Abstract

This lecture will explore Blockchain’s origins and its role as an artistic medium and distribution tool. Furthermore, how has blockchain catalyzed art markets and museological practices? How has it revitalized an interest in the broader history of digital art and what are its limitations?

Bio

cactoidlabs.io, is an experimental artist-driven blockchain consultancy specializing in bridging Web3, Digital Art and Museums lead by Lady Cactoid and Crypto Cactoid. _______An artist and co-founder of Cactoid Labs, Crypto Cactoid is a Full Stack developer specializing in blockchain, Solidity, Ordinals, Machine Learning and APIs, with 15 years experience working with metadata at scale, engineering SAAS systems that operate billions of API calls per month, as well as Merkle Trees, ERC721A, ERC1155, and L2s. He has built Contracts and Full Stack Web3 for leading artists and institutions including 0xDEAFBEEF and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art._______Lady Cactoid (a.k.a. Yael Lipschutz) is a curator, art historian and co-founder of Cactoid Labs. She holds a PhD in Art History and has organized large-scale exhibitions at institutions such as the Los Angeles Museum of Art, the and The Getty. She works as an independent curator and scholar, specializing in art and technology. She is the Artistic Director of the Digital Leaders Circle at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the author of numerous books and articles, including Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada (LACMA, Prestel), Cameron: Songs for the Witchwoman (The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles), and World Without End: The George Washington Carver Project (Hirmer, forthcoming 2026).

For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
seminar.mat.ucsb.edu.

Abstract

With haptic technologies increasingly embedded in commercially available devices, vibrotactile feedback is now appearing in streaming music platforms, gaming environments, VR/AR systems, and assistive devices. Haptic feedback has been shown to enhance the music listening experience [1], and recent musical haptics research has pursued greater tactile specificity and multi-feature extraction [2]. Despite these developments, relatively few musical works are composed specifically for audio–haptic realization.

The research undertaken in this Master’s project is a practice-based exploration of musical composition for coupled audio–haptic media through a multimodal gallery installation, Feel4UTM. The work renders music simultaneously as acoustic sound and distributed bodily vibration through three stereo haptic stations—two wearable systems and one handheld device. Haptics and sound were developed in tandem, with each modality mutually informing the content and structure of the composition. All synthesis, sequencing, and signal processing were custom designed for the installation. Filtering and transient detection are used to derive the haptic signal directly from the audio, allowing harmonic, rhythmic, and textural decisions to shape both sound and vibration. The composition unfolds across five large-scale sections, each oriented toward a distinct affective direction. The installation was presented in an open gallery setting where visitors engaged with the work independently over extended exhibition hours, introducing practical constraints distinct from a traditional seated concert performance.

As vibration becomes an increasingly common component of mediated listening, compositional methodologies must expand to account for how musical structures translate onto the body. This project presents observations from the process of creating an audio–haptic composition and installation. Musical, technical, and interaction design considerations are discussed, and several preliminary compositional guidelines for audio–haptic media are proposed.

Intertwined Practices: Computational Approaches for Handmade Textile Crafts

Abstract

Textile craftsmanship is a complex and powerful form of making that, for centuries, has developed and refined methods for manipulating fibers, producing textiles with distinct structures, functions, and cultural significance. Digital fabrication tools have long been intertwined with textile production, particularly in crafts well-suited for automation. In this dissertation, I adopt a craft-centered perspective to explore how digital fabrication can expand the expressive potential of handmade textile practices that remain too complex for machines to mimic. I present a series of works that investigate the integration of computational tools and manual methods that operate together (1) to produce new forms of handmade textile crafts, (2) inform new computational design tools for textile crafts, and (3) create more accessible and personally meaningful entry points into computational making for crafters, youth, and creative learners. My work is evaluated with craft enthusiasts, crochet practitioners, and high school students through a series of workshops and the design and production of physical textile artifacts. The findings suggest that it is possible to integrate computational tools in a way that respects, follows, and extends traditional techniques while enabling innovative artifacts, characteristics, and functionality.