
American Museum of Natural History, NYC
"The Power of Poison" is a globally touring immersive science installation designed by the American Museum of Natural History. From its evolution as a predatory defense to its use as both a mythic source of strength and a cornerstone of modern medicine, the exhibit explores poison’s paradoxical roles in nature, human health and history, literature, and myth.
I worked as fabricator and technician on the exhibition’s centerpiece: a 200-foot-long recreation of Colombia's Chocó Rainforest, and oversaw the production of 3,500 hand-painted, vacuum-formed polyethylene fronds. I repeatedly cite this as one of the coolest jobs I’ve ever had.
Center for New Music, SF
I served as curator for C4NM’s Window Gallery alongside instrument inventors Bart Hopkin and Bryan Day. Every two months, we premiered an original exhibition of experimental instruments, novel music technologies, or visual scores.
Among the many wonderful artists whose work we curated include The Hub, Reed Ghazala, Alison Knowles, Aisha Loe, Maggi Payne, Don Buchla, Paul Dresher, Tom Nunn, Laetitia Sonami, Roscoe Mitchell, Victoria Shen, Fred Frith, and Sudhu Tewari.
New Museum, NYC
Cotton Candy Theremin is a spinning audiovisual installation that responds to user’s culinary choreography. Developed by Philip Sierzega and Emilie Baltz, Cotton Candy Theremin remixes the interface of making cotton candy by transforming your hand motions into a reactive, interactive musical score. By spinning a cotton candy cone over wisps of candy floss, guests trigger sounds and visuals projected onto a giant planetarium dome. And it’s delicious.
A team of technicians, composers, and producers at the creative audio studio Antfood, both composed the music and developed a custom-built interface that allowed visitors to dynamically control the track. "Cotton Candy Theremin" premiered at New York's Red Bull Space as a part of The New Museum's NEW INC incubator in July 2015. It was additionally featured in Panorama Music Festival's "The Lab" in July 2016.
The audio controls are programmed in Max, which interpret hand motion via ten sensors surrounding the machine. The Max program translates and scales OSC data (via UDP) to specific audio controls in Ableton Live, including frequency modulation, beat repeat, and "one-shot" sample triggers.
Museum of Communication, Bern
I had the pleasure of working with one of my favorite animators—Nina Christen of Team Tumult—to sound design a series of shorts for the Museum für Kommunikation Bern, Switzerland.
The project, made back in 2018, explored a whimsical, sci-fi premise in which "Big Data" is used to invasively follow you around the internet. Fortunately, humanity dodged that particular bullet, and this remains a fun exercise in high-concept fantasy.
서울문화재단, Seoul
In 2018, while living in Seoul, New York, and San Francisco, I became fascinated by a shared urban feature: the artificial clouds of air pollution. Created in collaboration with Mullae Art Space and Sangbong Nam, Imaginary Clouds is a three-movement poem on the urban sky, and the strange, hazy beauty of air pollution. By compositing footage of ink and oil in water over city landscapes, I aim to meditate on a sky that is at once mesmerizing, dreamlike, and deeply unsettling.
Other Museum Roles
Pacific Pinball Museum | Repair and Restoration (2023–Present) Work with museum director Michael Schiess and a team of volunteers on regular machine electrical repairs, part restoration, and exhibition prep work.
Morris Museum | Exhibition Concept Developer (2019–2021) Collaborated with Director Cleveland Johnson to develop The Singularity Chamber, a meta-exhibit intended to interrogate the psychology of museum-going. It never got built, but I still really like it.
Children’s Creativity Museum | Sound Designer (2019) Contributed the sounds for the kid-friendly musical sampler installation, designed by Bryan Day. Every day, kids can use my sounds to make annoying jams, which thanks to the exhibits MP3 export feature, can continue to annoy their parents well after museum hours.
Biblewalk Wax Museum | Co-Director, Ascension (2016) Co-directed a documentary exploration of the world’s largest bible-themed wax museum.
AMNH Paleontology Department | Lead Technical Researcher (2015) Developed custom archival software for curator Dr. Melanie Hopkins and gathered data for a groundbreaking study on trilobite ontogeny. This work resulted in the first published paper to use 3D geometric morphometrics on CT-scanned trilobites.
AMNH North American Archaeology Lab | Archival Assistant (2013) Sorted my weight in fine-grain matrix from St. Catherine’s Island off the Georgia Coast. Managed data archiving project within a large-scale archaeological research team.
Eyebeam Gallery | Technician (2010–2012) Maintained the installations in two touring exhibits by Science Gallery, “Biorhythm: Music and the Body,” and “Surface Tension: The Way of Water.” The first involved debugging a lot of Max patches. The second involved a lot of mopping. Amusingly, this job was the first time I ever used Max/MSP, so it was a little prophetic.
AMNH Senior Saltz Intern | Science Communicator (2010–2012) Conducted daily high-volume public demonstrations and exhibit interpretations for hundreds of visitors, only some of whom were young earth creationists. My personal favorite demonstrations were the planetary sciences, and I developed a particularly good routine about air pressure (ask me about this sometime).
Micro Museum Brooklyn | Technical Assistant & Fabrication (2006–2009) Apprenticed under Kathleen and William Laziza, handling everything from legacy video equipment repair and gallery maintenance to the construction of an artsy haunted house two years running.