Allen Riley Portfolio
Earth’s Basement, 2025
Description: Earth’s Basement is a cybernetic soap opera that incorporates video synthesis and a live musical scoring system that uses AI to analyzes the sentiment of dialogue and triggers musical cues that I performed and recorded. Written and directed by Allen Riley; performance by Allen Riley and Shannon Kerrigan. Video synthesis materials produced by Allen Riley at Signal Culture in January 2025. First iteration performed at ISM Festival in Olympia, WA in September 2025.
Photo and Video: Earth’s Basement, ISM Festival, Olympia, WA, September 14, 2025
Synchronization Station, 2022-2023
Description: Synchronization Station is a participatory performance about mediated intimacy that uses analog video mixing as a counterpoint to everyday communications technologies. It operates in a fictional moment in which computers are being invented, or reinvented, for the intentionally humorous purpose of establishing contact between humans. Finalist: 2024 Lumen Prize. Official Selection: 2024 Slamdance Film Festival.
Photo and Video: Synchronization Station, Indexical, Santa Cruz, CA, January 27, 2023
Videofreak, 2016
Description: A video arcade game integrated with a circuit-bent video mixer provides an experience of play based on analog video feedback. The cabinet is presented in an installation with additional video mixers and CRT monitors patched into the game’s signal flow. Presented at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2017 and 2019 and at the Museum of the Moving Image in 2024.
Description: A video arcade game integrated with a circuit-bent video mixer provides an experience of play based on analog video feedback. The cabinet is presented in an installation with additional video mixers and CRT monitors patched into the game’s signal flow. Presented at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2017 and 2019 and at the Museum of the Moving Image in 2024.
Photo: Videofreak on display at the Smithsonian American Arcade Museum, August 2019
Video: 2 minutes, 4 seconds
Credits:
Concept, Game Design, Interface, Electronics: Allen Riley
Cabinet: Mark Kleback and Nick Santaniello
Cabinet Illustrations: Tim Fite
Concept, Game Design, Interface, Electronics: Allen Riley
Cabinet: Mark Kleback and Nick Santaniello
Cabinet Illustrations: Tim Fite
Electronic Pastoral, 2018
Description: Landscapes composed of video oscillators and feedback loops presented in a 3-channel immersive environment.
Description: Landscapes composed of video oscillators and feedback loops presented in a 3-channel immersive environment.
Photo: Immersive Gallery, Institute for Electronic Arts, September 2018
Video: 5 minutes, 50 seconds.Single-channel edit that integrates excerpts with documentation of two presentations of the work. Chapter title text from “Cybernetics” by Norbert Wiener; audio excerpt from “Summer School at SRI” by Douglas Engelbart Institute.
Cloud in a Cave, 2015
Description: A playful model of the internet as a video feedback campfire. Participants hold cameras in their hands to shape a mass of video energy in an interconnected electronic signal flow.
Description: A playful model of the internet as a video feedback campfire. Participants hold cameras in their hands to shape a mass of video energy in an interconnected electronic signal flow.
Photo: Installation view, PHAON Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, April 2015
Photo: Participatory performance, PHAON Gallery, Brooklyn NY, April 2015
Video: 18 second video loop showing participant’s view of video feedback.
Oversight, 2017
Description: Video installation for experiencing asymmetries of information. Participants crawl inside a canopied table surrounded by movable cameras to find a video monitor and camera showing their face. Setting a timer activates multiple live video images of the exposed part of their body.
Description: Video installation for experiencing asymmetries of information. Participants crawl inside a canopied table surrounded by movable cameras to find a video monitor and camera showing their face. Setting a timer activates multiple live video images of the exposed part of their body.
Photo: Installation view, Coconino Center for the Arts, Flagstaff AZ, April 2017
Video: 8 second loop showing the participant’s view from inside the canopy.
Evidence Timeline, 2012
Description: Shale tiles engraved with a fragments of a conspiracy theory website presented in a custom-built cabin in the woods. Part of my MFA thesis exhibition at the NY State College of Ceramics titled Internet Environments.
Photo: Tile detail
Photo: View of cabin exterior with a tile visible through a window, Alfred Station NY, 2012
Photo: Cabin interior with a close-up view of a tile, Alfred Station NY, 2012
Future Humans, 2020
Description: I design hands-on learning programs for youth at Beam Center. In 2020, I directed the development and implementation of a large-scale project-based learning program offered free to NYC public middle school students that could be completed at home during the summer of pandemic-related summer program closures. The program included a project kit, self-directed guides, livestreams, and a secure chatroom that students could access 24/7 using any device without installing software. Students built their own custom cyberpunk Future Gear equipped with sensors, motors, and lights, and created stories that connected themselves to each other in an emerging world.
Primordial Beings, 2007-2015
From 2007-2015, I designed and led over twenty participatory video projects for youth at Beam Camp. Each project results in a short fantasy movie dealing with themes of growth and transformation. In this example live cinema project, youth collaborated to write and film scenes and edit video in real-time while performing an improvised narration.
Video: 2 minute, 6 second (excerpt)