Research

Instagram Reels Mapping

How does the algorithm carry you from one reel to the next? Instagram Reels Mapping records those paths and renders them as a browsable map, the data engine behind the Portable Instagram Reels Viewing Devices. The project turns an invisible, personalised feed into something you can hold and trace; it asks how algorithmic distribution shapes attention, and what survives when you try to archive the ephemeral.

Artist Website + Portfolio Builder

Can you streamline the process of making a website and portfolio? Art schools seem to hand you a formula; can an algorithm implement it? The Artist Website + Portfolio Builder takes an artist's photos and writing and returns a shareable website and a downloadable PDF portfolio. The tool also poses a question about authorship and standardisation: what happens once you automate the conventions of the art-school portfolio? Contact me with any feedback.

Note: a private server stores the photos and keeps emails private. You can also make a site without storing anything, in which case the tool formats everything and hands it right back to you. To edit later, re-upload the folders in the ZIP file to the site.

selling shovels

Selling Shovels takes its name from the gold rush, where the reliable fortunes went to whoever sold the picks, the passage and the maps rather than to the miners. The film cuts 97 clips from 36 of the best-known online-business gurus into one continuous pitch: how easy it looks, all you need to do, the figure per month, the price, the course, the odds, sign up. Each clip keeps its speaker's name and title on screen, and each line links back to the moment in its source below. The archive underneath the film holds the earlier shovel-sellers: the 1850 map of the gold region, the correspondence schools of Scranton, Charles Atlas, the Famous Artists School, Ponzi. Same trade, older paper.