SCHEMATIC FOR MAKING FRIENDS WITH SOMEONE OTHER THAN THAT FAKE ROCK (2023) is a physical computing work that triggers text to display on screens embedded on either side of a fake rock when two people approach the system and are within a certain distance of one another. The text appearing on the screen is randomized from a dataset of 1000 utterances of fewer than eight words, starting with "you" or "I" that have been mined from transcripts of all episodes of the television sitcom FRIENDS. Activation of the text display requires two people to come into close physical contact, but in doing so, also interrupts them – confronted by a mediating barrier (a rock and two screens) in the space between them. The system fosters a fleeting moment of social connection between two friends, colleagues, or strangers, its form ultimately calling attention to the divide between the varied physical and digital realities between which we oscillate. 

The text in the animation "loud neighbors" (2024) is excerpted from a screenshot of my email inbox after undergoing a search for “Nextdoor,” which is an “app for neighborhoods where you can get local tips, buy and sell items, and more.” I’m not quite sure how or why I even ended up on the email list or how to get off of it, but I get frequent emails identifying “top posts” in my neighborhood. At some point, I started collecting them, questioning the nature of whatever algorithm might have decided that these specific posts were those that I needed to see. Taken together, they form somewhat of a scattered, garbled, hectic found poem – with lines at times truncated by the email header character limit, further truncated by my browser window size, or repeated in brief verse in the subheader preview text. These lines are portals into varied digital/physical worlds that are different/distant from my own, clearly resonant enough with certain people/computers/algorithms to be considered “top” posts and presented to me. There’s something too, about the frequency with which these small proclamations ping towards the inbox that develops its own time system and cadence.