• Brian Foo

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  • White fragments of words floating on a black background

    Mixed Messages

    is an online tool for playing with people’s words.

    2025 Mar • small project
  • A fragmented image of the painting of Mona Lisa

    Art Breaker 3000

    is an app for demolishing and recycling famous artworks efficiently and beautifully. Photosensitiviy warning: contains flashing images

    2024 Sep • medium project
  • DJ Phonetic logo comprised of an open mouth with a red speaker as a tongue

    DJ Phonetic

    is an online tool for making beats with the kicks, snares, and hi-hats that are hidden within historical speech.

    2023 Sep • medium project
  • A collage of image fragments from cultural heritage material with hues of red, orange, and green

    CultureCraft

    is an online tool for painting with fragments of visual culture from renowned museums and libraries such as the Met, the Smithsonian, and the New York Public Library.

    2022 Sep • small project
  • A 3D map of the world with clusters of images stacked on each country

    Collectionscope

    is an open source 3D software engine for visualizing museum collections across time and space, developed at the American Museum of Natural History.

    2021 Oct • big project
  • A color-coded map of the United States showing density of monument data

    The National Monument Audit's Search Interface

    allows you to explore the 48,178 data records that make up the National Monument Audit’s “study set” to assesses the current monument landscape across the United States.

    2021 Sep • big project
  • A map of the New York City subway in three dimensional space with train lines raised like roller coaster tracks

    The Subway Above Ground

    is an interactive 3D map that makes income inequality visible along the NYC Subway by literally making the subway lines rise above ground.

    2021 Mar • small project
  • A dense collage of illustrated fish

    Paper Kingdom

    is a series of digital collages based on public domain scientific illustrations from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

    2021 Jan • small project
  • An iconic figure with headphones with the text Citizen DJ

    Citizen DJ

    invites the public to make hip hop music using the free-to-use audio and video collections from the Library of Congress.

    2020 Sep • big project
  • A map of the United States with collaged video stills overlayed on each state

    The Sound of Movement

    immerses you in the sounds of 50 Black Lives Matter protests in the 50 states of the U.S.

    2020 Jun • small project
  • Twelve rows of sequential video stills with the text 12 x 24

    12 x 24

    is a film that immerses you in the lives of 12 people from 12 different countries over the course of 24 continuous hours.

    2019 Nov • medium project
  • Four columns of densely-packed video frame stills laid out in a geometric pattern

    Moving Archives

    is a film series that immerses you in the patterns, rhythms, and textures embedded within thousands of hours of footage from public moving image archives.

    2019 Sep • medium project
  • A dense mosaic of digital images

    AMNH Photographic Collection

    is a visualization of 13,212 digitized images in the American Museum of Natural History’s Photographic Collection.

    2019 Apr • small project
  • A photograph of a large digital screen display showing infrared cloud data

    AMNH Climate Wall

    is a 36 foot interactive media wall for exploring climate and climate change in the American Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Planet Earth

    2018 Jul • big project
  • A photograph of a teapot in the shape of a vintage hand iron

    American China

    is a set of porcelain dinnerware inspired by people, objects, and events in Chinese American history

    2018 Jul • big project
  • A screenshot of a dashboard-like interface with numbers and a map

    Harmony of the Sphere

    is an interactive song and visualization of global data organized by latitude.

    2018 Nov • small project
  • A simple radio from the 1990s

    The Breakfast Frequency

    is an online radio of my friends’ morning routines.

    2018 Apr • small project
  • A map of the united states represented with small circles that are colored in based on the area's carbon emissions

    Climate Change Coloring Book

    contains guided coloring activities that explores data and scientific research related to climate change.

    2017 Apr • big project
  • A musical staff superimposed on a night sky with stars

    Music Eclipticalis

    is an interactive song created by holding a musical staff up to the stars.

    2016 Oct • small project
  • Images of various household lights

    Light Reminders

    explores what would happen if my friendships controlled the lights in my home.

    2016 Aug • medium project
  • A map of the southern United States with a path drawn along multiple states

    Navigating The Green Book

    explores the Green Book, a guidebook from 1936 to 1966 that listed establishments across the country that welcomed Black travelers. Exhibited at the Museum of Art and Design.

    2016 Jan • medium project
  • A map of the world with many green and red lines drawn between countries

    Distance From Home

    (via Data-Driven DJ)

    translates global refugee movement to song.

    2015 Jul • series
  • A satellite image of the Lousiana coast with land loss highlighted in red

    Too Blue

    (via Data-Driven DJ)

    maps 1,900 square miles of land loss on coastal Louisiana with music.

    2015 Aug • series
  • A chart with particles that represent air pollution

    Air Play

    (via Data-Driven DJ)

    is smog music created with Beijing air quality data

    2015 Mar • series
  • A map of New York City next to a graphic that represents the stops on the number two train line showing stations for Wall Street, Fulton Street, and Park Place

    Two Trains

    (via Data-Driven DJ)

    is a sonification of income inequality on the NYC subway. Exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York.

    2015 Feb • series
  • An image of a Star Wars movie poster next to images of actors and actresses in that film

    Color Balance

    (via Data-Driven DJ)

    is a soundtrack for gender, race, and ethnicity in movies. Also available as an interactive visualization.

    2016 Apr • series
  • A musical staff with notes aligned with the lyrics Still I Rise

    Still I Rise: From Spoken Word To Sheet Music

    outlines my process from translating spoken word to sheet music.

    2016 Dec • small project
  • A mosaic of images organized by color with a circle that is magnifying a section

    NYPL Public Domain Visualization

    is an interactive visualization where you can explore over 180K digital items in the public domain from the NYPL.

    2016 Jan • small project
  • A several rows of zigzagging lines visualizing EEG brain wave data

    Rhapsody in Grey

    (via Data-Driven DJ)

    uses brain wave data to convert a seizure to song.

    2015 Mar • series
  • Interconnected lines of different colors that look like a subway map

    Memory Underground

    converts your memories into a subway map. Also, a blog post about the process.

    2014 Aug • medium project
  • Eight abstract, black-and-white, line-based portraits of people's faces

    You Drawing You

    is a portrait experiment that imagines people as computer algorithms drawing portraits of themselves.

    2014 Aug • medium project
  • Pastel-colored, watercolored, and densely-packed illustrations of buildings of New York City

    Continuous City

    is an art project and book that explores alternative landscapes and topographies for New York City. It has been published in Visual Families.

    2013 Jun • big project
  • A painting that looks like a blimp with an eye

    Cities of You

    envisions people as imaginary places using words and paintings.

    2012 Jan • big project
  • A statue of a line with headphones

    The New York Public Library Community Oral History Project

    aims to document, preserve, and celebrate the rich history of the city’s unique neighborhoods by collecting the stories of people who have experienced it firsthand.

    2013 Nov • big project
  • A graphic of headphones superimposed on top of a mosaic of images of people

    Together We Listen

    an open-source tool and public program for making audio archives searchable online and accessible to people with hearing disabilities

    2016 Jun • medium project
  • A watercolored illustration of two boys and one girl standing on a balance

    Small People Love You More

    is an illustrated blog that enumerates all the loving benefits of being small.

    2014 Mar • small project
  • Multiple images of a painted wall superimposed on top of each other with circular cuts that reveal the layers underneath

    Peeling Off The Painted Layers of NYC Walls

    experiments with the Google Street View archive.

    2014 Jun • small project
  • A wall of hand-drawn, black-and-white fish

    Wall of fish

    created by those who visited my apartment between 2008 and 2014.

    2014 Aug
  • A surreal mixed media portrait of a teenage boy

    Early artwork

    An incomplete archive of early artwork from high school and college.

    2000 Sep