Hi, I'm Kaloyan, a junior at
Yale University.
I like to make fun things. Mostly videos, music, graphic design, generative art and quirky gadgets.
From Sofia, Bulgaria, currently in New Haven, CT.
Check out some of my latest work below.
nice to meet ya
Mental Canvas
Summer 2021
Mental Canvas is developing an innovative spatial sketching tool that lies between 2D digital drawing platforms and 3D CAD systems.
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I helped launch the Mental Canvas $100k Challenge - a global challenge to reimagine drawing.
Worked on strategy, copywriting, video production and graphic design.
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Started the Mental Canvas TikTok (currently at 160k followers) and was responsible for marketing & community management.
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Worked with the engineering team on UX prototypes and QA for the systems supporting the challenge.
Small Foot
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I was in charge of their full website redesign & migration from WordPress to Shopify - smallfoot.eu
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Wrote copy, made visuals & coded custom Liquid blocks.
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Also directed and edited a series of product videos for their latest model, Small Foot Musala.
Orientation for
International Students
Summer 2021
Branding, web design and merch for Yale's annual orientation for international students.
Drum/Drama Machine
Fall 2021
A custom digital drum machine/synthesizer with a quirky wooden enclosure.
Built, coded, wired and performed entirely by me as a final project for CPSC334 - Creative Embedded Systems, at Yale.
The Drum/Drama Machine is a wooden box full of wonders. Drum mode plays a randomly generated drum loop sequence (kick, snare + hi-hat). When you switch the machine into Drama mode, it becomes a chaotic drone generator.
Powered by a Bela board and coded in Pure Data.
Inspired by Ciat-Lonbarde and digdugDIY <3
Kosmos?
Summer 2021
Kosmos? is a generative art project exploring the legacy of the legendary Bulgarian popular science magazine.
Exhibited at KO-OP Sofia as a part of
Kosmos was a legendary Bulgarian popular science magazine, published between 1962 and 1994. It was particularly known for its awe-inspiring covers, featuring everything from robots and astronauts to animals and Bulgarian history. Each was paired with inspirational quotes from a mix of scientists, communist leaders and national heroes - Faraday, Lenin, Levski. The project Kosmos? is an attempt to produce entirely new covers using a neural network.
The covers from the project are generated using the StyleGan2 algorithm, trained on 247 issues from the original Kosmos. Due to the small training set and high variance of the images, the model successfully produces the Kosmos title, but cannot extract any other details. The year is somewhere in the 1900s, the quotes are in a language of their own, the illustrations feel scientific, but impossible to interpret. The covers are murky and abstract, uncannily existing between history and fiction, the physical and the digital, the human and the artificial.
Ramonia
2020
A 12-track, 0-budget plunderphonics concept album about Bulgaria, internet culture, nostalgia and the remnants of socialism.
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Recorded, produced, mixed & mastered by me in my bedroom throughout 2020
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Under the pseudonym Kurt Kolev.
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Featured in The Yale Herald, Capital and the albums of the year of the Bulgarian Music Association.
Kalo's Stem Player
Fall 2021
A simple stem player device!
Plays 4 parts of a song simultaneously and you can turn them on and off while they're looping.
Transforms music listening from a fun passive experience to a fun active experience.
make sure to unmute this one
A two-week project for CPSC334 at Yale - Creative Embedded Systems.
Our task was to create a performable device using exactly one joystick, one button and one switch.
Made using Python, SuperCollider, a Raspberry Pi and an ESP32.
Inspired by the Yeezy/Kano/Teenage Engineering stem player.
But with cuter insect stickers!!!
Assorted Graphic Design
2021-2022
Various design work for events & organizations, primarily at Yale.
And more
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Fake Window - a video installation on 6 projectors
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Art Mirror - an interactive system that matches a user's pose to an artwork
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Building community at Design at Yale
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Computing @ Yale 2020 - animated short introducing incoming students to the technology resources at Yale
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Letter to Someone Living 50 Years from Now - a video for a poem / a Windows XP nostalgia trip
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Reimagining the Bulgarian State Maturity Exam - paper published in the Bulgarian Journal of Science & Education Policy
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Optimizing Gin & Tonic - explainer video about the science behind the iconic cocktail and how to perfect it
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Machine Voting in Bulgaria - short animated campaign video about the problems with the electoral system in Bulgaria
