Austin Field Trip May 2025
One thing the Creative Media Lab loves to do is foster collaborations. As such we ventured out to UT Austin’s Lab for Immersive Media, Grotto 101 Performance Lab and Jerry’s House.
The Lab for Immersive Media at UT Austin was founded by Michael Baker and is run by Kyle Evans, an amazing artist, arts facilitator and professor. Before working for UT Kyle has a track record of doing serious performance arts in the community and for being a connectory for artists through his concurrent venture DadaLabs, a community centric space for creatives. Our visit was with Kyle and and lab maintainer Micheal. They gave us a full tour, explained their interactive wall that incorporates 16 camera tracking system that was truly amazing to experience. They discussed their interdisciplinary collaborations across campus. We discussed what future collaboration might look like and performances we would like to collaborate on. Our current hope is to have a Spring 2026 Synthposium where we host speakers from their lab and Dadalabs. We cannot thank Kyle enough for taking the time to show us the space.
The Grotto 101 Performance Space is run by Heather Barfield Ph.D. a performance artist, performance arts facilitator and active scholar. The Grotto 101 is located in south Austin and provides an intiment performance space for artists to perform and practice. We had some great coversations about her visiting and ideating about possible collaborations in BCS. We would like to thank Heather Barfield Ph.D. for hosting us.
Last but not least we went to Jerry’s House. We could write a whole book about Jerry’s House. Basically it is a house that was inhabited by Jerry Chamkis and is has been since bought and continued on as a private meeting space. The meet ups held there are legendary and so many stories are in the walls. Jerry was a polymath who worked at the Texas School for the Blind and also was a general hacking community connectory. It was a pleasure to get invited to stop by and see what people were up to.
TAMU Skaters Skateboard Features – Gabe
The TAMU Skaters student organization led by student org president Gabe and Faculty sponsor joey phd took on a summer skateboard feature building initiative. Based out of the porch of joey phd’s house, TAMU Skater org members worked together to build multiple skate features such as quarter pipes, p-rail and wedge ramp throughout the summer with Gabe taking on multiple solo sessions to keep the builds on track as many students go home for the summer. The results have been amazing with one ramp already making it to campus. The features all have wheels making them ultra portable to move around campus for various events. We look forward to see how they are painted and utilized over the coming fall 2025 semester.
Polar.Booth Book Pop Up
This is a video from Aug 2025 where Will (Aka Seesar) and joey setup at Roundtree Market, in Bryan, TX where Polar Photobooth hosted a book theme polaroid shoot and Sarah, aka @BudgetGirl had a book giveaway. It was a good time and Will and I definitely enjoyed taking the eurorack synth out. Currently it is all Behringer modules as I am still learning the whole world of eurorack, my hope is to slowly replace each module with my own DIY built ones by niche designers and cover the process. So stay tuned. And thank you to both Valerie and Sarah for hosting an amazing event! The Creative Media Lab looks forward to collaborating with Roundtree Market on multiple events and programming in the future.
Lab update
The Creative Media Lab has big physical changes happening. The biggest is a full remodeling and expansion of the Creative Media Lab’s space. As such the Creative Media Lab as a space has been moved into Bolton Hall’s basement into rooms 010, 013, 014 and 020. Yes a lot of rooms, but the results have been quite amicable and has given focus to the various offering.
010 – CML Podcast Studio
013 – Gaming and Media Lab
014 – Audio & Video Post Production Studio
020 – Sim Racing/VR and Storage Space.
With a remodel completion date forecasted for Fall of 2026 we will continue to give updates over the coming semesters.
We currently do still have access to Bolton 113 where we will continue to host meet ups as well until construction starts.
Love Craft Book & Instrument Build – Will
Jonathan Dissertation Update
Joey’s Personal Projects
Below are 5 projects joey documented over the summer, they represent his polymath approach to life and what hey enjoys to do on his spare time.
Acrylic Synth Project
Coming Soon
Jojo’s Daft Punk 5 Questions
This video came out of a project jojo had to do for school. Will (aka Dr. Connor) and joey phd work through all the albums by Daft Punk with Jojo after he was assigned to talk about a famous person and their impact. The video covers the 5 questions assigned and we think this video resonates pretty well in terms of showing how children’s enthusiasm for pop culture can serve as amazing learning tools.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEKb-Nf1dbc
Joey & Jojo Switch 2 Release & Overview:
This second video is an overview of the Nintendo Switch 2 which was launched in early June. Additionally we also have a video of the night of as it was it was true “release” experience. Moments like this are always fun to document and again see how they resonate with others experiences.
Volkswagen GTI
Ahhh “Project GTI,” the bane of joey’s existence this summer, this 2005 VW GTI had an oil cooler leaking oil into the coolant system. To say it was a big job for a shade tree mechanic would be an understatement. Joey literally just watched Youtube videos to learn how to fix the car and documented the journey.
https://youtu.be/Y4-Pl-x8new?si=SF4NKBaerv2b1uYz
Lawnmower Overhaul
Joey went to mow the lawn and some how ended up making a lawn mower service video.
https://youtu.be/r6oYV_J6YG4?si=UTv7XGdUVJ1xDo5-