Owen Kirby

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Owen Kirby

TouchDesigner Developer

owen_kirby@hotmail.com

Member Since 2021

Bio

I am a fluently bilingual (English and French) audio-visual artist and interactive
media developer.
My love for electronic sound and real-time audio-visual workflows have helped me develop a deep understanding of the audio-synthesis elements of TouchDesigner; discovering and fine-tuning techniques and
workflows that I have shared through my online tutorials and workshops.
My expertise in TouchDesigner allows me to create and implement a wide variety of interactive scenarios.
Whether it be a permanent installation, screen based, sound based or some kind of never-seen-before multisensorial experience, I can make it happen!
In addition, I am a dual Canadian and Irish citizen, allowing me to work in both Canada and throughout the EU.

Education

2010-2013
Concordia University BA, Electroacoustic Music Composition

Work & Experience

Freelance TouchDesigner Programmer Never Apart
August 2020 through Present

Earth Room is a permanent installation by artist Kelly Nunes at the Centre Never Apart in Montreal. I programmed the custom ceiling LED panels with an Aurora Borealis effect using various interactions between the user’s seating placements, the soundtrack and triggered audio-visual effects depending on the various states of the room. I also programmed the generative spatialized audio system.

TouchDesigner Developper kellynunes.com
Nov 2019 - Jun 2020

I was engaged as Technical Director to help deliver an immersive media installation for the private collection of Lightspeed founder Dax Dasilva. My duties involved designing and developing the media
switching and playback device interface along with hardware control, wrangling a point-cloud particle
system into a real-time generative audiovisual experience and programming the 3D LED light array
with various audio-reactive modes.

Toolmaker in Residence Signal Culture
Aug 2019-Sep 2019

I participated in the Signal Culture “Toolmaker in Residence” program where I worked with various
TouchDesigner tools to develope my artistic practice. During the Residence, I created a component that
made it easy to achieve John Whitney inspired “differential dynamics” effects.

TouchDesigner Developer Jonathan Kawchuk/Mutek
Aug 2017

For this Project I was asked to work alongside artist and musician Jonathan Kawchuk to create a real-time, 360 video experience to go alongside his show for Mutek, an international electronic music and digital arts festival in Montreal. We crunched it hard for less than a month but managed to come up with something pretty different than your typical dome show. Here Jonathan wanted to focus on using the dome as a source of light rather than a projection screen.

TouchDesigner Developer Société des arts technologiques [SAT]
Mar 2017 - May 2017

“Plateaux” is an immersive audiovisual performance done in real-time. Inspired by the cycle of essays “Capitalism and Schizphrenia” by Deleuze and Guattari, the work illustrates the place of the individual in a universe which is in constant motion in relationaship to the self, the other and their environment.

TouchDesigner Developer Société des arts technologiques [SAT]
Feb 2017 - Mar 2017

Irradiance was a projection mapping project which made use of 12 real-time sensor inputs each capturing a different band of “frequency data” which ranged from seismographic data to x-rays and more. This data feed was sonified and visualized in various manners and then selected and displayed in sequence.

Professional Skills

  • Audio Spatialization
  • Full-Dome Interactive Media
  • Project Optimization
  • Real-time Audio-Visual Artist Tools
  • Troubleshooting

Portfolio