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, gaming, and performance. Currently based in Durham, North Carolina, Casey is a Visiting Assistant Professor of the Practice in the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies and the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image at Duke University as well as the founder and CEO of the social media corporation VacilLogix™. [CV] [more...] [back to top]
Things Fall Apart (2010) is a series of eight generative software works that illustrates the enchanting fragility of social systems. Created using the Processing programming language, the pieces visualize the changing relationships among different social network simulations, each with unique initial conditions and social rules. The resultant imagery represents a visual history of these dynamic behaviors, with colors, forms and motions varying as the relationships unfold across each system. Installed as part of the 2010 CHAT Festival at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in February 2010. [festival page] [HD video captures: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8] [top]
Emergence (2009-) is the first massively multiplayer online game designed to privilege diplomacy, cooperation, and collaborative world creation over violence, competition, and destruction. Its distributed experimental game interface tactically redefines popular conceptions of MMORPGs. The Emergence rules and game elements create an interactive ecology in which players help themselves by helping others, thereby gaining visceral appreciation of the consequences of their actions. Emergence is a collaborative project with Patrick Jagoda, Tim Lenoir, Brent Sodman, Lucas Best, Harrison Lee, and Pinar Yoldas. [HD Quicktime presentation] [back to top]
VacilLogix™ / Slightly Sociopathic Software™ (2007-) is a social media startup company founded in 2007 as the first entrepreneurial venture to fully embrace the limitless productive power of sociopathy. As stated in its corporate mission statement, VacilLogix™ is committed to the creation of social value derivatives and the universal democratization of sociopathic technologies. Our goal is complete deregulation of social value systems. As such, VacilLogix™ considers itself not just a software brand, but a social movement, a cultural revolution, a collective art performance to "outcode our moral code." [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]
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 experiment in the sonification of human crowd movement data. [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 microscopy cross-sections of fruit fly imaginal disk cells and automatically reassembling them into 3D 'landscapes' in Maya. [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]
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]
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 Genealogy 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 University. 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. [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. [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. [website] [back to top]
Things Fall Apart (2010) is a series of eight generative software works that illustrates the enchanting fragility of social systems. Created using the Processing programming language, the pieces visualize the changing relationships among different social network simulations, each with unique initial conditions and social rules. The resultant imagery represents a visual history of these dynamic behaviors, with colors, forms and motions varying as the relationships unfold across each system. Installed as part of the 2010 CHAT Festival at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in February 2010. [festival page] [press] [HD video captures: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8]
"VacilLogix™ : When Social Networks Go Sociopathic" (2009) is a 20-minute multimedia performance delivered as part of the "Decoding Social Networks" panel at the 2009 Decodings conference for the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts on November 6, 2009, in Atlanta, Georgia. The performance explores the nascent phenomenon that is VacilLogix™ and argues for its immense critical significance of its sociopathic software products as anticipating the next generation of social media applications. The panel also featured presentations by Patrick Jagoda and Zach Blas. [PDF] [back to top]
Next Nature Biggest Visual Power Show (2008), curated by Koert van Mensvoort & Mieke Gerritzen. 17 May 2008. Million Dollar Theater, Los Angeles. Work exhibited: Live Performance of VacilLogix™ Brand Launch. [website] [back to top]
Exit Strategies: 2008 MFA Show (2008), curated by Jennifer Steinkamp. 15-29 May 2008. New Wight Gallery, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA. Work exhibited: Slightly Sociopathic Software: VacilLogix™ Brand Launch installation. [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. [website] [back to top]
PALM MFA show (2006), curated by Christian Moeller. 07 - 12 December 2006. The New Wight Gallery, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA. [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. [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. [website] [back to top]
"Response without Responsibility : Twittered Subjects" (2009) is a short position paper delivered as a response to the "Twittered Subjects" panel at the 2009 Decodings conference for the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts on November 7, 2009, in Atlanta, Georgia. The panel featured papers by Bill Seaman, Tim Lenoir, and Mark Hansen. The paper argues for the sociopathic potential of social media as its most salient critical possibility. [PDF] [back to top]
"Interface/Power/Culture & the Coming Revolution" (2008) is an artist talk I delivered at Duke University in the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies on 21 October 2008. As our culture becomes increasingly digitally mediated, interfaces are the material sites where power confronts bodies, as the coded microphysics of power meet human desires. Overturning traditional media studies perspectives that dismiss interfaces as merely distracting façades for data, hardware, and algorithms, I assert that interfaces are primary, interface matters. [PDF] [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 presentation 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. [conference abstract] [back to top]
“Objects of Our Affection: How Object-Orientation Made Computation a Medium” (forthcoming in 2010) in Erkki Huhtamo & Jussi Parikka (eds.), Media Archaeologies: Approaches, Applications, and Implications (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming in 2010). [back to top]
“VacilLogix™: Slightly Sociopathic Software™” (2009) in Koert van Mensvoort & Mieke Gerritzen (eds.), Real Nature is Not Green: The Best of the Visual Power Shows (DVD) (All Media Production, 2009). [DVD] [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). [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. [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. [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). [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. [PDF] [back to top]
Duke University's Art, Art History & Visual Studies studio course Interactive Graphics: Critical Code (ARTSVIS 183L) 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. [Spring 2010 course site] [Spring 2009 course site] [back to top]
Duke University's Art, Art History & Visual Studies studio course Introduction to Visual Practice (ARTSVIS 54) introduces students to the basic principles and methods of a large variety of visual practices. Exercises, readings, and student projects are designed to lay down a foundation for future intermediate and advanced visual arts classes, as well as advanced work in the field of visual studies. Conceptual and experiential work focuses on basic 2D & 3D composition, drawing, color theory, photographic and architectural principles, as well as basic work in time-based media such as, film, video, and performance. [Spring 2010 course site] [back to top]
Duke University's Art, Art History & Visual Studies studio course Virtual Form & Space: Bodies of Evidence (ARTSVIS 108) uses the Maya 3D modeling and animation application and the Python programming language to create innovative data representations. Students explore the principles of information design with an emphasis on creating novel artworks that are not limited to conventional information design formats. Course projects emphasize critical and technical fluency and productive critique of work. [Fall 2009 course syllabus] [HD video of Fall 2009 student work] [Maya + Python tutorial] [back to top]
Duke University's Art, Art History & Visual Studies studio course Gaming the System: Pervasive Gaming as Art (ARTSVIS 173) explores the genre of alternate reality or pervasive gaming, in which the computer gameplay extends beyond typical screen spaces to any area of players' lives. In designing and staging their own alternate reality games as a transformative social actions, the course fosters an understanding of how blurring common distinctions between gameplay and life opens new critical possibilities for artistic interventions. [Fall 2009 course syllabus] [back to top]
Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation Visual Studies course Objects of Our Affection explores the tacit materiality of object-orientation and its implications for architectural theory and practice as fertile territories for both architectural critique and inspiration. Through historical and theoretical readings, in-class discussions and visual experiments using the Processing programming environment, students gain critical, practical and visual fluency in the aesthetics of object-orientation. [Quicktime video of Spring 2009 student work] [Spring 2009 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 combines 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. In June 2003, I received Stanford University's Centennial Award for Undergraduate Teaching. [view course list] [view Centennial Award announcement] [back to top]