Generative peony installation for NY Design Week (NYC, in person preferred. Part-time, paid)
Hi all. I'm developing a small-scale generative art installation called to be shown at NY Design Week this May. It's a single peony, rendered and projected into a cube with a beam-splitter mirror so the flower appears to float in physical space. Over a 10+ minute generative loop, the flower moves through four probabilistic states — resting, unfurling, dispersing into particles, and returning as a faint ghost, synced to a slow ambient soundscape and a timed peony-absolute scent release.
The piece is about impermanence, abundance, and the inability of any medium to fully capture a real flower. It's my directorial concept. I'm looking for a TouchDesigner partner to build it with me.
What I'm looking for:
- Strong generalist TouchDesigner skills — GPU particles, PBR materials with subsurface, CHOP-based state machines, audio-reactive parameter routing
- Comfort with Python DATs for probabilistic state transitions
- Experience shipping an installation that runs unattended for multiple hours without crashing
- Bonus: Blender or similar for cleaning up a purchased 3D peony model; KantanMapper or projection-mapping experience; prior work with beam-splitter or Pepper's Ghost setups
What you get:
- Paid engagement — happy to discuss day rate or fixed scope, I have a realistic bootstrap budget and I'd rather pay fairly for less work than lowball for more
- Full creative co-credit on the piece — wall text, press, portfolio use, the works
- Work alongside me on the physical build (projector, frame, foil, scent system) if that interests you — otherwise I handle all of that
- A finished piece you'll be proud to show, built small enough to be genuinely achievable
Scope:
- 3x3 ft prototype first (already exists), scaling to 10x10 ftfor the show
- Roughly 3–5 weeks of part-time work, starting as soon as we're a fit
- NYC-based preferred for the install week, remote fine for the build
If this sounds like your kind of project, reply with a reel or a couple of links to installation work you've shipped, plus a sentence or two on what draws you to the concept. I'd rather hear what you'd want to bring to the piece than read a formal résumé.
Thanks for reading.
Maira C
mairac092@gmail.com
Maira C. Email: mairac092@gmail.com