Aidan Nelson

I am an NYC-based creative developer currently building Arium, a web-based platform for immersive virtual experiences and teaching media and technology at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Find me on Github, LinkedIn, lurking on Twitter or write an old-fashioned email to aidanjosephnelson at gmail dot com.


Projects

Experiments in Digital Storytelling

La MaMa and CultureHub’s Experiments in Digital Storytelling Program incubates story-driven art works that harness digital distribution platforms, expand online audience engagement, and push the boundaries of current artistic forms.

3D Reconstruction (NERF, Gaussian Splatting)

Recent experiments with Neural Radiance Field (NERF) rendering and 3D Gaussian Splatting.

Arium

Arium enables artists and curators to build immersive experiences in 3D virtual worlds, showcase digital artwork and engage their communities through immersive live events – all in a web browser.

YORB 2020

Connected virtual space built by and for the NYU ITP/IMA community.

Previsualization Tool: Judgment Day

Custom previzualization tool for theatrical creative team to plan large-scale scenic moves.

Eye in the Sky

Interactive tabletop simulation-game presented at NYC Media Lab Summit for AMC Networks on 'Synthetic Media & The Future of Storytelling'

Motion Platform

Unity C# library for control of a 3DOF motion platform

Workflow: Unity to TensorflowJS

Porting neural networks trained in Unity's ML-Agents reinforcement learning platform for use on the web with TensorflowJS.

Refracting Rays

A series of playfully impractical lenses and an interactive drawing application gives audience members a way to intuitively engage with optics and the phenomenon of refraction.

Library of Places

A new search vehicle for the Library of Congress' unfathomably massive photo archive, this experiment uses the analog of a roadtrip as a search through these collections.

p5.js WebGL Improvements

As part of Google Summer of Code in 2018, I made a number of usability improvements to the p5.js open-source creative coding library, with the goal of easing the transition from coding in a 2D environment to a 3D environment for a beginner coder.

NYC Soundscape

The project for Data x Design 2019 reimagines routes through the city as tracks on a musical sequencer, drawing on New York City's open geo-spacial data (of trees, subway entrances, wifi access points, etc.) as notes on these tracks.

CT Scanning Butterflies

Engaging museum-goers as citizen-scientists through an immersive interfaces for computed tomography (CT) imagery.

Paradise Blues

An exploration into the affordances of voice recognition in virtual reality, in which audiences are invited to experience the frustration and disappointment that comes with unlimited power.

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