The Golden City — a future-city concept piece

San Diego, CA · open to full-time and contract roles

J. Ferguson “Phoenix”

Creative Technologist · Interactive & Immersive Experience Director

25 years in technology, directing physical-plus-digital experiences that ship — from a browser-based Burning Man universe named by Burning Man Project itself, to an AI-native production pipeline I designed and run end to end.

See the work ↓

Selected work

Five case studies spanning experiential, product, and AI-native content production — the same range this role calls for.

Experiential

METABURN — The Bridge Experience

2020 · Founder & Regional Director

A free, fully immersive 3D web-based XR Burn that ran in any browser on any device — no download, no headset required. Named one of the Recognized Universes of the 2020 Burning Man Multiverse in Burning Man Project's own announcement film, alongside BRCvr, BURN2 and SparkleVerse.

Challenge

Deliver a full immersive Burn experience during a pandemic shutdown, with no in-person event possible and a hard external deadline.

My role

Founder & Regional Director — ran the full production stack: platform licensing, producer/participant agreements, scheduling, volunteer recruitment.

Approach

Cloud-hosted WebXR with no-code 3D world building and an on-chain asset layer — a portal to seven other Recognized Universes of the Multiverse.

Outcome

11,500 participants · $16,500 budget · 80-day window, 40 days active development.

Independently corroborated

Named by Burning Man Project in its own film: “the eight recognized universes of the Burning Man multiverse — Burn2, BRCvr, the Bridge Experience, Build-A-Burn, MysticVerse, SparkleVerse, Multiverse, and the Infinite Playa.”

Burning Man's own Journal names “Phoenix” as a co-creator; PlayaVR2020 credits list “Meta Burn Producers: XR Labs, Paul Bronstein, Juan Rivera, Jeffery Ferguson (Phoenix).”

WebXRExperience designLive productionVolunteer leadership

Experiential · Content

Interactive & Augmented NFT Art Mural

2021 · Art Basel Miami · Project lead

An Instagram/Spark AR layer over a physical mural in Downtown Miami, delivered by XR-LABS for Fly NFT's LLC across Art Basel week. Part of a broader run of NFT/on-chain work that same year — including minting and listing “MetaBurn 2020 (1st NFT)” on Rarible, and METABURN's own release of the Alien Love Nest 2020 gift token designed by Geoff “Fusion” McCabe. Full story in the archive →

Challenge

Extend a static physical mural into a living, animated layer without altering the original artwork.

My role

Project lead, working inside the XR-LABS team delivering for the client, Fly NFT's LLC.

Approach

One image-recognition target trained on the mural, a 15-second looped animation, and an on-wall QR code as the entry point — scan and the mural comes alive in place.

Outcome

A shipped, publicly exhibited AR layer running live across Art Basel week.

ARSpark AR / InstagramImage trackingPhysical + digital

Product

CoPlay — Garfield Campus Digital Twin

2020 – 2024 · Joint venture with owner Susannah Rosenthal · Muncie, Indiana

A joint venture to convert the former Garfield Inc. headquarters into a Science & Technology Park and Family Entertainment Center. Susannah Rosenthal was the owner; I was the technical and business-development partner.

Challenge

Give stakeholders a way to walk a proposed campus redevelopment before a single wall existed.

My role

Technical partner & General Operations Director. I built the digital twin and engaged the property's IP rights holder on licensing terms.

Approach

A navigable digital twin: building massing, circulation, landscape treatment, and the campus monument as an explorable environment.

Outcome

Delivered flythrough used in stakeholder review. The wider deal never closed — I did not raise the capital — but the twin shipped.

Digital twin3D visualizationSpatial design

Product

Sensor-Driven Installations — Teslasuit, 3D Scan & Sports Lab

2020 · Creative technologist

Full-body haptic hardware and capture-to-model environment scanning, taken from first bring-up through working experiential prototype.

Challenge

Prove out unfamiliar physical-computing hardware — haptics and 3D capture — as real, demoable experiences, not a spec sheet.

My role

Hands-on hardware bring-up and prototype build, from first software load.

Approach

Teslasuit haptic feedback integration; environment 3D-scanning; sports-performance motion-capture prototyping.

Outcome

Live demonstrations at a Midtown Miami pop-up next to the Tesla Store.

HapticsSensor-driven3D scanningPrototyping

Content

AI-Native Production Pipeline

2020 – present · Designer & operator

A wired-together pipeline — not one tool, a system — that takes a client or venture brief from research through a delivered, polished package. It's the same pipeline that produces this site.

Challenge

Agencies need AI-native production, not a single AI tool bolted onto an old workflow.

My role

Designed, wired, and personally operate every stage of the pipeline.

Approach

Intake/research (retrieval + vision-language OCR) → orchestration (Claude Code, MCP tool calls) → generation (Gamma; ComfyUI/Stable Diffusion with published Deforum/ControlNet configs) → finishing (Python/Pillow/pymupdf) → delivery (styled HTML → PDF/DOCX in one pass).

Outcome

64 client & venture decks across 19 sectors, Nov 2024–Aug 2026 · open-source Deforum/ControlNet configs published Mar 2023.

Claude CodeMCPGammaComfyUIStable DiffusionProduction systems

Leading people, not just projects

135-person camp

Directed a Love Burn camp with a core team of 35 active volunteers across logistics, build, and on-site delivery.

3-hour panel, convened live

Convened and hosted an AI-ethics panel during the first pandemic spring — algorithmic bias, ad-funded AI incentives, Web 3.0, three years ahead of the mainstream conversation.

Mentorship, in practice

Mentored young builders (DreamTank) shipping their own browser-based virtual worlds for a Burning Man SDG experience.

Full portfolio & archive

References, credentials, the complete venture history, application documents, and every claim's provenance — self-reported vs. independently corroborated, labeled throughout.

Full CV & archive →