I'm an interactive designer.
I'm curious about synthetic biology and I recently audited MIT's How to Grow Almost Anything course.
I studied Interactive Media Arts at NYU ('24). You can reach me at kariina.altosaar@nyu.edu.
2025
November 2025
The core diffused, long, long ago. There used to be a raised circular stone ring containing orange fire. The men would gather around it while the women hid indoors. The ring had been opened up by the dreams of the arrivers. It contained plasma. Dense, life matter.
Some saw it and set about carrying light to new places. Some dipped their hands in it and walked away, leaving drops of plasma shaped by their idiosyncracies: a building, energy, light-speed transit. Some dipped buckets into it, releasing fumes. Some left, forever seeing the imprint of fire that they saw in their fellow congregants' eyes. Some gathered around fires. Some put up lampposts, and then checked the eyes of whoever happened to be stopped by a lampost for signs of vivacity. When more people arrived, rush began. Streaming. Places to feel wind from where preserved to, rocks were erected, light was projected. The molten ring became a small mound. If you sat on it and listened, you might hear the chuckles and snores of a city that long ago stopped having to take care of itself.
The clouds of industry in the air provided a surface for reflecting light.
Of those who jumped into the molten core, their dreams either flicked off as sparks into the night sky, only to be perhaps briefly seen as sparks in subsequent campfires, or went spiralling up and embedded in the industrial clouds.
I design motion graphics and visual assets for Helus Pharma spanning press releases, clinical trial data, and the science behind their therapeutics platform.
Tone.js, p5.js - Code of Music - 2020
A web-based musical app that encourages the exploration of harmony without having to memorize note locations. Notes float by and if the user likes their sound they can "catch" the notes by placing two bars around the note. This will make the note bounce back and forth between the bars. The user can change the distance between two bars to adjust for rhythm and tempo.
Play here: (works better on desktop)
Node.js, Tone.js - 2021
Collaboration with Yona Ngo and Anh Li.
We asked participants to tape their phone to a body part of their choice. Each participant was assigned a different sound and their phone’s orientation controlled the frequency and duration of notes. We then read out prompts to them, ranging from “as a group, collectively wail” to “can you be free together?” and asked them to respond with sound.
We were curious about how people could express feelings and information with their body by using it in a different way. With different prompts we were trying to see their willingness to move and express sounds with other people without preparation.
p5.js, HTML, CSS - Creative Computing - 2019
A web application that allows people to collaboratively tell a story with GIFs. People are prompted to come up with poses for two frames of a GIF and the GIF is then placed into the appropriate part of the story. The story unfolds as more and more people add GIFs.
Vibe coded in Times Square with Claude - November 2025
My computer sometimes picked up audio from the street performers nearby and their interactions with their audience went into the Claude conversation too.
NeoPixels, Arduino, Acrylic - Physical Computing - 2021
A lamp that you can brighten and dim by rotating it. You can both precisely set its brightness or playfully roll it around for fun. It serves as a gentle reminder to pay more attention to the act of giving light.
Acrylic, Arduino, Servo motor, Ultrasonic sensor, Cork - Physical Computing - 2021
Think Twice is a mirror that looks ordinary from a distance, but when you go up to it to look at yourself in it, it flips around so you can't see yourself.
They galloped away in the middle of the night when the Frost touched them.
2021
