Josh Urban Davis

01 — About

Systems for
strange futures

I'm a designer and engineer 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.

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.

Download CV Resume

02 — Research

Peer-reviewed
publications

Improving the Color Accuracy of Lighting Estimation Models

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

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

"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

Multimodal Direction Manipulation in Video Conferencing

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

Exploring AltNarrative in HCI Imagery and Comics

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

PokerFace: Exploring Augmenting Masks through Mixed-Reality

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

Designing Co-Creative AI in Virtual Environments

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

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%

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

Josh Urban Davis & J. WentzelCHI '2121% acceptance

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%

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%

CircuitStyle: Peripherally Reinforcing Best Practices in Hardware Computing

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

IllumiWear: A Fiber-Optic eTextile for MultiMedia Interactions

Josh Urban DavisNIME '19

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

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

03 — Design

Past & ongoing works

Deleted World Tarot

A fully illustrated 80-card tarot deck and guidebook. Many influences went into this deck, from emerging technologies and internet cultures to occult histories and tarot illustrations past.

The early internet promised unlimited connection; that vision faded into disinformation and data-driven oppression. In both failed utopian visions, religious and digital, something was lost. A choice was made. A world was deleted.

The Deleted World Tarot 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.

Purchase the Deck See more Press Feature Research Paper

Deleted World Tarot — First Printing spread

Deleted World Tarot — The Composer, Ambition, The Shapeshifter

Deleted World Tarot — Between Pixels and Prophecy

Deleted World Tarot — Atlas of Deleted Worlds

Deleted World Tarot — What is not saved will be lost

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.

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.

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.

See more C&C NeurIPS

break me into bigger pieces so some of me is home with you

the space between two bodies is a body too

i just wish we could kiss somewhere that isn't melting

i just wish we could kiss somewhere that isn't melting (detail)

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.

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

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.

Animation

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

Watch {frankenstein} live