Contact Information

My contact information
and Curriculm Vitae

Analog Logic

Analog Logic:
Analog, Continuous-Time Circuits for Statistical Signal Processing

Magneto-
Acoustic
Infinite-Sustain
Guitar

The Magneto-Acoustic Infinite-Sustain
Gypsy-Jazz Guitar is the first acoustic guitar with sustain and the first sustain guitar to use DSP.

Games
for Song

My Collection of Games for Musical Improvisation in Groups

The Flying Karamazov Brothers

L'Universe

A Musical Technological Juggling Show That I Helped Build

The
Mustn't
Grumble

A Viola, Bassoon, Trumpet, Washboard, a home-built Magneto-Acoustic Gypsy Jazz Sustain Guitar, and many great guest musicians,
The Mustn't Grumble is our avante-garde old-time gypsy-jazz swing band.

TouchTags

Accessing Data Stored in Objects Via Touch.

This project combined an electrostatic rfID tag reader that I built with sending low-frequency ~100kHz signals across the skin.

The Comput-
ational Universe

Yael Maguire and I have been writing a textbook for Cambridge University Press, as part of their Information and the Natural Sciences Series, while also teaching this course at the MIT Media Lab. We introduce the numerous ways that computation manifests in physical systems, from tinker toys to black holes and from cell phones to biological cells.

The course is intended for graduate students (or advanced undergraduates) in science or engineering interested in modeling information processing in the systems they study or design, and is intended to prepare students to participate in extending computation beyond the end of Moore's Law. We introduce many computationally universal models including factor graphs, constrained optimization, cellular automata, spin glasses, nonlinear dynamical systems, genetic algorithms, self-organizing systems, self-reproducing logic, and quantum operators.

This project originally started at the end of the semester in Neil Gershenfeld's Physics of Information Technology class (also in the Cambridge University Press series), when we realized that we had learned a great deal about the physics of communication, but not about the physics of computation. That led to our "Babbage" Student Study Group at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms where we originally gathered much of the material for this course.

The Double Lipsmack Bluegrass Band

My Old String Band. We played some beautiful shows at the Zeitgeist Gallery in Cambridge, MA including a live soundtrack for Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times.

Hex Dna

Saul Griffith and I Built a Self Assembling NanoScale 2D Lattice Made with DNA. Basically it was a chicken wire fence with 10nm holes in it. We thought a structure like this might be useful for seeding protein crystallization.

Electric Bass Hammer Dulcimer

A Novel Musical Instrument For Games for Song

Printed Plastic
Guitar

A Plastic Electric Guitar that I printed using
a laser-cutter and water-jet cutter.

Ekazoo

A Noise Maker That Teaches Jazz Modulation designed with Saul Griffith

Songs from
an Empty Chair

I recorded these songs with my friend John Rice. Thank you John.

Bucky Spins

My Happy Rock Band with Clark Kemp and Dan Paluska (Now de-funked)

Design That Matters

A not-for-profit that grew out of the curriculum and community surrounding Thinkcycle.org at MIT, of which I was a co-founder.

Outreach, Education, Innovation for Sustainable Development at designthatmatters.org

Invent Music

Dave Merrill and I organized the Experimental Musical Instrument Workshop at MIT for instrument builders who want to take their instrument projects to the next level: performance.

Our semi-monthly "build days", our MIT IAP workshops, and our blog, www.inventmusic.org (click on image), are forums for musicians and luthiers to meet, brainstorm, build, jam, and interact with a number of guest artists including (so far) John Zorn, George Lewis, Evan Ziporyn, and Tan Dun.

David Vigoda
Writing

My father's independent small press for thoughtful, emerging writers and their readers.

Liz Vigoda Pottery

My mother's beautiful handmade pottery. View her online catalog.

Ben and Lauren's Wedding
09 20 2008

I am super excited that Lauren and I are planning our wedding for September 20, 2008 at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts.