If you're curious about Hypnogenesis, a video feedback space shooter, @allenriley.com edited our @exgs.bsky.social talk from @officialgdc.bsky.social into a clean video with lots of game footage! #indiegames #videofeedback www.youtube.com/watch?v=n38C...

I once again consult my Triangle of Despair® life improvement model first established in 2012: Instructions: Each of the three corners (Confused, Discouraged, Unhealthy) leads to the others. Remove one corner to break the triangle.

I apparently made this MS Paint illustration of the Dream House by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela which I emailed to myself on February 12, 2010 (dh.bmp)

I pretty much had zero or negative interest in the idea of art before seeing the Dream House in 2002 and I still don’t really understand or make art that isn’t somehow like the Dream House

There was a lot more crowd footage of my 2022 Smashing Pumpkins cover show than I realized. I learned a lot about performing live music doing this!

"I AM THE BEST ARTIST René" by René Moncada on West Broadway between Spring and Broome Street circa 1986 appears in the 1988 Superman arcade game by Taito

I saw Mindflayer, Action Trio, Noise Nomads, Kites/Can't, and Shadowmaps at an on-campus apartment at Hampshire College in 2003

Hypnogenesis has a wishlist page on Steam! After the response that @allenriley.com and I got at GDC we decided to make a home version! I think we're the only game on Steam that mentions Nam Jun Paik in the description. store.steampowered.com/app/4545390 #indiedev #videofeedback #indiegames

This year’s @exgs.bsky.social Experimental Games Showcase at @officialgdc.bsky.social was such a joy to help organize and be a part of. Thank you so much to everyone who presented, organized, showed up to pack the room, and came to demo. What an absolute honor to work with these people. ♥️

Me landing at LGA youtu.be/DgLS1kHiVcA?...

I discussed the “Oddly Satisfying” video/performance program I curated for @anindexof.bsky.social at the 2026 Society for Cinema and Media Studies featuring Erma Fiend, Blake Andrews and Nina Sobell

I nearly forgot: @allenriley.com did something very important at GDC

This is good

I like to think that if Kurt Cobain lived longer he would have started a post-Nirvana techno grunge band inspired by PIL in 1997 called Transcendence Inc.

What an amazing GDC! @allenriley.com and I got to present Hypnogenesis to a huge room of people at the @exgs.bsky.social! At the demo session, the Little Raven Gallery & the @boshis.place x @syzygysf.com party, we had 244 play sessions on the machine! (photo by @jakeweidner.bsky.social)

Got lunch in a ramen place in SF and every song on the radio was by the exact same Jack Johnson style singer with lyrics like “transactions smooth as butter”, I asked and it was indeed AI

Andy Wallace and I showed and discussed Hypnogenesis at a video game concept art exhibition curated by Steph Ng and Meha Murthy at Little Raven Gallery in San Francisco on March 12, 2026. The show also featured microtalks by game designers including Richard Lemarchand and Bridget Winn.

@andymakes.itch.io and I presented Hypnogenesis at The Intersection of Art and Technology on March 10, 2026. The game is on display until March 14.

Hypnogenesis, the video feedback arcade game I made with @andymakes.itch.io is going on a San Francisco tour from March 10-14, 2026 with events at the Intersection of Art & Technology, Little Raven, Experimental Games Showcase at GDC, and boshi's place x Syzygy!

Allen Learns Video Synthesis, 2010/2026 (cutting some multichannel edits of work that has never been displayed)

Exciting news: @allenriley.com and I will be showing Hypnogenesis at the Experimental Games Showcase at @officialgdc.bsky.social We'll be talking about using video synthesis techniques to make video feedback a core gameplay mechanic. We'd love to show the game at your GDC party! Drop us a line!

I made a series of cell phone landscape videos processed with the Sandin Image Processor in 2010

Here's a site with info about Hypnogenesis, the new psychedelic space shooter that I am making with @andymakes.itch.io. The game uses video feedback as a core gameplay mechanic via Andrei Jay's Video Waaaves library. www.hypnogenesis.xyz

I do miss having a Volvo 240 station wagon but the van rules

I have had to move my studio so many times since moving to Santa Cruz that I feel like I work for an eccentric artist who never makes anything and who I never see

HYPNOGENESIS, a psychedelic space shooter by @andymakes.itch.io and @allenriley.bsky.social , created using video waaaves by Andrei Jay! An analogue visual feast, and yes, we'll have a CRT for display :)

Over at Wonderville doing some more CRT work with @kleeb.bsky.social to get Hypnogenesis (my video feedback game with @allenriley.bsky.social) ready for @magfest.org!!! It's been a minute since I played through the whole game!

I presented "Video Feedback as a Model for Emergent Narrative" at ICIDS 2025 – 18th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling. Thinking about how to approach AI as a live signal medium like electronic music or video synthesis (and not as a source of content).

Just read my PhD application from 2021 and it is heartening to see that I either have done, or have concrete plans to do, pretty much everything I said I would do, although I have not necessarily made anyone aware of these things outside my immediate community

I participated in this song-a-week challenge this fall at the encouragement of my friend Maggie Carson, and at the end you're supposed to go back and re-record one of the songs. Here is mine!

I spent so much time sifting through VHS rips on the Internet Archive looking for this previously-lost Rhode Island TV commercial, but it was impossible to find because it presumably aired during times when nobody was taping. Thankfully someone finally found Super Credit Man, and I am at peace.

U2's The Edge has truly had a singular impact on the composition and style of hold music

The day after his screening at @anindexof.bsky.social, Larry Gottheim met with filmmakers in Santa Cruz on Nov 9, 2025 to view and discuss works in progress. We looked at my work, as well as projects by Nena Hedrick, Matte Hewitt, and Alanna Nickles.

Saturday Nov 8: We're very excited to be hosting Larry Gottheim as part of the filmmaker's California tour celebrating his 2024 book "The Red Thread: Larry Gottheim and His Films." Q&A with guest curator @allenriley.bsky.social to follow the film screening. www.indexical.org/events/2025-...

I know he is making a point about the cost of living, but as a person living in California who listens to the Brian Lehrer Show every day, I appreciate Mamdani's coinage of "a New Yorker who lives elsewhere"

Here's the recording of my talk "Arcade Games as Public Art" at MAGWest 2025 in San Jose, CA on August 8, 2025. @arcadecommons.org

h/t to @annierau.bsky.social, who shared this tidbit during her remarks at our celebration: archive.org/details/the-...

"The limits of my cables are the limits of my world." (Wittgenstein, video art version)

“It’s about the history and future of socially interactive video”

Have you seen every possible time on the clock? Are there rare times?

I performed scenes from my as-yet-unproduced science fiction film Earth’s Basement with my collaborator Shannon Kerrigan as a video synthesis performance that also utilized a live musical scoring system I made that uses an LLM and MaxMSP to categorize dialogue and select musical cues

My favorite film at Telluride was “It Was Just An Accident” by Jafar Panahi

Dream work and meditation is very hip; the unconscious is Hollywood’s answer to AI

Noticing the word “align” or “alignment” newly all over the place ways that seem transferred over from AI jargon

Hypnogenesis is at Video Sync in Portland right now! Come say hi to @allenriley.bsky.social who is showing it off and try your hand at our arcade game / interactive video feedback system! #indiegames #videofeedback

I was surprised to learn that the film majors in my media class have neither read or seen Lord of the Rings and seemingly have zero interest in it

One of my least favorite teaching moments is getting flustered about how to transition between concepts and either leaving out key information or accidentally saying the opposite of what I mean

One of my students used "stop trying to make fetch happen" to explain language games 🥲

I screened The Matrix for my media art class today and remembering how I first saw this in the theater in 1999 without having seen a trailer or knowing anything about it at all, so I was completely shocked when Neo’s mouth seals shut

A bit more Hypnogenesis footage. Another level with feedback & level design by @allenriley.bsky.social Peering through the noise is a key game mechanic. This might look completely impossible to parse, but it's easier than you might think while still remaining challenging. #gamedev #generativeart