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Researcher • Engineer • Designer • Maker

Josh Urban Davis

I build machines, interfaces, and fictional artifacts that explore perception, memory, creativity, and the things technology leaves behind.

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StyleGANthe space between two bodies is a body toocomputer visionroses are rosesEEGthisObituaryDoesNotExistsatellite telemetrymysterious forces at playa sudden rush of blood to the skinwhat is not saved will be lostthe night airneural networksi just wish we could kiss somewhere that isn't meltingco-creative AISuperColliderthree days and a year on top of a mountainbreak me into bigger pieces so some of me is home with youfiber opticspostcards from the electric voidatlas of deleted worldstangible circuitsbetween pixels and prophecyinductive sensingmixed reality masksomnimodality StyleGANthe space between two bodies is a body toocomputer visionroses are rosesEEGthisObituaryDoesNotExistsatellite telemetrymysterious forces at playa sudden rush of blood to the skinwhat is not saved will be lostthe night airneural networksi just wish we could kiss somewhere that isn't meltingco-creative AISuperColliderthree days and a year on top of a mountainbreak me into bigger pieces so some of me is home with youfiber opticspostcards from the electric voidatlas of deleted worldstangible circuitsbetween pixels and prophecyinductive sensingmixed reality masksomnimodality
01 — About

Systems for
strange futures

I'm an engineer, researcher, and designer working at the intersection of machine learning, computer vision, and human-computer interaction. Based in San Francisco, I build multimodal systems that push on questions of creativity, communication, and who gets to participate in both.

I'm currently an Applied AI Research Engineer at Apple.

My research has received best paper awards at C&C and ASSETS, honorable mentions at CHI, and recognition from the Neukom Institute. My creative practice has been supported by a grant from the Queer Arts Council and featured in the Queer Futures Journal.

Selected work exhibited at Grey Area Foundation for the Arts, D!iverseWorks, Synaps Projects, the Blaffer Art Museum, the Chandler Center for the Arts, and at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021.

I live with my two cats, Jynx and Nyx, in San Francisco, CA.
My profile headshot is a 3D reconstruction of my face, generated using a pipeline I built.

Download Resume Download CV
Josh Urban Davis
02 — Research

Peer-reviewed
publications

I build machines that perceive the world, and ask what happens when those machines change how we see it.

01

Improving the Color Accuracy of Lighting Estimation Models

Z. Zhang, Josh Urban Davis, J. P. A. Vu, J. Kuang, J-F. LalondeCVPR '25
02

Plurality, Revisited

M. Sturdee, M. Lewis, Josh Urban Davis, A. Strohmayer, K. Spiel, N. Koulidou, S. Fdili AlaouiSeeing Interaction Design (Springer, 2026)
03

Traveling Arts x HCI Sketchbook: Exploring the Intersection Between Artistic Expression and Human-Computer Interaction

M. Lewis, M. Sturdee, D. Lengyel, M. Toselli, J. Miers, V. Owen, Josh Urban Davis, et al.CHI EA '24
04

Bridging Reality and the Virtual Environment: Perceptual Consistency and Visual Adaptation

J. Miao, A. Shin, J. Vu, T. Miki, G. Rong, Josh Urban Davis, Z. Li, W. Wang, J. Gao, J. KuangSIGGRAPH '24~25% acceptance
05

Is it Art, is it HCI? Exploring Tensions Between Practice and Research

M. Sturdee, E. Blevis, W. Gaver, C. E. Ohlenschlager, S. Fdili Alaoui, Josh Urban Davis, L. Loke, M. GamboaCHI EA '23
06

"It's Not an Issue of Malice, but of Ignorance": Towards Inclusive Video Conferencing

Josh Urban Davis, H. Wang, P. Chilana, X-D. YangIMWUT / UbiComp '2323.2% acceptance
07

Multimodal Direction Manipulation in Video Conferencing

Josh Urban Davis, P. Asente, X-D. YangDIS '2324.6% acceptance
08

Exploring AltNarrative in HCI Imagery and Comics

M. Lewis, M. Sturdee, J. Miers, T. Hoang, Josh Urban DavisCHI '2221% acceptance
09

PokerFace: Exploring Augmenting Masks through Mixed-Reality

Josh Urban Davis, J. Tang, E. Cutrell, T. SeyedHICSS '22
10

Designing Co-Creative AI in Virtual Environments

Josh Urban Davis, F. Anderson, M. Stroetzel, T. Grossman, G. FitzmauriceC&C '2123.1% acceptance
11

A Plurality of Practices: Artistic Narratives in HCI Research

Josh Urban Davis, M. Sturdee, M. Lewis, A. Strohmayer, K. Spiel, N. Koulidou, S. Fdili AlaouiC&C '21 Best Paper — Top 1%
12

Font Your Friends and Loved Ones: On the Utility of Ugly Interfaces

Josh Urban Davis & J. WentzelCHI '2121% acceptance
13

Mixed Abilities and Varied Experiences: A Group Auto-Ethnography

K. Mack, M. Das, D. Jain, D. Bragg, J. Tang, A. Begel, E. Beneteau, Josh Urban Davis, et al.ASSETS '21 Best Paper — Top 5%
14

TangibleCircuits: An Interactive 3D Printed Circuit Education Tool for People with Visual Impairments

Josh Urban Davis, T-Y. Wu, B. Shi, H. Lui, A. Panotopoulou, E. Whiting, X-D. YangCHI '20 Honorable Mention — Top 5%
15

CircuitStyle: Peripherally Reinforcing Best Practices in Hardware Computing

Josh Urban Davis, J. Gong, Y. Sun, P. Chilana, X-D. YangUIST '1920.6% acceptance
16

IllumiWear: A Fiber-Optic eTextile for MultiMedia Interactions

Josh Urban DavisNIME '19
17

Indutivo: Contact-Based, Object-Driven Interactions with Inductive Sensing

J. Gong, X. Yang, T. Seyed, Josh Urban Davis, X-D. YangUIST '18
03 — Design

Strange systems & other works

01

Deleted World Tarot

A fictional archive of a world that didn't survive.

The Deleted World Tarot is a fully illustrated 80-card tarot deck and guidebook, influenced by emerging technologies, internet cultures, occult histories, and tarot illustration past and present. These works were made without AI.

This deck is a tool for healing the rift between the choices of the past and the loss of alternative futures. Includes a hand-illustrated companion book, Atlas of Deleted Worlds, custom marbled box, and printed ephemera. A story told out of order and out of time. What is not saved will be lost.

Deleted World Tarot — First Printing spread
Deleted World Tarot — The Composer, Ambition, The Shapeshifter Deleted World Tarot — Between Pixels and Prophecy Deleted World Tarot — The Moon Deleted World Tarot — Box interior Deleted World Tarot — Atlas of Deleted Worlds Deleted World Tarot — What is not saved will be lost
02

A Collection of Strange Systems

Small machines for memory, disappearance, transformation, and other strange futures.

Some are functional. Some are fictional. Some are both. Together, they form an ongoing practice of building things that remember, mutate, hallucinate, decay, and occasionally become something else entirely.

Seven prototypes and counting. Fictional infrastructure, digital archaeology, behavioral art.

Browse the Collection
A rotating ASCII bust of Michelangelo's David, from the experiments collection
03

if you go_say hello

A memorial: an AI trained on a deceased poet's writing, attached to a satellite, sent into orbit. Twice daily, visitors received transmissions. Over months, cosmic radiation corrupted the computer. Poems degraded to noise, then silence. The collected writings were bound as a memento mori.

Venice Architecture Biennale, 2021. The poet's name remains private.

Venice Biennale 2021
04

The Night Air

A collaborative poem composed by visitors during COVID-19 lockdown, inspired by miasma, the medieval belief that bad air spread plague. Ironically, COVID is airborne. Technology as connection, language as survival.

Houston Arts Alliance grant.

The Night Air
05

Selected Works

Experiments in photomanipulation, shader rendering, generative neural networks, and digital collage, spanning ongoing series including A Sudden Rush of Blood to the Skin, Hideouts, and Postcards from the Electric Void.

These projects explore the tension between physical and virtual worlds: bodies dissolving under algorithmic pressure, architecture emptied of people lurching towards ruin, and machine hallucinations of space that flicker between the plausible and the uncanny. When the glitch arrives, it's the most human thing in the frame.

a sudden rush of blood to the skin Hideout No. 37 Postcard from the Electric Void break me into bigger pieces so some of me is home with you Hideout No. 114 Butterfly Epiphany the space between two bodies is a body too Creature Hideout No. 8 roses are roses Holographic Fishing Net i am skinless in a limo Hideout No. 53 Pixel Dripper No. 1 mysterious forces at play Hideout No. 71 Self Portrait as Scattering Glitter Self-Portrait as Vertigo i just wish we could kiss somewhere that isn't melting Hideout No. 22 Pixel Dripper No. 2 Postcards grid purple shifted Hideout Colony Collapse sample and replicate No. 15 Hideout No. 96 violence Pixel Puddle Hideout No. 45 random walk on a rose Architecture Slouching Toward Ruins i just wish we could kiss somewhere that isn't melting (detail) Hideout No. 61 There's a Bridge from Here to There
06

Synapstraction

A brain-computer installation: EEG headsets measure your neural response to five stimuli, one per sense, each mapped to a painting implement through machine learning. Your brain serves as conduit. The senses use the artist to create an image.

Black Visual Arts Center, 2017.

07

thisObituaryDoesNotExist

StyleGAN and GPT-2 imagine photographs, death narratives, and life stories for people who never existed. Printed as funeral pamphlets indistinguishable from real ones. The website generates a new obituary on each refresh.

Visit
thisObituaryDoesNotExist
08

Psych-VR

VR relaxation content for astronauts in isolated spaces, developed with NASA and the Geisel School of Medicine. "Three Days and a Year On Top of a Mountain" compresses a year of timelapse footage from Gile Mountain into a single sunrise-to-sunset experience.

09

Animation

Ongoing experiments since 2017: abandoned sculptures, lab timelapse, visual programming. Each film paired with contemporary literature, soundscaped in SuperCollider.

Watch {frankenstein} live
04 — Contact

Let's build
something strange

San Francisco, CA hello@joshurbandavis.com