Music
My father was a professional musician (guitar and piano), and I was instilled with music appreciation from an early age. Growing up, I sat in on after-hours jam sessions that he often held with pop, jazz and big band musicians. When I started playing drums, he wisely sent me to study with a jazz drummer. At age twelve, the two qualifications that got me into my first band were that I owned a set of drums, and I could hit the high scream that started the James Brown song, "I feel good."

I drifted away from music until I was 16 and got a job at The Aerodrome, a converted bowling alley outside of Albany, New York, where major rock bands including Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin and B.B. King played. Kevin Bartlett and I did liquid lights for the shows. Meeting many rock musicians, it struck me that they were just human beings with skills. Some had amazing skills, of course, but it was still something they had learned how to do. I figured if they could do it, I might too.

I returned to music and moved from drums to keyboard. It was a fortuitous move, since my keyboard skills later enabled me to play many instruments, once synthesizers and computers entered the picture. During my band years, I played keyboard and sang with the progressive rock band, od. The band shared my interest in incorporating visual and theatrical elements in our performances. We wrote two rock operas, Slow Children Crossing (a.k.a. Spheres) and Sideshow. before disbanding. Later, when computers and samplers entered the picture, I composed and recorded many soundtracks and short experimental pieces.

Video and 3D
Wanting to further incorporate music and visuals, I founded Perpetual Motion Pictures, an A/V production company. I started shooting short films and videos, including Michael the Archangel and the original footage for Everydog Has His Day. In 1987 I bought an Amiga, a multimedia computer, and began creating short digital animations. Shifting to the Macintosh, I became an Apple trained and certified multimedia support person.

As my computer skills grew, I embraced 3D and incorporated it into my work. AlterNative TV, a 30 second short, brought together all of my interests: stop action film, 3D animation and sound. I also wrote and performed other short pieces that I hope to release, given time.

Interactivity
In the early nineties, a new dimension opened up for multimedia artists: interactivity. My day jobs, first as a CGI and 3D sales and support person at an audio/video dealer and later, as director of 3D animation at a new media ad agency kept me on the (sometimes bleeding) edge of new tech. I collaborated in the production of corporate CD's and, by 1997, moved on to the Internet. A video demo reel can be seen here.

By night, I began working on my own interactive projects, eventually creating the virtual fortune-telling site, Give Chance a Chance. Under the name Tubehead, I collaborated with my wife, artist Penny Kurtz, to create and publish Switch Zoo online and Switch Zoo Deluxe. After years of working on larger collaborative projects, we wanted to lay claim to a small patch of virtual realty that we could fully control. Next up for Tubehead: Switch Zoo Pets. We are letting visitors add their pet to the zoo.

Existence, the game. Play it to the end.