Adam Sadowsky
Adam is an entrepreneur with experience in a broad range of industry sectors. He’s been involved in early stages with companies in software, product design, video games, genetics research, and online sales. The common thread through all of these is that his role has always been helping creative people achieve extraordinary results. A software engineer by education, he appreciates great design – especially functional design. He’s pondered having a bluetooth headset implanted in his skull.
Doug Campbell
Doug is a community constructor, experience engineer and tuxedo traveler. He cofounded Mindshare LA in 2006, a monthly event that has established a large local following. From the start he saw the power of technology to augment social interaction and began forming an interactive collective to showcase projects at the event. This group’s growing success led to it’s spin off and incorporation as Syyn Labs, LLC in 2008. When he takes a break from the mayhem of LA he heads to an organic farm in the Sierras, where he takes time to write and weed the turnips.
Brent Bushnell
Brent is an engineer and an entrepreneur building companies focused on games and entertainment. He has held founder or executive positions at early stage Internet, game, technology and biotech companies for the past 10 years. Brent studied Computer Science at UCLA and serves as a technical advisor to three companies. He co-founded Syyn Labs and has exhibited at TEDxUSC, TEDActive, LACMA, BIL, the Hammer Museum and others. In his spare time he likes building interactive art, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and artistic graffiti.
Dan Busby
Dan is a physicist/engineer by training who started dabbling in interactive art. A compulsive tinkerer, he’s built many bizarre contraptions, from large, 50 person art cars for Burning Man to electrostatic loudspeakers to resonant fire tubes that dance with music. He’s recently converted his 1964 Triumph Spitfire to be 100% electric. In his spare time he likes to hang glide and organize pub crawls in formal attire.
David Guttman
In addition to his work at AT&T Interactive’s Applied Research Division with ubiquitous and cloud computing, David is a highly acclaimed and successful interactive artist and entrepreneur. Exhibitions of his work include showings at the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art and the GEL conference in New York. David has designed, built, and operated sound-reactive systems, including the one that accompanied Yo-Yo Ma at his performance in 2009 at the Museum of Natural History in New York. He studied graphic design at Parsons, Project Management at UCLA, and both Economics and Psychology at the University of Virginia, and is the founder of Meemle LLC, the company behind the KCRW Fringe Benefits iPhone application (an NPR radio affiliate). He’s been caught writing code on napkins while on a date.
Eric Gradman
Until recently leaving to pursue some of his other passions, Eric was a roboticist at Applied Minds, an R&D and rapid-prototyping consultancy. Eric has over 15 years experience designing and building diverse cutting-edge tech including 3d-touch displays, virtual reality systems, satellite control systems, intelligent robots, and concept cars. As if that isn’t enough, Eric is also a musician and performer in the circus. No joke. The CIRCUS! In his time with Cirque Berzerk and The Mutaytor he has gained extensive experience in the production of large-scale music and performance stages. Plus, he’s got really, really good hair.
Hector Alvarez
Multimedia art director and designer Hector Alvarez cut his teeth and honed his interactive design skills in the burgeoning field of digital and interactive advertising, where his work has been well received and awarded by competitions ranging from the 2006 Cannes Lions to the 2009 Webby Awards. As Creative Director at Syyn Labs, he focuses on bringing ultimate experiences to life, developing core creative ideas with the team and defining the practical solutions to bring them to reality with full clarity of vision. Holding a degree in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), he has experience in fields ranging from social media campaigns to video production to product and interface design. Hector is endowed with a dramatically flexible face and takes pleasure in ruining other people’s photos with it.
Gilles D’amecourt
Gilles is a Graphic Designer with a degree from the Rhode Island School of Design who works as a fine art advisor and curator. He has a deep understanding of how Syyn Labs installations work in public settings, and he curated our first “Syynterstitial” event at the Los Angeles Architecture and Design Museum. He’s been known to orchestrate the installation of 150+ piece exhibits in 24 hours. Gilles is also an abstract artist who paints on gun targets and often contemplates shooting his work for a little catharsis.
Brent Houston
Brent is a 2D & 3D designer/artist with 18 years of video game and digital art industry experience with multiple #1 games to his design credits. He brings a unique blend of award-winning art, design and UI experience to any project and benefits from having extensive experience with both departments, in addition to familiarity with creative and technical writing, sound design, music and motion capture. Additional experience includes a background and ratings in military and civil aviation, scuba diving, high performance driving, and numerous outdoor activities.
Davis Galligan
Davis is our in-house; fabricator, rigger, heavy machine operator. He has extensive experience sailing tall ships in the South Pacific, Caribbean and Southeast Asia (holding a 100 ton USCG Master’s licence and PADI Divemaster certification). He has built large scale industrial art over the past 11 years for Black Rock City LLC. His background also includes teaching students of all ages marine biology and environmental science. He is most likely to be seen in his spare time with a ukelele or guitar.
Quin Cabalquinto
Quin is a multimedia presentation specialist working with large scale digital projections. His work includes theatrical video backdrops, projection mapped promotions, 3D art exhibits, and interactive visual performances. Previously Quin occupied his spare time eating fire and teaching yoga, activities which seem to have been replaced by his new found enthusiasm for playing with lasers & finding the perfect hammer.
Robb Godshaw
Associate Engineer
A former Syyntern, Robb quickly made himself at home in the Syyn family. Robb is a nonstop maker. While attending Rochester Institute of Technology’s Industrial Design program, Robb had been known to develop edible cupcake liners and built a no. 2 pencil making machine from scratch. Here at Syyn Labs, Robb’s tinkering skills have become an essential ingredient in the magic-making mix. Since joining, he has overseen the construction of a wacky Ping Pong table and countless top-secret projects. Notably, Robb has consistently held the Hair of the Month award since arriving at Syyn.
Yones Rahmati
Having only an AA from attending part time at Pierce College, Yones has experienced the world of art from many perspectives from being in the field right out of high school. From audio and video effects to car and motorcycle design, Yones has a wealth of knowledge with a gift of bringing different mediums together. From motorcycles with glowing tron-inspired wheels and laser brake lights to faux painted Bel Air Crest homes, his hard work ethic and eye for taste bring his projects to levels exceeding clients’ expectations.
Chris Nelson
Chris has been bending technology to the whims of multinational corporations for fun and profit since 1995. Chris’s primary focus is on building and leading small teams of highly talented individuals allowing large organizations to operate nimbly and effectively compete in the fast-paced world of internet connected technologies.
Eliot Phillips
Eliot has made his career covering bleeding edge technology as a professional blogger. He’s a former Engadget contributor and his work as head editor helped turn Hack a Day into the best source for hardware hacking news. He has a formal background in mechanical engineering combined with a passion for computers and electrical engineering. Add that to a huge knowledgebase of what’s possible and you’ve got someone who knows how to take interactive art to the next level… usually without it catching fire.
Geoffrey Emery
Geoffrey is our media guru. He leads the charge camera in hand when not helping tinker on the master plan. Currently swimming through the mobile world in the day he fills his nights with dreams of circuits and wireless networks.
Oren Schaedel
A world traveler and storyteller, Oren collects experiences wherever he goes, which he converts into new ideas and ways of sharing them between people with different backgrounds. He has worked as a photographer, mountain bike builder, army engineer, and experimental biologist. He is currently combining ideas from engineering and evolution as part of his PhD thesis in Caltech, trying to understand how animals make decisions.
Pehr Hovey
Pehr is a digital explorer who pulls together diverse technologies to create interactive systems. His Masters project at UCSB focused on realtime processing of social media data streams to drive distributed visualizations. Recent efforts involve automated parameterization and evolution of generative visuals as well as building tangible games to explore interplayer interactions. It is most interesting when a seemingly straightforward object elicits a competitive reaction in even the most stoic participants.
Pehr holds a M.S. in Multimedia Engineering from University of California Santa Barbara and B.S. in Computer Engineering from Washington University in Saint Louis.
Richard Whitney
Dick has worked for NASA, created UIs for Samsung, built multitouch tables for Schlumberger, and headed the R&D group at Idealab. He has experience in solar tech, 3D printing, tangible user interfaces, energy storage, thermal atrial fibrillation reversion, low-cost CNC, health monitoring, and more. Dick holds a S.M. from the MIT Media Lab and a B.S. from Johns Hopkins in biomedical engineering, and recently founded grain design. Dick has stubbornly endured interventions due to his frequent binge prototyping nights.