updated april 2025:towards a new material reality; ontological & phenomenological deconstruction + emergencei am interested in re-arranging , transfiguring electrons, cells, and in breaking apart material reality to find what lies underneath.what is the unsayable aliveness that lies underneath phenomena?currently, much of my work lives within a feedback loop of deconstructing and reconfiguring mediums in an effort to deconstruct material reality to find what lies underneath phenomena. my inquiries lie in witnessing what emerges in this rearrangement of media - most prominently electrons (which builds up light, sound, etc.) and cells (which builds up life itself).i enjoy inhabiting the spaces in-between other mediums as well, including but not limited to: oil paint, words/language/second languages, sound, noise, charcoal, saliva, soft dynamic materials cuttlefish-inspired pedot:pss, white light, electrons, ultrasound, NIR-II, neurospora fungi, bits, iPSCs/cardiomyocytes, time, loveconcretely, this manifests as:
1) "creation": creating a novel medium of 'living ink' (ink made of iPSCs, neurospora fungi) via 3d bioprinting. witnessing self-assembly and emergence into higher order living forms. applying fungal bioink toward patterning organ vasculature, textiles, architectural materials, sculptures
2) "dissolution":
```a) manipulating electrons + experimenting with various modalities of energy (NIR-II light, ultrasound, 800nm light, heat, white light) to modulate cells / neurons via engineering of light-sensitive opsins into cells
````b) siddharth doshi's work: in engineering soft, dynamic nanomaterials inspired by cuttlefish camoflauge, how changes in material topology lead to change in color and texture on demand
3) "transfiguring": encoding poems (words as a medium) into 3d proteins, vascularizing proteins and bioprinting via neurospora fungal inki am inspired by others before me who have taken a similar approach toward deconstructing mediums and material reality to allow for a shining emergence:
- paul celan, words
- tehching hsieh, time
- clarice lispector, words
- gordon matta-clark, architecture/space
- bassiani/berghain/underground music scenes, space
- churches, cathedrals, temples, space
- mark skylar-scott, cells -> organs
- various experimental / left-field artists, including but not limited to: wordcolour, teqmun, barker, djrum, kk.shucko, minor sciencewhat is left behind in the transfiguration between mediums?secondary investigations:
- to develop a robust rule / paradigm to describe both natural and non-natural /human and nonhuman dynamical systems , how + why a system survives , and at what points does evolution vs. emergence occur
- all scientific models dissolve in the face of Love . to reach the limits of / break of scientific language and toggle between that and mystical / phenomenology wonder lens as an expression of agency & compassionrelated topics: chaotic mediums, emergence, self-assembly, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, dissipative structures, constraints-based evolution, complex systems, phenomenology, organ engineering, optogenetics, thermogenetics, photonics, organic transistorsopen questions:
what is the basic unit of aliveness?
what is the lowest energy state of a medium?
what does it mean to use life as a medium?
what does it mean to make art that is wholly alive?
what is left behind (anish kapoor red sculptures) or lost (vestiges) in the transition of the same qualia "it" between mediums?
where does the residue go?
should one aspire to create a form of non-lossy qualia exchange?
lispector's "it"
lispector's "neutral"
God?i am advised and supported by mark skylar-scott, alexander nemerov, guosong hong, and vayu hill-maini. i owe much to synergy house, uytengsu teaching lab, and all the warehouses and dancefloors i have grown up in, in strange corners of the world.
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updated november 2024:overarching goal:
right now, i’m building a hybrid studio/lab that functions as a physical feedback loop
wherein the scientific method is used to inquire about the nature of the world. novel qualia gained via observation + experimentation is expressed into a novel medium (this process defined as "art"). across various scales and domains, curiosity, questions, and agency guide everything, and creativity is encoded into the scientific method itself as patterns emerge.currently working on:
* precise spatiotemporal cell control using various energy modalities (i.e. heat, ultrasound, magnetism as alternatives to optogenetics) (w prof. guosong hong)
* exploring emergence and nonlinear dynamical systems via 3d bioprinting of stem cells into sculptures of self-assembly (w prof. mark skylar-scott)
* heterotopias (foucauldian): how and why do they form, esp. re: sociopolitical contexts. what are "cathedrals of the future"? phenomenology of space
* oil painting + charcoal drawingwhat i’ve done before:
* founded moonbear, a company that made ai tools accessible to biologists, democratized alphafold 2 early on, backed by backend capital, human capital, and y combinator.
* designed for iris van herpen (paris fashion week s/s 2024)
* built ai for drug discovery (blossom ai) and cancer diagnosis from histopathology slides (pocketonco)
* research in ai+bio with professor andrew ng at stanford ai lab
* longevity drug research for extending human lifespan at loyal
* researched cancer gene polymorphisms, novel fungal inhibitors, epigenetics, diver microscopy (six publications)
* bio-architectural design + engineering at stanford (independently designed major - on leave) w/ interdisciplinary arts honorsmy guides + inspirations:
clarice lispector, tehching hsieh, gordon matta-clark, daido moriyama, antoni gaudí, deana lawson. and michael murata and alexander nemerov for their guidance.extras:
co-founded health{hacks}, sienna solstice, published in ny times, national philosophy olympiad finalist, google brain speaker. solo traveled to 35+ countries. speak mandarin, portuguese, and german. born and raised in los angeles. lived in taipei, berlin, amsterdam, tbilisi, palo alto, new york city, boston, and san francisco in various capacities.


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