A month of attention, rendered.
Daily signals pulled from search behavior, translated through the system, and stabilized into color. Each frame holds a moment of collective focus, small on its own, but directional in aggregate.
This is what a month looks like when you treat emotion as data.
American Emotions (2024)
Affective Computational Geometry
Studio Lab BH
Convergent Grammar: Portraits (2026)
Affective Computational Geometry
Studio Lab BH
Convergent Grammar: Portraits looks at how we’ve learned to see images over time.
Using 200 portrait paintings from @metmuseum a shared pattern appears. A compositional grammar that shows up again and again across portraits.
It shapes how images are made, and how we place ourselves within them.
A street-facing light installation rendering two parallel affective systems: collective emotional data from America and real-time emotional responses from the Upper West Side.
ACG by Studio Lab BH: Installation (2026)
Affective Computational Geometry
Studio Lab BH
A temporary affective ecosystem composed through light, scent, sound, food, conversation, and collective presence.
Food: @chefwillcoleman
Wine: West Side Wine
Scent: @malinandgoetz
Floral: Amsterdam Deli
ACG by Studio Lab BH: Activation (2026)
Affective Computational Geometry
Studio Lab BH
Studio Lab BH presents “ACG By Studio Lab BH,” a three day installation about reported feeling at two scales, the country and the room you are standing in. One window shows the emotional field of the United States as it forms from public signal across the day, and the other window shows the emotional field of the Upper West Side as it forms from the people who walk in and report how they feel in the moment. Your submission briefly shapes the local display, stays visible for a short time, and then recedes into a rotating ledger of everyone who came before you, so the piece holds a record of the room without holding onto any single person in it.
The work sits inside our ongoing research into Affective Computational Geometry, the framework we use to treat emotion as a measurable, shared condition that operates across different scales of time and place. A country has a feeling, a block has a feeling, and you have a feeling, and the installation lets you see all three in the same room.
No prior knowledge required, just a few minutes and an honest answer.
The Space, 463 Amsterdam Avenue, New York. April 28–30. Free and open.
Link in bio to RSVP.
Portraits converge on a body-head where the head goes, shoulders below. Landscapes converge on a single line: the horizon. Across 80 paintings, painters disagreed on almost everything except where the eye should travel to find the world’s edge. This creates proof that compositional grammar is subject-agnostic, shaped less by what is depicted than by the spatial problem the genre was built to solve.
Convergent Grammar: Landscapes Study (2026)
Affective Computational Geometry
Studio Lab BH
A single day in American Emotions begins as search behavior.
Google Trends provided a daily snapshot of what the country was paying attention to in aggregate. That behavioral signal was passed through a translation layer I built to map search activity into emotional categories. The weighted emotional output was then rendered as color.
#americanemotionsretrospective
Two years ago, Studio Lab BH’s director Brendon Hawkins began a project called @americanemotions . It is the work that this lab has grown out of. Over the next two weeks we are returning to the beginning, walking through what it was, what it revealed, and how it set the direction the lab is now operating within.
This is day one.
#AmericanEmotionsRetrospective
The CUNY Public Interest Technology Lab is excited to announce that we are convening our inaugural advisory board. This board will serve to broaden our impact as a site aimed at advancing public interest technology.
CUNY PIT Lab appoints Brendon Hawkins as Founding Advisory Board Chair.
In this role, Hawkins will lead the creation of the board’s charter, structure, and membership.
We spoke to Brendon about what draws him to public interest tech and what he hopes to bring to this new advisory board. Check out the blog, link is in our bio!
#NYC #PublicInterestTechnology #popup #CUNYPITLab #CivicTech #DataForGood #TechForEquity #CUNY
