The collection / Always in progress

Apps, art &
other experiments.

Software, sculpture, sound, and systems. Different directions, connected by a habit of making things and seeing where they lead.

13 projects
More than one way to make.

13 projects

FOOM

A family of fitness apps built around showing up.

AppsFitnessProduct design

Saylight

Private, offline dictation. Speak, and get back to your thought.

macOS appVoicePrivacy

Harness

Small, speculative interfaces for working with AI.

Desktop appsHuman–AI interaction

Algorithmic Research Group

Benchmarks, datasets, and open infrastructure for AI safety research.

AI researchOpen sourceDeveloper tools
Performers surrounded by projected imagery and machine learning classification probabilities. 2018

THE_OPER&

Machine learning becomes a performer in an algorithmic opera at Duke. My contribution made image classification probabilities visible as a shifting field of interpretations.

With Bill Seaman, John Supko, Jim Findlay, Lorelei Ensemble, Keith Scretch

Machine learning & performanceCollaboration
Performers in a space illuminated by cyan and green projections. 2017

These Borders That Keep Me Down

Redlining maps, live data, and moving bodies become an AfroFuturist performance with Duke’s SLIPPAGE Lab, presented at Moogfest.

With Slippage Lab, Duke University

Shown at Moogfest, Durham

Sound & performanceCollaboration
A looping, faceted form in the Algorithmic Techtonics design interface. 2015

Algorithmic Techtonics II

Flocking particles draw as they move. Their accumulated paths become sculptural meshes, ready to leave the simulation as OBJ or DXF files.

Generative design
An organic 3D mesh generated in the Algorithmic Techtonics interface. 2015

Algorithmic Techtonics

A sculpting tool made of competing forces. Tune a network of moving nodes and watch a surface find its shape.

Generative design
A performer’s movements rendered as vivid colored motion trails. 2015

Footwerk

With Alex Murray-Leslie of Chicks on Speed, recorded movement becomes visual trails and synthesized sound. Exhibited at the Venice Biennale and ArtScience Museum.

With Alex Murray-Leslie (Chicks on Speed), Penn State Biomechanics Lab

Shown at 56th Venice Biennale · ArtScience Museum, Singapore

Sound & performanceCollaboration
2015

Quantified Self

A musical portrait built from 100 days online. Five SuperCollider instruments turn a radio host’s web activity into rhythm, texture, and counterpoint.

Data sonification
A carved oak landscape with a central ridge and sloping valleys. 2014

Biobehavioral Landscapes

Emotional life, given terrain. Data from 150 adults becomes a series of statistical landscapes, modeled in Grasshopper and milled from oak.

With Nilam Ram, Penn State Department of Human Development

Data sculptureCollaboration
Polar Ice Sonification title graphic over blue ice, reading 400,000 years of Antarctic ice melt. 2014

Polar Ice Sonification

Four hundred thousand years of Antarctic change, compressed into sound. Six synthesized voices carry the motion of ice, ocean, sun, and temperature.

With Mark Ballora, Penn State Polar Center

Data sonificationCollaboration
Terrain map of the Shale Hills Critical Zone Observatory showing monitoring locations. 2014

Shale Hills Sonification

A watershed becomes an instrument. Three years of isotope measurements drive the sounds of rain, groundwater, and a moving stream.

With Mark Ballora, Penn State Critical Zone Observatory

Data sonificationCollaboration
A practice, over time.

The creative archive brings together earlier independent work and collaborations by Matthew Kenney. Each project retains its original date and collaborator credits.

Make something together