Who I am

Hi, I am Matt Band, I run the website www.matthew.band (nothing posted yet, but one day), and I am an engineer by trade. I got a degree in Computer Engineering for my bachelors and now I am finishing my Master's in MRI imaging coil design -- I have been innovating the circuit designs to one day make them better! (FYI right now I am on page 119 of my thesis...taking a break to write this). The opportunity at B21 arose, and I made it my duty to carve out the time for it. After reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I got hit with this wave of energy that wanted to produce some form of original Quality in the world, and here we are: Interactive art.
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The Idea

"Sublime, Subliminal Resonance" is a project about those moments in life which feel "oh so correct" that they are just Right, but which are paradoxically beyond our own conscious experience. These are feelings of laughing with a friend and losing track of time, or going for a walk and being lost in thought, as in these moments we drift into subliminal felt experience of Sublime Beauty. I believe these moments are ones of Resonance between our own unique personal interfaces of Being and interfaces to the World around us. I wish to represent these resonances, and maybe along the way even catch a glimpse at the Universal thread which connects us all.

To study such a concept, I sense that Science is not necessarily the greatest tool, and drifting into artistic medium of expression will be necessary. As on this journey, part of me believes that to study something Beautiful requires Beautiful tools. And while Science is often Beautiful, we may have to back away from pure rigor and control to let the it breath and give space for the Resonance to take over.

So, I ask: What connects us deeply? What form do we each take? What is the Feeling that precedes all thought? Does the sublime chord lie in our shared metaphysical experiences of the world, or in something even more profound? And if we could all internalize this feeling of universal connection, what would the world look like? I hope to find one of the many answers to such questions.

Note: Something I also wanted to make clear: I have not done drugs in the making of this project. In fact, when people sense that I did, I have such a hard time explaining that I hadn't. I don't like drugs, they frighten me, and I believe that ingenuity and neuroplasticity is a practiced skill. To be able to let go and drift to let ideas emerge: that is creativity. And so, I know many will not be able to see the same vision I see, but that's the beauty of it. If you think I took drugs, that's just a compliment to me and my neuroplastic honed mind. As a 26 year old my mind feels as flexible as a young kids.
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How It Started - Jan 2026
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How it's going - April 2026

Well, there it goes. In like an unsuspecting moment in time and out like my life long project. These 4 months have transcended all expectation.  There is something so profound to be apart of a space that accepts unconditionally; your crazy idea is heard; you are seen for who you are. It's unlike any experience I've ever had and I can assure the reader (You), that as I write this, the positive fallout of this experience is already showing up.

Along this path I've gotten closer to many of my questions. To what connects us as humans and what it is what we seek. To how the complexity of life flickers and flows with time, and how one day you can experience so deeply and on the next day you couldn't care at all. This complexity, this nuance, seldom can be captured by the simplistic observations of cause and effect. For my science or math friends, life is a non-linear function; life is indescribable with simple equations.

In life, it's like this: you are not happy because you are trying to hard to be happy, but also, you have not done anything in your life to change your environment to make happiness occur easier. You feel isolated because you are clinging onto your old definition of connection, one where you are seen by others, instead of a definition of where You are the one that see's others. But even then, having a good friend makes life beautiful. The world is grey, a mixture of yes and no, or the offspring of up and down, but even still, this middle ground is not the only place where life is lived.

Sometimes it's fun to lean into a passion, to dig deep and give it your all. Sometimes it is great to spend your energy to help others and sometimes it's also great to help yourself. These labels, they obscenest labels about what something Is and what something Isn't, does not serve. But, sorry for doing this, sometimes it does serve. What I am getting at, is that everything is Good. Life is good, the world is the world, people are people, just be let be.

This B21 project really highlighted this concept for me and the selection for why fractals just felt right for representation.  I cannot think of another form that represents everything that I expressed above as coherently as fractals. The sharp edges, the diffuse contours, the nuance, the changing patterns with time, THAT is life and THAT is fractals. A beautiful representation of the complex.  
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The zooming of the 2D fractal is an easier representation of what I am after. The zoom is like the march of time, the pockets of black coloring is like the resonance that we seek. We flow towards it, in and out, operating at the edge of what's possible. The colors change, as does our mood or interpretation of the world. No path is bad, every zoom in the fractal is beautiful, but only when we operate at the edge of what's good for us. Watch this video for fun, notice that two distinct zoom locations result in a different journey:

The experience that I wanted to explore had to be fractals. First, I graciously forked some fractal code from Hopson97 (github.com/Hopson97/Compute-Shader-Testing), and then repurposed it to render the fractals I wanted to render, created some organic flow with time, and added resonance sound to the visuals (binaural beats). I added a microcontroller component to it with joysticks so that this 3D space could be traversed. The setup was first showcased at the B21 showcase where I presented in a bathroom for 6 hours straight, with the fractals projected on the wall. Fighting through tiny bathroom induced hypoxia, I provided an interactive experience for people to explore the fractal space.

Many people came in with interest. They were intrigued by what they were experiencing, and I think their internal monologue went something like this: Fractals in a bathroom? This must be a hallucinogenic trip I am about to experience.  Oh, and you get to sit in a bathtub with pillows? Weird but okay. You get to move around the fractal space with joysticks? OH BOY, strap in. AND there are these weird notes of sound that I am experiencing in my ears? Gee whiz, what is happening. But okay, this is pretty unique.

Boom. That was exactly the goal I wanted to achieve. This peculiar conduit of an experience to get people to flow into the fractal world and to ideally let their brains be brains. The bathroom was selected to get people out of their traditional operational experience, and therefore offered a helping hand to achieve novelty. That was also why there were pillows in the bathtub. The ability to move around the fractal space connected the user to the display as if they were apart of it and could WANDER where their heart desired (see Neil's B21 project). The sounds were there to isolate the environment from around the person, and as they fluctuated with the flow of fractal, induced deeper connection the display. If I was lucky, even for a moment, the people experiencing display would have felt resonance. In which, unbeknownst to them, their worries of life melted away for a split second.

But overall, this was my project. I know it sounds crazy, but crazy is sometimes good. We need certain types of mental exploration in this world, it's how new connections and experiences are made. Afterall, everything is nothing but a model. If this interactive experience can induce anything positive at all, then good. For now, I am going to get back to thesis writing, but I will leave you with this video of me talking about the project: