“Sankofa City” Dissertation

Sankofa City is my dissertation project, based on 4+ years of working with Ben Caldwell and the Leimert Phone Company.

We will explore the nexus of emerging technology, art, and community-based urban design, to provide visions for the future of local innovation and cultural development in Los Angeles.

“Sankofa City” is a collaboration between USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab, Ben Caldwell’s Kaos Network, and Urban Systems nonprofit autonomous vehicles company. The project proves that large research universities, nonprofits, and local communities can work together and empower local citizens to imagine alternative urban technologies that work for the public good.

The advent of new urban-based technologies means that the future form of Los Angeles will be unlike anything one can now imagine. For example, how might self-driving vehicles and augmented reality be used to change our relationship to the city – to even change the city itself? We will conduct a series of collaborative workshops with artists, students, technical experts, and local Leimert Park residents, to create vivid scenarios of the possibilities to share with the public and spark debate.

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Pershing Square Renew Win

Video for winning Pershing Square redesign project! As seen on LA Times, Archinect, SoCal Public Radio, ABC 7, and more!

In April 2016, I directed the interviews and live action shooting for Agence Ter and Team’s redesign for Downtown Los Angeles’s Pershing Square. Their design was one of the final four in a larger Pershing Square Renew competition. The proposal was focused on a flat, democratic, and green design – one that would be timeless and open to new generations. Ultimately the team won, beating out the three other teams (including notable figures such as James Corner and Thom Mayne).

Now that Agence Ter has won, there is talk of me creating a larger video installation based on all of the remaining (and unused) interviews and city footage.

DTLA Street Futures wins at New Urbanism Film Festival

“DTLA Street Futures” Mini Documentary

Winner of “Best Active Transportation Film” at the New Urbanism Film Festival on October 7 in Los Angeles. As seen on Streetsblog LA and CicLAvia.

This video is an exploration, a conversation starter about the future of streets in LA. It’s indicative of a desire for a different experience of the city. An experience driven by two wheels rather than four. A design driven by very real issues of sustainability, livability, and affordability.

Project Reel 2015

Writer/Director/Cinematographer/Editor

Reel of work from 2011-2015. Includes documentary, fiction, and experimental video.

Music: Dan Deacon “True Thrush”

“Sankofa Says” Big Urban Game at Indiecade

“Sankofa Says” is a place-based game that brings people together on the streets of Culver City as part of Indiecade 2014. To succeed, players join flash rallies at local landmarks, make phone calls to answer riddles about local history, and tell truth from neighborhood fiction.

Every adventure requires hitting the streets, meeting new people. Even locals will encounter a few surprises. With a little luck, you will discover strange cinema history, play with public art, and even help tell the story of Culver City yourself.
More on the game: http://www.sankofa.cc
More on our group: http://www.leimertphonecompany.net/

Ride South LA video at the Guggenheim

The video I made for the Ride South LA group was featured in the Guggenheim Museum’s new exhibit on the Participatory City. Our contribution is a response to the term “Collaborative Urban Mapping,” based on our work in South LA with the Healthy Food Map. The video was funded as part of the Guggenheim’s exhibit, which addresses “100 Urban Trends from the BMW Guggenheim Lab,” and is showing from October 11, 2013 through January 5, 2014. The exhibit explores the major themes and ideas that emerged from the Lab during its travels to New York, Berlin, and Mumbai. See all videos in the collection in a YouTube playlist (ours is #25).

Memory Cellars

Memory Cellars is an augmented tour of the new Cinema building. The tour is constructed of binaural sound and voice acting to build a speculative future in which the building is a distributed archive and research headquarters for the MemCel company. The fictional characters give competing stories of the mysterious on goings of the company’s research and it’s foundation. The different stories and archival information are distributed throughout the building and triggered by the participant’s proximity. So it’s up to the participant to traverse the building in order to find different narrative clues and put the pieces together. In addition each story ends with a prompt in which the participant can record their own memories or ideas and thus add to the archive.

The Leimert Phone Company

The Leimert Phone Company is a community design project in South Los Angeles. By repurposing payphones, the project seeks to reclaim public space and create cultural portals to local arts, music, and business. South LA is set to change over the next 10 years as planners focus on development around a new subway line through the area. In the face of possible gentrification, how can a community art project deepen neighborhood identity and broaden access to local business? Our collaborative team chose payphones as sites for public intervention and transmedia storytelling tied to justice.

The Leimert Phone team is composed of students from USC and local artists from Leimert Park. Through a 5-week workshop participants formed 3 project groups to develop unique designs. The workshop used rapid-prototyping and playtesting to facilitate lo-fi transmedia designs to share stories and access local music, history, artwork, and business. Each group presented their work on April 6, 2013 to local residents, students, and a panel of expert community organizers. The groups’ presentations included concept videos, detailed design handouts, visual mockups, and a hardware demo. Examples included a phone to play, download, and purchase tickets to local hip-hop acts. Other one sent you on a scavenger hunt to local businesses to collect stories and receive discounts. (Check out group videos http://leimertphonecompany.net/week-4-concept-videos/)