John Smith

Listen. Design. Code. Craft. Iterate.

Hi. I'm a web developer/artist based in Hamilton, Ontario. Here are some of my project highlights from over the years.

Art Gallery of Hamilton: This is the Nemesis

Javascript, HTML, CSS

For the Art Gallery of Hamilton, I created a geo-location based app that enables visitors who are physically be there to experience a recorded album in response to Kurelek's 'This is the Nemesis'. This project is the first in an on-going series exploring the concept of "Situational Music".

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Medicine Pods

Wordpress, Custom Javascript

Founded by an incredible team of Canadian doctors, Medicine Pods is a one-stop source for comprehensive internal medicine education and evidence-based medicine resources.

This project was guided by merging two pre-existing websites into a new singular vision and website, which involved creating custom plugin solutions to handle both podcast feeds and automating importing of RSS feeds.

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Video Painter

C++, MIDI

Inspired by early experiemental animators such as Norman McLaren, Video Painter is my first ever C++ based application that aims to visulize music via MIDI and animation.

Beta testing is ready to start late November, 2024.

An early prototype of this software was used in the projects below.

Vivaldi Lute Concerto
Noble Rot's "Medicine"

Collective Arts: Upcoming Events

Javascript, HTML, CSS, Video, 3D

Highly stylized video feeds that display upcoming events for Collective Arts (Hamilton). The final result is displayed on old CRT displays in the brewery.

I rendered 3D text for each event over 2D video, then created a single page web application to display the upcoming events, and auto-expire them based on their event date. Additionally I consulted with staff to guide the technical setup of the project.

WWII Journal Preservation Project

HTML, CSS, JS

Designed to preserve a treasured historical document—my grandfather's WWII journal—this project features an intentionally minimal design that highlights and emphasizes the profound weight of its content.

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MERIT Brewing Company

WordPress, Shopify

Great beer deserves a great digital home! This custom theme allows for the staff of MERIT to quickly update what's currently on tap, and also shop their favourite bottles online for delivery.

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Animating With Machine Learning for Netflix + NIN

Custom Data Training, Machine Learning

Machine Learnig + Video Art contributions to Netflix's show "Song Exploder" for Trent Reznor/NIN. A special team of incredibly talented people made this entire episode possible.
It is currently the highest rated episode in the series on imdb.com, and as far as I can find, one of, if not the first use of machine learning animations to air on a major streaming service.

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Making a Music Video With a Dot-Matrix Printer.

Dot-Matrix Printers, Animation

What would it look like if you ran a video through a dot-matrix printer, then re-assembled it? I had to find out for myself...

CBC Interview