Black Rock Station Posted on January 11, 2023 (October 3, 2024) by Wes Modes A mysterious rural train station appearing in the Black Rock Desert has become unstuck in time, haunted by ghost trains heard but not seen….
A Secret History of American River People Posted on November 16, 2019 (November 24, 2023) by Wes Modes A project to build a collection of personal stories of people who live and work on the river from the deck of a recreated mid-century shantyboat over a series of epic river voyages…
People’s River Stories Posted on May 5, 2025 (May 5, 2025) by Wes Modes People’s River Stories is a new media storytelling platform that invites people from across the world to share place-based narratives about rivers that matter to them. The project functions as both an interactive map and a digital archive of oral history, grounded in community voices and bottom-up storytelling….
DriftConditions Posted on July 14, 2024 (July 20, 2024) by Wes Modes An online audio stream of uncanny late-night radio generated on-the-fly by code….
WesBot Posted on November 19, 2023 (July 20, 2024) by Wes Modes A personality transfer experiment and teaching assistant with vague anxiety about being a digitized brain…
Free Skool Santa Cruz Posted on November 9, 2019 (November 19, 2023) by Wes Modes A radically different approach to living and learning, Free Skool Santa Cruz is a grassroots educational project beyond institutional control. It is an opportunity to learn from each other and share what we know, to foster communities of mutual support and autonomy….
Secret History Web Doc Posted on November 19, 2023 (July 20, 2024) by Wes Modes An interactive web documentary featuring video, images, sound, and stories gathered from my Secret History web expeditions…
We’re Still Here Posted on November 19, 2023 (July 20, 2024) by Wes Modes Social practice and new media work involved interviews with dozens of local elders about the subject of social isolation…
Unavoidable Disaster Posted on October 9, 2020 (July 20, 2024) by Wes Modes Unavoidable Disaster is a monthly eclectic, punky webzine, a collaborative endeavor whose assembly is part art practice, part therapy, and part pure lark….
Playing Bear Creek Posted on January 28, 2014 (July 20, 2024) by Wes Modes Bear Creek is interactive fiction, a coming-of-age story from a child’s point-of-view. Looking back, it was that summer, or maybe just that one day that changed everything. Play online or with an IF player, includes period-accurate musical accompaniment….
Punk Rafting Posted on November 9, 2019 (November 19, 2023) by Wes Modes A few of us set out on a punk rafting journey, building a raft out of found and scavenged materials and floating for a week, Huck Finn-style, on one of the largest fastest rivers on the continent. When we survived, we did it year after year on different rivers….
SubRosa Community Space Posted on November 9, 2019 (November 19, 2023) by Wes Modes An anarchist and radical space offering anarchist books and literature, coffee and tea, shows, art, and a garden courtyard social space….
Night Ride Radio Show Posted on November 9, 2019 (November 19, 2023) by Wes Modes I produced a radio show on Santa Cruz public radio station KUSP and pirate Free Radio Santa Cruz for six years between 2001 to 2007, over 120 volumes amounting to…
Santa Cruz Guerilla Drive-In Posted on November 9, 2019 (November 19, 2023) by Wes Modes An outdoor movie theater under the stars that springs up in the fields and industrial wastelands. Showing great movies, bringing a broad community together, and reclaiming public space….
Santa Cruz Trash Orchestra Posted on November 9, 2019 (November 19, 2023) by Wes Modes Trash Orchestra is a marching percussion band – a bone-shaking recycled orchestra – appearing at protests and celebrations, where a ruckus needs to be made….
Decision Maker Posted on November 19, 2023 (July 23, 2024) by Wes Modes Reveal your secret plans! uncover your hidden agendas! It’s science and magic combined!…
Union of Benevolent Electrical Workers Posted on November 9, 2019 (November 24, 2023) by Wes Modes Tech Community: UBEW provides mutual support to anti-authoritarian groups making radical social change through direct action, community involvement, and education….
Burning Man Posted on November 9, 2019 (November 19, 2023) by Wes Modes Adventure: In 1993 when I first when to Burning Man, it was a few thousand crazy artists together for an apocalyptic weekend of camping in the desert. Since then, I’ve seen it grow from 2000 people to 50 thousand….
Spotify Vinyl Posted on November 19, 2023 (July 20, 2024) by Wes Modes Missing those years of crackly vinyl records replaced by the streaming era, I created a web app that allowed you to listen to entire albums (and only entire albums) complete with crackly vinyl, scratches, and needle drops and lifts…
Grouper Posted on November 19, 2023 (July 20, 2024) by Wes Modes Student Project Group Creator: I observed early in my teaching career that students were both stressed by and relatively bad at choosing groups for course projects. I created a tool to generate approximate optimum groupings based on student self-reported characteristics…
