Early-career research statement

Working brief · PDF not yet built

ICCC 2026 · Early Career Symposium · 2026-05-15 · missed

Date: 2026-05-07

Deadline: 2026-05-15

One-sentence version

My research asks how a creative computer can be treated less like an app store and more like a living instrument: small pieces, direct feedback, public materials, and a community that can see how the work is made.

Keep

• Aesthetic Computer as the main work: a web/native creative runtime, not a single artwork.
• KidLisp and Notepat as concrete examples: small languages and playable interfaces make the idea touchable.
• The papers platter: the research practice is public, accumulative, and shaped into papers/cards when an idea becomes clear.
• Latency work: proof that the project is technical, not only poetic.

Cut or compress

• The full SIGGRAPH-style buffer-turnaround argument.
• Dossier politics unless directly relevant to research method.
• Too many named subprojects.
• Any sentence that tries to summarize the whole AC cosmology.

Proposed application shape

1. Research question: what would a creative computing environment look like if pieces, papers, and people were all first-class materials?
2. Work so far: AC runtime, KidLisp, Notepat, papers platter, native OS.
3. Method: build small public tools, measure them, write from inside the work, then publish the simplest clear version.
4. Why ICCC: computational creativity needs systems that are playable, inspectable, and culturally situated.
5. Next step: use the symposium to turn AC from a pile of strong artifacts into a clearer research program.

Abstract seed

Aesthetic Computer is a creative computing environment made of small playable pieces, public writing, and a runtime that spans browser and native hardware. My current research asks how such an environment can support computational creativity without becoming only a software platform or only an artwork. The work combines KidLisp, a minimal language for generative pieces; Notepat, a keyboard-driven visual and musical instrument; a native OS path for low-latency performance; and a papers platter that turns ongoing experiments into papers, cards, and dossiers. The project treats writing as part of the system: an idea is not finished when it runs, but when it can be explained simply enough to travel. At ICCC, I want to clarify this practice as an early-career research program: creative tools as living instruments, with code, publication, and community all visible in the same frame.

Tone

Use the AC papers voice: direct, personal, and plain. The application should sound like a person building a serious thing, not like a platform pitch.