Connecting through Kinect is two-player game for the Microsoft kinect to encourage complex emotion recognition and collaboration between autistic people and their peers. Players must work together to form figures and choose their correct emotional responses to situations in the story. Its aim is to be a helpful intervention for children on the autism spectrum. It was developed in collaboration with autistic college students. I created the visuals, co-designed the storyline and functionality of the game and animated the accompanying scenes.

Below are screen stills of stimuli I made for psychology experiments conducted at UCLA and CUNY by Dr. Kristen Gillespie-Lynch and colleagues. The videos and animations were used in eye tracker experiments to guage the response of infants and assess symptoms of autism.

Joint Attention 1. An eye tracking assessment of early shared attention designed to assess symptoms of autism in infancy. Videos, animations.

Joint Attention 2. An eye tracking measure of the ability to learn words from opportunities to share social attention. Videos, animations.

Emotion Integration. An eye tracking measure of the effects of emotional cues on shared attention. Videos, animations (gif simulation).

Visual Search Eye Tracking Experiment. A perceptual task assessing the speed with which a participant locates a discrepent target in an array. Videos, animations.

Wireframe for autism communication and planning app for ipad. Children scroll through choices of current activities to reflect on what emotions they experience. Once decided they are able to choose how much time they will spend.

Illustrations for articles about shared attention.

List of publications my work has contributed to:

Deficit, difference or both? Autism and neurodiversity

Eye Tracking as a measure of Responsiveness to Joint Attention in Infants at Risk for Autism

Responsiveness to Joint Attention in Autism: Predictive Characteristics and Concurrent Mechanisms

Atypical Gaze Following in Autism: A Comparison of Three Potential Mechanisms

Response to and initiation of Joint Attention: Overlapping but distinct roots of development in Autism?

Other Illustration

Music

Mount Vision Template Breather is the collection of tracks formed out of a collaboration with choreographer Janessa Clark and dancer Stevie Oakes titled "Station". Based around this improvisational music and dance peice, the sounds of MVTB contain the saturated and grizzled textures inspired by the 200 year old Catskill church in which it was composed and executed. Many sounds were sampled from within "The Church" (so named by Upstate Production Services Inc., the non-profit which sponsored the work). STATION. (2018) Taking up residence in a 200-year old former Baptist Church, two dancers and an electronic composer will examine ideas around encounters, rituals, architecture and witnessing. This site-specific work will excavate the church's history and archives to create a duet unique to the space. Three people from different places encounter each other in a place foreign to all. What can come from deep listening? Performed by Janessa Clark, Stevie Oakes, and David Shane Smith Original music by David Shane Smith