The Rainfall Project

Rendering Graphical Images with Falling Water

Graphical Waterfall® — Nestlé “Electrolytenment” campaign (2013) — © The New York Times Company.

Graphical Waterfall® — Nestlé “Electrolytenment” campaign (2013) — © The New York Times Company.

From 1989-1992, I was a research assistant on the Rainfall Project in the School of Fine Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UW-M) under the supervision of Professor Stephen Pevnick (MFA). I was a member of a small team of artists and engineers working to realize Professor Pevnick’s large-scale Graphical Waterfall®, which is capable of rendering images through falling water.

Graphical Waterfall® — Penn State University (2009) — © Pevnick Design, Inc.

I was solely responsible for all levels of software design and development — from device drivers up to the graphical user interface — through every phase of project life cycle. I wrote the software system from scratch in C and 8086 Assembler on MS-DOS. The team designed all non-PC hardware.

Working in this creative group instilled in me a drive to push limits beyond what is conventionally considered possible.

Graphical Waterfall® — Bangkok, Thailand (2006) — © Pevnick Design, Inc.