[2025]

I’ve spent years wrestling with relentless sinus problems. I’ve acumulated a substantial folder of CT scans, MRIs, doctor’s notes, each a close-up dissection of every corner in my face. Recently, I’ve felt particularly overwhelmed and wanted to transform these unsettling documents and scans into something I can interact with, and play with. 

This particular work scrolls through my CT scan slices with a simple hand-tracking setup. A pinching motion lets me flip through layers of tissue and bone, and finger rotation swaps between views (front, top, profile).

I gently excavate what once felt alien into something I can touch, move, and slowly understand ~ it almost feels as though I am brushing away the fog that’s settled into these little caves within my skull.

And, in a strange way, I find comfort...

personal medical documents

software → TouchDesigner

captured → Magda Gourinchas

[2025]

How Many Birds Would It Take to Carry My Shadow is an immersive, generative installation that reimagines the weightlessness of our shadows. I was inspired by the fluid, collective intelligence of bird murmurations that seem to defy gravity, I began to imagine my weightless shadow take flight.

Using a depth Kinect camera, the work captures bodies in real-time. I convert their silhouettes into point clouds that either scatter or assemble in response to human gestures and jazz improvisations.

software → TouchDesigner

hardware → Kinect V1

captured → Magda Gourinchas & Stephan Zyngier

[2022]

more info to come...

wax, eucalyptus leaves from Oakland [CA], eucalyptus essential oil, wick, lighter

captured → Magda Gourinchas

[english: a little too flexible]

[2022]

I developed an obsession with graphic novels and comics from the moment I learned to read. With full access to my father’s substantial (and mostly French) collection, I spent countless afternoons leafing through spreads —— analyzing each frame and grappling with storylines that were perhaps a bit mature for my age at the time. I was particularly drawn to the way women were represented or rather, as I would quickly learn once entering my teens, the way women are completely misrepresented within the world of comic books. 

By then, I understood that comic culture —— dominated by both male creators and audiences, and propped up by the uncredited labor of women illustrators and writers —— becomes an echo chamber that amplifies sexist visual tropes. With its most notorious being the hyper-sexualized, and anatomically impossible poses female characters are routinely drawn in. And, as if trained contortionists, these characters strike twists that almost always deliberately showcase their breasts, buttocks, and faces.

Un Peu Trop Souple [EN: A Little Too Flexible] confronts the absurdity and flips the visual logic on its head. Using a Kinect depth camera to capture my own body in real time, I force myself into those absurd, bone-breaking “superheroine” postures. The software struggles to resolve my joints —— resulting in a glitchy rig and intentionally messy animation. I ultimately want to highlight the fundamental anatomical absurdity of these poses and moreover expecting any body —— print, digital, or flesh —— to conform.

software → TouchDesigner, Kinect Studio (SDK)

hardware → Kinect V1

captured → Magda Gourinchas

[2022]

step 01 ~ collect your hair until it amounts to the size of a small mandarin

step 02 ~ wash hair with gentle soap

step 03 ~ while wet, shape the hair into a flat pancake, use scissors as needed

step 04 ~ with a needle and thread, weave around the outer circumference of the hair

step 05 ~ pull thread create a small divot at the center

step 06 ~ let dry

step 07 ~ lay your egg(s)

hair, sewing thread, scissors

captured → Magda Gourinchas

[english: welcome]

[2022]

more info to come...

wood handbuilt frame, mixed fiber yarn, cut-pile machine tufted exterior, felting glue

[english: a home of my own]

[2019]

During my first semester at Carnegie Mellon, homesickness hit me harder than I’d anticipated, so I set out to build a compact object that could serve as both a reminder of home and a stress reliever.

I cut, sewed, and glued thin plastic film into the familiar outline of a three-dimensional house —— four walls and a slanted roof —— then fitted it with an Arduino, flexible tubing, and tiny air valves. When powered on, it inhales and exhales in slow, steady rhythms.

Holding it feels therapeutic: the sides give way gently under your fingers and then refill with air, as if the house itself is taking a calming breath. The piece questions my need for attachment to a physical location and, instead, places symbolism and meaning in the meditative act of remembering the places I call home.

Although I eventually grew out of my homesickness, I know this little device will make its way back into my life once I leave this now-familiar Pittsburgh.

plastic film, sewing thread, latex glue

hardware → arduino (C++), valves, air compressor

captured → Magda Gourinchas