it's summer (again) (somehow)! (🦄/🌊/👋🏻/🧵/🎲)
in which a pile of rocks is also poetry, 200 hands make light work, and really (for real, forever) the only thing to do is trust the process
🦄 WELCOME TO THE INFINITE KALEIDOSCOPE » 48 hours before our Physical Computing final, the floor is chaos. “The floor” is where it all happens: daytime classes, evening guest lectures, midnight mad science experiments, green room meets playground meets construction site, all of it bursting at the seams of a single office building floor. Weekends are usually fairly quiet — but of course finals season is anything but a usual time. Midterms are hardly over before the semi-orderly maze of worktables and stackable red supply bins is already mutating rapidly into a wild thicket of projects-in-process, emergency snack stockpiles, and sleep deprivation as just about everyone across our ~200 person program rallies to stitch, solder, debug, and glue their way to the finish line.
Having now completed my first full year in the program, I’m still so moved by how quickly it became normal to work like this, shoulder to shoulder on projects that could not be more different, but also very often would not materially exist without each other. At this time last year I hadn’t even met the people I spend every day inspired and challenged by, let alone tested and reimagined the boundaries of my own creative impulses and possibilities alongside them. I had never wired a circuit, used a soldering iron, written a for() loop (or, as happened, written it so poorly it shut down my computer — and then fixed it!), mapped my own MIDI, built a 3D model, created audience-reponsive projections, pitched and prototyped and scrapped and prototyped again.
Even given everything we’ve absorbed and accomplished so far, I still hardly know how to describe ITP, this “art school for engineers and engineering school for artists,” or the place I’ve been slowly — gratefully, chaotically, astronomically privileged-ly — getting to discover for myself within it. If I can tell you at least one true thing about it, let it be that maybe the heart of it is closest to articulable in these little details, the many-branching paths of collaboration and possibility springing up even (and perhaps especially) at these eleventh hour moments before we have to shed ourselves of the process and send our projects out into the world. The tools that are handed across the table without a second thought. The unexpectedly relevant threads from our before-this professional lives and contexts freely offered. The fresh pot of coffee always in the works in the kitchen when someone notices we’re out. The infinite kaleidoscope of everything we’ve ventured thus far, and whatever wonders we might, together, stumble into next.
🌊 BEFORE I KNOW IT I AM ALREADY + 2024 ITP/IMA WINTER SHOW » At the end of every semester, we have an open house gallery-style show where students show work they’ve made during the semester — which means all the worktables and bins and shop tools and random ephemera I mentioned above have to get packed away in the course of an afternoon. Turns out when you have 200 students at hand to essentially bucket brigade an entire floor, you can transform a space pretty quickly! (And hey, if you’re in New York and/or planning to be this coming December — come on by next year’s Winter Show to check out our work in person!)
I showed my poem sculpture before I know it I am already, an interactive reimagining of my poem walking home in the dark (is still walking home). The words of the poem are projected in light onto a bed of river rocks — if no one is nearby, the words are in restless chaos, an illegible rush. But if someone draws near, and stays near for long enough, the words slow, eventually resolving into the full poem. I’m still working on full public documentation for this project (watch this space! :) ), but in the meantime here is a quick video demonstrating the interaction at the show, as well as a peek into the process from my final in-class presentation!
👋🏻 DEVANKWS.COM 2.0 » Wrapping up this first year of grad school also meant it was time to build a better, more up-to-date home for my work on the internet! I spent the first few weeks of summer vacation learning how to code my portfolio site from scratch — if you’re interested in seeing more of what I’ve been working on this year, come on over to the new and improved www.devankws.com! (please visit via a desktop browser, mobile view is still under construction! :))
🧵ITP CAMP » This June the ITP floor transformed once again to welcome the 15th year of ITP Camp, a month-long, unconference-style adult summer camp exploring all things creative tech! I got to help run the day-to-day as a part of the camp counselor team, and it was so inspiring to meet new folks and participate in the broader ITP community in a new way. Some particular highlights were co-producing the end-of-camp gallery show, co-leading a hands-on mending workshop, and leading a session all about getting + giving better creative feedback — not to mention a lot of puzzles, some truly beautiful conversations, and getting to work with some of my favorite people. (If you’re interested in exploring creative tech in any way, at truly any experience level, ITP Camp is a very cool place to do it — registration for summer 2026 will open next spring!)
🎲 ROLL FOR LEARNING + JUKEBOX: THE KARAOKE TTRPG MUSICAL » My game Pangaea Pals and my quickstart playset One Last Job are now available!
🦕Pangaea Pals is a STEM journaling game for ages 7+ — it’s my first serious game, and it was so meaningful to design something that can hopefully support educators + imagination-centered learning! Many thanks to the editors of Roll for Learning for including Pangaea Pals in their free, open-source anthology — for more, check out playstorypress.org!
🎤One Last Job is an indie pop, heist-themed playset for Jar of Eyes/Lyla McBeath-Fujiwara’s wonderful storytelling game Jukebox: The Karaoke Musical TTRPG! It was so fun getting to indulge both my games nerdery and my musical theatre nerdery in one project — for the full game + all of the incredible playsets by the collaborating writer team, check out jarofeyes.itch.io!
Games are one of those things that just aren’t truly finished until someone picks them up on the other side — as with everything I make, if you give either of these a spin I’d love to hear how it goes!
until next time —
❤️ devan
Thank you so much for detailing your adventures! You continue to amaze and delight with your creativity and drive <3