I'm Shakti. I make films, software, and websites. I run Two Shiny Coins, a small studio for independent research and projects.
I'm interested in the strange behaviors that arise when humans and machines interact: what they make people feel, do, want, and imitate. Currently, I’m thinking about what “good personality” means for an AI bot. Recently, I spent time lurking on Discord chatrooms where people make bots. That became The Force of Thirst (2024), a short film put together from chat logs, and My girlfriend is a JSON file, an web-based archive of curated JSON files I found of bot personalities (supported by Rhizome).
During my UnionDocs film fellowship, I made Soil Story (2025), where a cemetery and a reservoir talk to each other. It's playing with some science cinema at Science New Wave during fall 2025.
I sometimes end up making films about people I meet. Right now I'm developing Broken Things, a feature documentary about my friend Mike, a sailor rebuilding a hurricane-wrecked boat. I am a member of NEW INC's Art + Code track
Before this, I studied psychology, got an MFA in Design + Technology at Parsons, and spent a decade making consumer software. This site has my research, films, experiments, and whatever else ends up here!