In his mid-20's, he was shown a short fractal program in BASIC. Not knowing anything about programming,
he only knew that changing a few letters in what looked like alphabet soup made
the picture change in interesting ways. He had an epiphany, and discovered a new visual
language, with strong biological metaphors.
This new journey in algorithmic art led him to
Syracuse University,
where he earned an MFA
in Computer Graphics, under Ed Zajec. After graduating, he worked at SU for four years as
Computer Graphics Specialist,
helping researchers with data
visualization, and teaching programming to Art students and CAD to Industrial Design students.
Jeffrey moved on to
UC San Diego,
where he served as Visiting Professor for one semester, under Harold Cohen, teaching
software programming to Art students.
Jeffrey then bounced back East to Cambridge, where he got his third degree: a Masters from the
MIT Media Lab. There he met
Nuala Creed, who later became his wife.
They moved to San Francisco, and Jeffrey began working at
Rocket Science Games,
prototyping simulation-type games.
After that he became Principle Inventor and second co-founder of
There.com.
He wrote the first line of code in 1997, and went on to invent a virtual dog,
vehicle physics, and many other aspects of the virtual world. He co-designed
'Avatar-Centric Communication'.
While working at There.com,
he adapted the artificial life simulation
Darwin Pond
to become
GenePool. This work resulted in a handful of
papers and presentations at artificial life conferences in the US and Europe.
After briefly working at
Adobe
on the Acrobat3D platform, Jeffrey joined
Linden Lab, makers of
Second Life, where he invented Flexies,
FollowCam, and
Puppeteering.
He then joined his friend Brewster Kahle at the
Internet Archive,
and developed the home page for
NASA Images.org, and also consulted on user interaction.
In 2008 Jeffrey began a new academic sub-career in Vancouver as a visiting professor at
the
Centre for Digital Media.
He now divides his time between his home in Northern California and Vancouver, BC, where
he is working on a book project.
CV (Word)
