Greg Borenstein is an artist and researcher in New York. His work explores the use of special effects as an artistic medium. He is fascinated by how special effects techniques cross the boundary between images and the physical objects that make them: miniatures, motion capture, 3D animation, animatronics, and digital fabrication.

Greg is a graduate of the NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program where he is currently a resident researcher. He recently finished writing a book for O'Reilly about the Microsoft Kinect, titled: Making Things See: 3D vision with Kinect, Processing, Arduino, and MakerBot

Work

Monolith is a stop-motion music video for the band Soars made with Calli Higgins. This video was selected for the Eastside and New Media film festivals.

The Valley of Heart's Delight: Tinkle Toy is a multimedia installation that uses special effects as an artistic medium to construct an absurd and eccentric monument to the origins of the personal computer.

'LO': October 29, 1969 is a multimedia monument to the birth of the internet.

Running of the Bulls is an electromechanical game built with Scott Wayne Indiana that lets you participate in a tiny version of the Festival of Sanfermines.

Physical GIF is a collaborative design project with Scott Wayne Indiana. It turns animated GIFs into magical tabletop toys. With a laser cutter and a strobe we give GIFs life off the screen. Follow Physical GIF on Kickstarter.

Face Fight is a collaborative drawing machine that allows two players to physically wrestle over control of a line in order to create a single drawing of both of their faces. More about Face Fight.

Homunculus is a video self-portrait that explores facial expressions and physical performance. In it, I use the position of my body to puppet a 3D model of my own head.

Open is a 30-second animated short about the adventures of a corkscrew. Hand drawn in Flash.

Tabula Rasa is a video meditation on the quiet of late night New York streets. It uses the music of Arvo Part and a composited miniature to reflect the beauty and calm of the midnight city.

Drift is a simple text editor that stores your documents as GitHub Gists so that they're always backed up and easily shared, built with Devin Chalmers and currently available in the App Store. More about Drift.

KAMAS: the Kinect Abnormal Motion Assessment System. A software system dedicated to automating the detection and tracking of movement disorders using the Microsoft Kinect. Winner of the national Health 2.0 Developer Challenge 2011. More about KAMAS.

Book

Greg is the author of Making Things See: 3D vision with Kinect, Processing, Arduino, and MakerBot, due out from O'Reilly January 12, 2012. The book uses the Processing creative coding environment to introduce readers to the basics of working with depth cameras, from basic pixel processing to drawing 3D point clouds and working with user-tracking skeleton data.

The book includes projects and introductory concepts in a wide range of application areas made possible by the Kinect: gestural interfaces, 3D scanning for fabrication, and robotic vision.

Making Things See is scheduled for a print release in January 2012. It is currently available in digital form through O'Reilly's Early Release program.

Code

Greg is proficient in a number of programming languages including Ruby, JavaScript, Java/Processing, C++ (for graphics with OpenFrameworks and for embedded systems with Arduino), and Objective-C. He has extensive experience in web programming including server- and client-side work for both his own startups and for an extensive list of clients. He also has experience creating and running open source projects including a few with a significant community of contributors. Below are the most prominent examples:

  • Ruby Arduino Development (RAD)
    A system for programming the Arduino microcontroller using Ruby. Created in 2008. It has a thriving community and is now maintained by others.
  • SegmentedPuppet
    An OpenFrameworks library for puppeteering a set of 3D model files with the Kinect skeleton data.
  • Oled
    An Arduino library for working with OLED screens.
  • TabSweeper
    A MacRuby app that helps you close your browser tabs and submit them to Instapaper and Pinboard.
  • jMacs
    A user-modifiable network-aware editor in Javascript and REST. Implemented with jQuery and Sinatra.
  • Gaggle
    A jQuery plugin for the Google ajax search API.
  • Spiffy Bird
    A bridge between the Songbird music player webpage API and the JSON Shareable Playlist Format.

Exhibits

  • 2012
    PULSE: Art and Technology Festival, Telfair Museum, Savannah, GA
  • 2012
    Untitled upcoming solo show, Ventana244
  • 2011
    FORMAT, The Luminary Center for the Arts, St. Louis, MO
  • 2011
    New Media Film Festival
  • 2011
    Southside Film Festival
  • 2011
    It Reminds Me, Ventana244
  • 2011
    Spring Show, NYU ITP
  • 2010
    Winter Show, NYU ITP
  • 2010
    Spring Show, NYU ITP
  • 2009
    Winter Show, NYU ITP

Talks

Upcoming

  • PULSE: Art and Technology Festival
    Savannah, GA, 27 February - 4 March, 2012 at Telfair Museum.

Past