Timeline | Hiren Kangad

Self-hosted, real-time collaborative reference board. PureRef on the web.

Refboard

npm + CDN library for animated wave and dot-field backgrounds, with a visual editor.

FieldX Waves

Three character LoRAs across eight video pipelines. A map of which pipeline wins which job.

ComfyUI LoRA experiments

Audio model fine-tuning 2025 – 2026

Custom VoxCPM voices on ~120 hours of speech per character, and an F5-TTS run for Hindi. Checkpoints stay private.

A shared brain for AI agents: knowledge base in git, MCP tools, a web explorer.

Engram

Weekend project

Word Mirror

Paste one prompt into Claude and it renders you as a living word-portrait over your camera.

Weekend project

Arduino Claude Tracker

An Arduino and a 16×2 LCD on the desk showing what the coding agent is doing right now.

Weekend project

2025

11 things

ComfyUI workflows for the stage

Depth-to-video and ControlNet kinetic typography, built for volumetric parallax tests in live shows.

Paint on a 3D mascot in the browser, export it as a PNG. For Quicksand's WorldBuilder IP.

Worldbuilder

Indie game studio site with a playable arcade game as the front door.

AddChai

Site for an accelerator that helps AI startups grow up.

Qualqa

Interactive 3D installation for exploring ISO tanks remotely.

Deccan

Site that explains cell and gene therapy manufacturing to the people who fund it.

KODO LifeScience

Rebuilt their site from scratch after the park went green.

Payal Industrial Park

Sound Canvas, All About Music 2025

Generative-AI installation: audience sketches on an iPad become album art in ~800 ms.

Native VST3/AU plugin (JUCE, C++) wrapping RVC, for a film dubbing pipeline.

Voice cloning plugin

3D ASMR typing scene. Wooden puppet hands type alongside you.

typing-ai

Hunyuan text-to-video, prompted with one word: dance.

Dance.ai

Research site that makes neuroscience readable.

2024

5 things

NeuroAct Lab

Corporate site for a company that introduces companies to companies.

IDEX

Obvious Mar 2023 – Jan 2024

Case-study pages with custom interactions, built with their design team. Later cited in PhonePe's acquisition note.

Arijit Singh, India tour Nov 2023 – May 2024

Node-Shed Bangalore

Talk: "From Shader to Stage: Real-Time Graphics for Live Music".

Talk

Visual artist. The last run of a five-year tenure.

Vishal-Shekhar · Asees Kaur 2019 – 2024

2023

6 things

Live-show visuals for both, multi-show runs, between the Arijit tours.

National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad 2023 – 2025

Visiting faculty. Generative Animation elective (p5.js, GLSL), 30 M.Des students a semester.

Teaching

Pritish Nandy Communications

Website redesign for the production house, with Reva Sarma.

Sunidhi Chauhan, "I am Home" Aug 2023

Custom visuals for a special-themed concert.

Arijit Singh, Australia & New Zealand Apr 2023

Visual artist. Two countries, one crew, no downtime.

Arijit Singh, India tour Nov 2022 – Mar 2023

Visual artist. The long home run: five months across India.

FIFA World Cup opening, Qatar Nov 2022

2022

9 things

Visuals for Sunidhi Chauhan's performance on the world feed.

Arijit Singh, Australia Jul 2022

Visual artist. Arenas, winter, July.

Arijit Singh, USA · Canada · Europe Apr – May 2022

Visual artist. 8K–12K LED walls, crews of up to 20.

Khoj: The Observatory, Second Site

WebGL lecture-performance with artist Rohini Devasher. Spotlighted by Pro Helvetia.

Tryangle42 / CHNOPS Feb 2022 – Mar 2023

Story site for the origins and traits of the CHNOPS NFT.

Daily GLSL practice. Became the live-visuals shader pack.

50 shaders in 50 days

Glicol + TouchDesigner audio-visual set, NYU.

Live performance

Face detection with ml5 Jan 2022

NYU Tisch School of the Arts 2021 – 2022

M.A., Interactive Media Arts (low residency). ml5, p5.js, generative systems, computer-vision interaction.

Study

Real-time face mixing from a webcam. Demoed at NYU with 80+ people.

Web museum of young people's mental-health stories, for Quicksand and Sangath.

2021

5 things

Mann Mela Jan – Jun 2021

Content platform with a custom backend for its storytelling formats.

The Vibe

Comedy portfolio and fan hub.

Kaneez Surka

Arduino servo webcam steered by ml5 face tracking.

Follow-me camera

Disaster tourism in the future

Unity simulation of a rare-earth mining disaster.

Research platform on gender barriers to entrepreneurship.

2020

5 things

UNDP & UNICEF

Mobile-first site for a comedian turning writer.

Sapan Verma

A 3D typeface, one glyph a day, in WebGL.

36 Days of Type Feb 2020

Bollywood Music Project 2019 – 2020

In-house VJ for the festival's artists.

All About Music conference 2019 – 2020

Tech lead and operator for India's music-industry conference.

Arijit Singh Live Feb 2019 – 2024

2019

12 things

Official visual artist. Five years, world tours across USA, Canada, Europe, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, South Africa, India.

Role

Arijit Singh, USA · Canada Apr – May 2019

First world tour.

Introspection, Michelle Poonawalla Mar & Sep 2019

Technical lead on a 360° installation. Alserkal Avenue, Dubai and Saatchi Gallery, London.

Lakmé Fashion Week 2018 – 2019

Tech lead, main stage visuals.

Futuristic festival site.

Terminal-1 Festival

Conference hub: schedules, venue maps, networking.

All About Music

Title sequence in Unreal Engine, with Reva Sarma.

One Mic Stand, season 2

Audio-visual launch presentation for the new OTT platform.

Voot Select launch

Interactive pitch deck with live data visualisations.

Voot Select pitch deck

Projection-mapped butterflies that fly off Michelle Poonawalla's paintings when you walk up.

MYP

Fanart for The Help Feb 2019

A favourite movie line, rebuilt in WebGL.

Virtual dressing room 2016 – 2018

Kinect body tracking + cloth simulation in Unity.

Interaction designer and creative technologist for hire. Everything under Work starts here.

2018

5 things

Self-employed Sep 2018 →

Role

Sunidhi Chauhan, live tour Nov 2018

Primary VJ across the run.

Amit Trivedi, live tour Oct 2018

Visual content design.

5 Stages of Grief Feb 2018

Sofar Sounds Ahmedabad Jul – Nov 2018

Co-founded the chapter. Curated artists, found rooms, ran the gigs.

Co-founded

Grief as geometry, in three.js.

The Big Squat 2017 – 2018

2017

2 things

Built a venue from the ground up for an eight-week festival: film, stand-up, spoken word, music. 20 brand partners, 2,000+ attendees.

Startup

Fangirl Live, year two

Two days, two stages, 24+ indie artists from across India.

Startup

2016

2 things

Candyman Entertainment Nov 2016 – Aug 2018

Co-founder, design head, and creative director of Fangirl Live. A company to promote independent Indian music.

Co-founded

Fangirl Live, year one

Gujarat's first fan-experience festival for indie music. Started as house gigs.

Startup

2014

2 things

Dotted Yellow Umbrella, Bangalore Jul 2014 – Aug 2016

Co-founder and CEO. Multitouch, AR and VR products with in-house hardware, for real-estate and automotive clients.

Co-founded

Godrej Interio colour visualiser Feb – May 2014

3D room visualiser for the digital experience centre.

Fruit Ninja with a finger in the air.

2013

7 things

Leap Motion gaming

Sun-light demo Aug – Sep 2013

OoBI.in Aug 2013 – Sep 2014

Interactive prototyper. Kinect, Leap Motion, AR, VR, built to survive a trade show.

Role

Real-time sun position simulator for real-estate showrooms.

Sign language to text May – Jul 2013

Google Maps plug-in for Real-IT Nov 2013 – Jan 2014

Amenities around a property, inside the in-house real-estate software.

Client work

Final-year project: Leap Motion reads hand posture and writes it out.

Kinect dressing room, proof of concept May – Jun 2012

Inkoniq Jan – Apr 2013

First job. Designed and coded interactive installations.

Role

DA-IICT, Gandhinagar 2009 – 2013

B.Tech, Information & Communication Technology. Music club convener, movie-making committee.

Study

2012

3 things

Internship. Kinect data into 3D space with cloth simulation.