01
Problem
How can an autobiographical memory archive feel like a place to enter without requiring visitors to learn video-game controls?
Read the chapterPersonal archive / Spatial interaction
Memory
Television.
A place to remember.
A television to take you there.
An autobiographical 3D memory archive built in React Three Fiber, exploring personal relics and authored worlds through a handheld CRT companion.
Get the short versionMy role
Build the world.
Make it feel familiar.
I designed and built the CRT navigation, 3D environments, camera transitions, and visual effects in Three.js and React Three Fiber.
My contribution
- Creative Direction & Worldbuilding
- Spatial Interaction Design
- WebGL / R3F Engineering
- GLSL Shader Implementation
Active prototype
Living browser-based archive in active development.
The short version.
The story, before you tune in.02
Approach
Collaboration Station showed that free walking created a control and wayfinding barrier; added audio and video cues could not repair the unfamiliar movement model.
Read the chapter03
Solution
Use the CRT and channel guide as autobiographical navigation. Guide locomotion along authored splines while visitors control gaze and attention.
Read the chapter04
Outcome
The live WebGL prototype demonstrates the CRT companion, mouse-directed gaze, channel switching, world entry, and tactile artifact inspection.
Read the chapterThe guided story
From navigation problem to a guided memory world
The scan establishes the problem, pivotal learning, decision, and current result. The chapters below show the evidence and tradeoffs behind each one.
01PROBLEM
An archive meant to be entered, not only listed
Memory Television is a living archive I am building to hold onto life's memories long after the details fade: personal photography, family audio interviews, 360-degree video, and 3D Gaussian splat captures from Tokyo. Its virtual-world form honors the electronic media and late-night television through which I explored stories growing up.
02PROCESS / PIVOTAL LEARNING
A familiar failure changed the movement model
I initially wanted Memory Television to behave more like a video game, with free walking through its environments. In Collaboration Station, a separate virtual-reality museum project, visitors struggled to understand both how to move and where to go. Added audio and video cues did not repair the unfamiliar control model.
03SOLUTION / PERSONAL ORIGIN
The interface came from the memory
The CRT and blue television guide were how I navigated television, media, and pop culture growing up in the 1990s and early 2000s. I remember waking around 3 a.m. to the Weather Channel, smooth jazz playing while the television remained on as background white noise.
Live prototype video: The raised CRT companion and blue channel guide floating in the 3D archive room with real-time scanline shaders.
Drag the frame. Pass it back.
Asset 1 of 204SOLUTION / TRADEOFF
The system moves; the visitor looks
The experience controls movement and sequencing while visitors direct mouse-controlled gaze and choose where attention lands. Free roaming was traded for a lower interaction burden and authored pacing.
Live prototype video: Surfing between broadcast channels, inspecting metadata for Channel 01 (Nostalgia Nihilism) and Channel 03 (Portland Worlds).
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Asset 1 of 2Less steering.
More noticing.
An interactive explanation of the movement model. The prototype videos above show the actual experience.
Choose a channel
The CRT guide gives the archive a familiar starting point. A channel is an entrance to an authored world.
You choose the destination.05SOLUTION / WORKING PROOF
A channel becomes an entrance to a world
Choosing the available channel moves the visitor from the archive-room guide into the observed Nostalgia Nihilism world, which houses an ongoing painting series exploring childhood cultural icons on reclaimed canvas. Raising the CRT provides a return path to the channel guide and larger archive.
Live prototype video: Entering the Nostalgia Nihilism world where the camera glides among floating paintings.
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Asset 1 of 206CURRENT OUTCOME / VERIFIED PROTOTYPE
Tactile relic inspection in the CRT memory transmission
Clicking a floating relic in the archive room shifts the viewport into a focused CRT Memory Transmission inspection mode. The selected artifact, such as ARC-2019-FLW ('Idea Flow - Abstract Blob'), is brought forward into a dedicated CRT frame with procedural shader telemetry, artifact catalog metadata, and live descriptive annotations.
Live prototype video: Lowering the CRT to gaze across the archive room, clicking 'Idea Flow - Abstract Blob', and inspecting its procedural shader in the CRT focus overlay.
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Asset 1 of 2What the prototype demonstrates
A working world inside a living archive
The live browser prototype demonstrates the CRT companion, mouse-directed gaze, channel interaction, entry into the Nostalgia Nihilism world, and artifact inspection mode. Memory Television remains an active personal archive rather than a finished commercial platform.
HONEST NEXT STEP
Mobile behavior still needs refinement, full 6-DOF relic rotation is still being expanded, and additional memory worlds remain in production. The archive will keep growing as I add personal audio interviews, 360 video, and Tokyo Gaussian splat captures.
The archive keeps growing.
Enter Memory Television ↗Keep exploring
From a virtual world to the outside world.
Gardens Aglow — three biodiversity installations in a winter landscape.
Let’s make something
worth caring about.
Open to staff and lead product design roles, design engineering, and creative technology collaborations in Greater Boston and remotely.