Casey Alt is an artist whose work explores how interface mediates power and culture. Though primarily engaging in problematics and processes of computational media, his works often span multiple mediums, including software, design, installation, and performance. Currently based in New York, Casey is a Visiting Assistant Professor of the Practice in the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies at Duke University and is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation at Columbia University. [CV] [more...] [back to top]

Slightly Sociopathic Software (2007-) is a multi-component work-in-progress that critiques the relationship between corporate business practices and software design. The project was first presented as a videoconference installation in the DMA First-Year MFA show in the UCLA Broad Arts Center in June 2007. [more...] [back to top]

In the Future [100x100] (2007) is a data sculpture created in collaboration with Chris O'Leary which visualizes 100 years of forward thought. The work consists of a stack of 100 1-foot square acrylic plates with each plate representing one year from 1906 to 2006. Each plate has 100 holes that correspond to the top 100 most frequent noun phrases associated with the phrase "in the future" for each year. A horizontal beam of white light randomly walks up and down one side of the sculpture, illuminating one plate at a time. Originally installed as part of the DMA First-Year MFA show in the UCLA Broad Arts Center in June 2007. [more...] [back to top]

Capture (2006) is an original software installation that explores new possibilities for interface. By simulating the experience of two shadowy strangers touching through a frosted pane of glass, Capture creates an intimate collaboration between the viewer and the work. Installed as part of the PALM MFA show, curated by Prof. Christian Moeller in the New Wight Gallery, UCLA. [more...] [back to top]

PBV (2006) is an original software application designed as a visualization of the Deerhoof song "Punch Buggy Valves." The piece is an experiment in the 3D graphics capabilities of the Processing programming environment and novel user interface methods for real-time performance. The application functions as an immersive 3D game in which multiple users navigate the gamespace by moving their bodies to steer Apple MacBook "rocketpacks" worn on their backs. [more...] [back to top]

Pressure (2006) is a playful experiment in generative painting processes. It was first installed on 24 October 2006 in the Eli & Edythe Broad Art Center at UCLA on a 3 meter x 2 meter rear-projection screen. Pressure was created using the Processing programming environment. [more...] [back to top]

GFP Landscapes (2002) is a collaboration with Ben Dean to produce a 5 1/2 minute digital video as one of three multimedia installations in Transgenic Light, an exhibition at Stanford University's Cantor Arts Center that examined the use of green fluorescent protein (GFP) in biomedical imaging. The video was constructed by importing thousands of 2D images of confocal microspopy cross-sections of fruit fly imaginal disk cells and automatically reassembling them into 3D 'landscapes' in Maya. [more...] [back to top]

Sleep Spindles (1999) is a multimedia installation intended to make visible the normally invisible processes of sleeping. Sleep Spindles consists of a bedsheet treated with cyanotype chemicals that was exposed to changing levels of natural light during one night of sleep and white map tacks connected with transparent fishing line that trace the sleeper's changing EEG brain activity. [more...] [back to top]

Figure Series (1998-2004) represents a diverse collection of human figure studies in different media, including ink, pencil, oil, acrylic, and digital. Several of the figure images were done without models. [more...] [back to top]

I was the Summer 2007 Graphics Editor Intern in the Graphics Department at The New York Times from June-August 2007. The 10-week internship combined daily and long-term reporting assignments with information graphics design in collaboration with each of the major news desks at theTimes. [more...] [back to top]

ArtSoftware.org (2007) is an open community for sharing information about free and open-source art software. The wiki-based website allows anyone to post information about free and open-source software products and related initiatives. ArtSoftware.org was started by C.E.B. Reas and I in 2007. [view website] [back to top]

In 2005, I designed and taught Duke University's Information Science + Information Studies Research Capstone course (ISIS 200) in which my co-instructor, Jess Mitchell, and I led seven undergraduate seniors through a 12-week process of redesigning the Duke University online campus map (2005). Despite the extremely limited time period, the students produced a dynamic, data-driven map interface that was so successfully received by the University that three of the students were hired to develop it into the official campus map. [more...] [back to top]

soundSense: engineering music information (2004) was a collaborative multimedia installation at Duke University on 18-19 November 2004. The event was located in the CIEMAS Photonics Studio, a reconfigurable space wired with over 160 infrared motion sensors, 26 computers, 9 speakers, and 50 19" LCD screens, as part of an ongoing study of the sonification of human crowd movement data. In addition to contributing to the general concept, I also created an informational Flash/Maya animation for the work. [more...] [back to top]

The ColumnBrowser (2003) is a Flash-based graphical interface for navigating complicated online directory structures. The design concept was inspired by Apple's OS X Finder column view. The ColumnBrowser is driven by XML that may be either hand-coded or dynamically generated via server-side scripts. The interface allows for the outside linking of graphics and text and supports HTML and CSS formats. [more...] [back to top]

The Collaborative Genealogy (2002-2003) is a web-based, data-driven graphical interface that allows research communities to collaboratively map genealogical relationships. Users can enter event profiles with multiple data fields and can upload any kind of documents as documentation. The Geneaology consists of a Flash frontend that passes XML requests to a MySQL database via Java servlets. I created the genealogy application with the assistance of Vince Dorie, who developed the Java servlets and the database backend. [more...] [back to top]

The History of Silicon Valley course site (2002) was designed to augment the Stanford University History 262S research seminar which was co-taught via videoconference with Georgia Tech. The easily configurable Flash-based site integrates a vast array of disparate online course materials into one location and employs early releases of the Flash Communication Server to provide cross-platform, multi-session live video and text capabilities as a means for extending student collaboration beyond the classrooms. [more...] [back to top]

The Collaborative Timeline (2000-2001) is an innovative web-based, data-driven graphical interface that allows communities of researchers to collaboratively map historical events across multiple categories. The application architecture consists of a Flash frontend that passes XML requests to Java servlets that query and edit data in a MySQL database. I created the timeline with the assistance of Vince and Tony Dorie, who developed the Java servlets and the database backend. [more...] [back to top]

In 2006, I organized the Thinking Through New Media graduate student conference (2006) at Duke Univeresity. The two-day event brought together over 50 graduate students from 25 different US and international universities to present their interdisciplinary research on digital technologies and their impact on art, culture, science, commerce, society, and the environment. [view website] [back to top]

In 2005, I was the lead organizer of the Duke University Podcasting Symposium (2005), the first-ever academic symposium on podcasting. The two-day event featured a hands-on podcasting workshop, as well as panel discussions of the economic/business, legal, political, journalistic, and cultural impacts of podcasting by bringing together over 40 prominent members of the podcasting community with policymakers, scholars, and media experts. [view website] [back to top]

Henry Lowood and I organized Story Engines: A Public Program on Storytelling and Computer Games (2004) in conjunction with the Fictional Worlds, Virtual Experiences: Storytelling and Computer Games exhibition at Stanford University's Cantor Arts Center. The one-day conference brought together scholars and game developers to present current thinking about the place of storytelling in computer and video games. Speakers included Tim Lenoir, Henry Lowood, Jane McGonigal, Scott Bukatman, Kevin O'Hara, Katherine Isbister, Haden Blackman, Sheldon Pacotti, and Will Wright. [view website] [back to top]

MFA First Year Show (2007), curated by Rebeca Méndez. 14 - 22 June 2007. EDA, Broad Arts Center, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA. [view website] [back to top]

PALM MFA show (2006), curated by Christian Moeller. 07 - 12 December 2006. The New Wight Gallery, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA. [view website] [back to top]

"Fictional Worlds, Virtual Experiences: Storytelling and Computer Games" (2003) was part of a multisite collaboration between Stanford University's Cantor Arts Center and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The exhibition addressed the historical and cultural importance of computer games as the emerging narrative form of the early 21st century. Henry Lowood and I co-curated the show, which also included a simultaneously web- and gallery-based interactive timeline installation I designed to chronicle the history of storytelling games. 12 November 2003 - 28 March 2004. [view website] [back to top]

Transgenic Light (2002) was a collaborative exhibition exploring the visuality of the bioluminescent molecule Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) in biomedical images. Gibbons Gallery, Stanford University Cantor Arts Center, 13 June - 25 August 2002. Curators: Nancy Anderson & Patience Young. [view website] [back to top]

"Above the Fold: Graphics at The New York Times" (2007) is a presentation I delivered for the Design | Media Arts department at UCLA on 31 October 2007 in room 5261 of the Broad Arts Center. The prentation is a discussion of my experiences as a graphics editor intern for the summer of 2007. [more...] [back to top]

"The Duke Map Class: A Collaboration between Administration & Students" (2006) is a presentation Jessica Mitchell and I delivered at the EDUCAUSE Western Regional Conference in San Francisco on 25 April 2006. The presentation discusses our experiences designing and teaching Duke University's Information Science + Information Studies Research Capstone course (ISIS 200) in 2005, in which we oversaw the student redesign of the Duke University online campus map. [more...] [back to top]

"GridCultures: Advanced Computing in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences" (2005) was a presentation I delivered at the GRIDtoday VIP Summit Latin America in San Jose, Costa Rica, on 21 February 2005. The presentation outlines my argument for why governments should extend research for high-performance computing to the "nontraditional" computational research fields, particularly the arts, humanities, and interpretative social sciences. [more...] [back to top]

"Michel Foucault's Genealogy of Modern Medicine" (2004) is a lecture I delivered via videoconference on April 8, 2004, to Professor Tim Lenoir's Rise of Scientific Medicine course at Stanford University. The Keynote presentation and lecture summarizes Foucault's approach to the body and medical science across several of his major works. [more...] [back to top]

"There and Back Again: Situating the Digital Narrative" (2004) is a presentation I designed for the Story Engines: A Public Program on Storytelling and Computer Games conference at Stanford University on 06 February 2004. The paper and accompanying Flash presentation are an attempt to, quite literally, locate the narrative in storytelling videogames and digital narratives and their potential to offer moments of escape from the social power structures. [more...] [back to top]

"The Digital Historian v2.0" (2003) is a talk I originally gave at a Charles Babbage Foundation (now called "IT History Society") meeting in 2003. The presentation explores next-generation methodologies for expanding upon many of the digital library initiatives of the late 1990s. The presentation showcases new collaborative design tools developed to address contemporary historical research problems, such my own Collaborative Timeline and Collaborative Genealogy research applications. [more...] [back to top]

"Flow, Process, Fold" (2002) was a presentation of Tim Lenoir and my "Flow, Process, Flow" paper at the "Transforming Spaces: The Topological Turn in Science Studies" conference at the Technische Universität in Darmstadt, Germany. The presentation paper was accompanied by a Macromedia Director / Maya presentation, which was constructed as a high-resolution, 3D flythrough that functioned as my presentation slideshow. [view conference abstract] [back to top]

“Objects of Our Affection: How Object-Orientation Made Computation a Medium” (forthcoming) in Erkki Huhtamo & Jussi Parikka (eds.), Media Archaeologies (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming). [back to top]

“Imagining Black Superpower!: Marvel Comics' Black Panther" (forthcoming) in Robert Mitchell and Alex Ruch, eds., Sequencing the Body: Comics, Media, and Embodiment (in preparation for the In Vivo series at the University of Washington). [view PDF] [back to top]

"Social Networks Generate Interest in Computer Science" (2006) with Owen Astrachan, Jeffrey Forbes, Richard Lucic, and Susan Rodger, SIGCSE Proceedings, March 1-5 2006. [view PDF] [back to top]

"Viral Load: The Fantastic Rhetorical Power of the Computer Virus in the Contemporary U.S. Technoscape" (2005) in Philipp Sarasin, ed., Fremdkörper, Special Issue of Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft (16/2005/3), 133-149. [view PDF] [back to top]

"Flow, Process, Fold: Intersections in Bioinformatics and Contemporary Architecture" (2003) with Tim Lenoir in Antoine Picon and Alessandra Ponte (eds), Architecture and the Sciences: Exchanging Metaphors (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003), 314-353. Republished in German in Henning Schmidgen, Peter Geimer und Sven Dierig (Hrsg.), Kultur im Experiment, Berlin: Kadmos, 2004, S. 37-81. Reprinted in David Bell & Barbara M. Kennedy (eds.), The Cybercultures Reader, 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 2007). [view PDF] [back to top]

"The Materialities of Maya: Making Sense of Object-Orientation" (2002) in Tim Lenoir (ed.), Makeover: Writing the Body into the Posthuman Technoscape, Two-Part Special Issue of Configurations, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003-2004, Part I, Configurations, Vol 10, Number 2, Spring 2002, pp. 203-220. Included in Karla Tonella (ed.), University of Iowa Communication Studies/Digital Media Resources Reader. [view PDF] [back to top]

Duke University's Art, Art History & VIsual Studies course ARTSVIS 170 Interactive Graphics: Critical Code is an introduction to interactive graphics programming for artists. Students gain understanding of object-oriented programming via the Processing programming environment as well as historical and theoretical appreciation of interactivity and computer graphics as artistic mediums. Course meetings combine discussions of key concepts from the readings with hands-on Processing projects and critiques. [view course site] [back to top]

Duke University's Information Science + Information Studies Research Capstone course (ISIS 200) is an experiment in student-inspired pedagogy, I designed the course to simulate a small technology startup company in which the students were responsible for the entire design and development of a new information technology that could actually be implemented at the university. In 2005, the students created an interactive campus map. In 2006, the students created an automated electronic flyering system for campus events. [more...] [back to top]

In 2005-2006, I led the proposal and development of the Game2Know Focus cluster, a multi-course interdisciplinary curriculum for first-year Duke University students that explored the importance of videogames and interactive simulations in contemporary culture. Currently titled "Virtual Realities: Visualizations, Interactive Worlds, and Games," the integrated curriculum comibines perspectives from engineering, history, critical studies, classics, and computer science into a single-semester experience. [more...] [back to top]

In winter 2006, Tim Lenoir and I created and taught Duke University's Information Science + Information Studies course "How They Got Game: The History & Culture of Interactive Simulations & Videogames. The course provides an historical and critical approach to the evolution of computer and video game design by integrating cultural, business, and technical perspectives into one critical course context, providing students an understanding of the history of this medium, as well as insights into design, production, marketing, and socio-cultural impacts of interactive entertainment and communication. [more...] [back to top]

From 1998-2008, I was a graduate and undergraduate teaching assistant for an amazing collection of professors and students at a number of top universities. [view list] [back to top]