Sam Ferris - Morris

Bio

I am a Cincinnati-based Show Control System Designer, musician-composer, and Cofounder of the Interdisciplinary design-studio, Intermedio, which specializes in designing interactive and immersive architectural installations. I have worked on and lead a variety of projects of different scales including immersive audio pavilions for Justin Vernon's, Eaux Claire’s Music and Arts Festival, Cincinnati’s Blink light art festival, as well as the design and production of large scale industrial control systems for high power servo motors and animatronics in the themed entertainment industry. My installation, “From Any Point”, was featured at the University of Cincinnati's DAAPx architecture conference, and was up for five years at the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center. My work was also featured on the 2017 inaugural year of the BLINK: Festival of Light and Art which saw millions of visitors and culminated in a permanent installation on the face of the ArtsWave headquarters building in downtown Cincinnati.

My primary technical experience is in designing, developing, and integrating software and hardware systems for tightly timed, synchronous and safe control of musical systems and animated mechatronic figures. In this role I have worked with the biggest clients and organizations in the business including Grammy winning musical artists, ensembles, and studios. I am responsible for the production of deliverables to clients at all phases of the development process, including RFP’s, budgets, BOM’s, 3D models, electrical schematics and wiring diagrams, assembly drawings, engineering calculations, cable schedules, safety analysis, parts procurement, Industrial Control Panel assembly, system integration and electromechanical troubleshooting, servo motor tuning and scripting, FAT testing and documentation, as well as installation and programming.

Experience

LFstudios

January 2022 - Present

Intermedio

January 2013 - Present

Miami University, Adjunct Professor of Music technology

January 2017 - January 2022

Cincinnati Public Library, Makerspace Technician

January 2016 - January 2022

Oscillators - Installed for Light Strikes Exhibition 2016, Cincinnati, OH

Twist - Installed in Downtown Cincinnati 2021

From Any Point - 2016-2017 Intermedio

From and Point is a large scale architectural musical instrument/ interactive installation I invented and designed with my design studio, Intermedio, and Jeff Welch's Modulerum in mid to late 2016. The piece uses a distributed network of infared LED communication to pass a set of simple musical states around a large geometric sculpture of circuits creating cascades of sound and light that travel like digital creatures from Conways Game of Life.

I designed, prototyped, programed and fabricated this project with Architect Jeff Welsh and Composer/Artist Justin West for the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Museum's UnMuseum.
tested and designed a circuit consisting of 3 photodiodes, a photoresitor, an atmel Attiny42, 3 infared LEDS, an RGB LED, and a speaker.
Each unit communicates by flashing the infared LED at periodic intervals which it's neighbor senses and measures the specific time interval with the photodiodes on each of its sides. There is no centralized control system. The patterns are generated by variations in the length of melodies and time delays.

Intermedio Creative Studio - primary contributors - Sam ferris - Morris, Justin West, eric blyth

Started in 2012-2013 from collaborations and late night conversations between Sam Ferris - Morris and Justin West. We built an 8 part Choir and 52 voice contrapuntal harmonizer with 16 channel sound diffusion in MaxMsp for the Clifton Cultural Arts Center in Cincinnati. Then we built our first networked interactive installation with haptic feedback, tactile transducers, led shift registers and and capacitive sensors for call and response haptic sound between Cincinnati and Mainstrassee Village in Covington Kentucky in 2014. We continued for 10 years with our most current installation, Embedded, living in its permanent home on the Artswave building in Downtown Cincinnati, OH.

Intermedio Projects and Collaborative work