Hiren  wanted to be Batman, settled for creative technologist.
I build interactive things: websites for clients, real-time visuals for stages, generative-AI tools for whoever needs them. Working for myself, one way or another, since 2014. Around 900,000 people have watched my visuals across 50+ arena shows in 8 countries. I teach generative animation at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. Most tools I build for myself end up as MIT-licensed packages or public repos. The thread through all of it: code as a creative material, used in service of a specific person, room, or audience.

Microsites, brand experiences, and case-study sites for studios and cultural institutions. Recent partners: Quicksand, Sangath, Khoj, Pritish Nandy Communications, Obvious, Tryangle42. Webflow, Three.js, GLSL, real-time motion. See the work →

14 years of real-time audio-reactive visuals for concert tours, fashion weeks, and gallery installations. TouchDesigner pipelines for Arijit Singh, Sunidhi Chauhan, Vishal-Shekhar, Amit Trivedi, Asees Kaur. Introspection at Saatchi and Alserkal. See the stage →

Generative-AI workflows in ComfyUI, voice-cloning audio plugins, custom LoRA training, GLSL shader practice. And a habit of open-sourcing the tools I build along the way: Refboard, FieldX Waves, Helix, typing-ai. See the lab →

RIGHT NOW
Product Engineer at Alt Inc since July 2026. Prototypes, mostly. Evenings and weekends go to generative-AI pipelines and the tools that fall out of them.
DAY JOB
Product Engineer, Alt Inc
TEACHING
Generative Animation, NID Ahmedabad
EXPLORING
ComfyUI video pipelines, LoRA training, voice models
BASED IN
Bangalore, India
THE FULL RECORD
THE LONGER STORY

Skip if you only wanted the credentials. Keep reading if you want the shape of the practice.

I trained as an engineer at DA-IICT, Gandhinagar (B.Tech, ICT, 2009–2013), but the parts of the curriculum that stuck were the ones where code was a way of making something visible. After a year prototyping with Kinects and Leap Motions at OoBI, I started Dotted Yellow Umbrella in Bangalore, building multitouch, AR and VR products for real-estate and automotive clients with a four-person team. We shipped client work and our own hardware-software products for two years, and I learned what running a creative-tech business actually costs.

In 2016 I co-founded Candyman Entertainment with a focus on Indian indie music. Out of that came Fangirl Live, Gujarat's first large-scale fan-experience festival: house gigs in year one, a two-stage, two-day festival with 24+ artists in year two, and The Big Squat, a venue we built from the ground up for an eight-week festival of independent film, stand-up, spoken word and music. By the end I'd been curator, production head, and head of design and technology. It taught me how to build the room as well as what goes on the screen.

From 2019 I went fully independent and started touring as Visual Artist for Arijit Singh Live. Five years, multiple world tours: USA, Canada, Europe, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, South Africa, India. TouchDesigner pipelines feeding 8K–12K LED walls, frame-perfect sync with broadcast and lighting, on-site crews of up to 20, zero-downtime shows. Sunidhi Chauhan's FIFA World Cup opening in Qatar. Lakmé Fashion Week as tech lead. The Bollywood Music Project as in-house VJ. The All About Music conference as tech lead and operator. Between tours, the studio kept building websites with a story in them.

I went back to school in 2021, an MA in Interactive Media Arts at NYU Tisch, to formalise the parts of my practice I'd been picking up by ear: ml5, p5.js, generative systems, computer-vision interaction. Came out of it with a face-tracking installation, a follow-me Arduino camera, a daily 50-day GLSL practice that became my live-visuals shader pack, and a much sharper sense of what generative work could be when it was deliberate.

Since 2023 I've been Visiting Faculty at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, designing and teaching the Generative Animation elective in p5.js to cohorts of 30 M.Des students each semester. Explaining generative systems to designers every week keeps me honest about what actually matters in them.

The current chapter is generative AI. Eight months consulting at Aeos Labs (character LoRAs across eight ComfyUI video pipelines, generative UI, and Refboard, built as the team's own tool), then Alt Inc as Product Engineer from July 2026. Alongside: voice-conversion pipelines, audio-model fine-tuning, and the open-source tools that fall out of all that work. I post experiments at @metalfinger.xyz.

That's the shape. The receipts are on the Timeline.

HOW I WORK
  • Code is the material, not the department. I design and build the same thing, so the idea never gets lost in a handoff.
  • Run the show, don't just design it. Years of live operation mean I plan for the night it goes wrong: cue stacks, fail-overs, a second machine.
  • Open source by default. Tools I build for myself ship as MIT packages, because I've taken enough from that ecosystem to owe it back.
  • Prototype before pitching. A working thing in a browser settles arguments that a deck can't.
  • Teach it to keep it. If I can't explain a generative system to a room of designers, I don't understand it yet.
TOOLKIT
  • Real-time graphics — TouchDesigner · Unreal Engine · Unity · GLSL
  • Frontend — Astro · Three.js · React · p5.js · TypeScript / JavaScript · Vite · Webflow
  • AI / ML — ComfyUI · SDXL · ControlNet · RVC · LoRA training · F5-TTS / VoxCPM training · ml5.js
  • Programming — JavaScript / TypeScript · Python · C++ · C# · GLSL
  • Design & prototyping — Figma · Adobe CC
  • Audio plugin dev — JUCE (C++)
  • Backend & infra — Node.js · Express · Socket.IO · SQLite · Firebase · MinIO · Docker · Cloudflare Tunnel