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Work Archive

Mule Design Studio
2016–2019
Mule Design provides strategic consulting, design, and technology services. Started in 2001 by Erika Hall and Mike Monteiro. Khoi Vihn called Mule “one of the most influential design practices in North America”. Mule’s client roster runs the gamut from startups to large nonprofits and they famously don’t take on  projects that don’t incorporate research and design discovery upfront.

SELECTED PROJECTS:
Creating access to a global movement for the Wikimedia Foundation 

Recruiting the next generation of neuroscientists for the Zuckerman Institute for Mind Brain Behavior at Columbia 
Voice of Design Podcast 

2012–2014
Making pro-Audio accessible to new audiences 
A quick overview of my work desigining and prototyping audio interfaces at MOTU.

I collaborated with illustrator Leonard Robel to develop Chirp Hop, a tactile learning game that teaches musical scales. I designed, built, and voiced the game for the original Sifteo Cube platform in which the cubes were tethered to a wireless connector. Sifteo Cubes are programmable blocks that have an embedded LCD display and an array of sensors. Dave Merrill and Jeevan Kalanithi came up with the original cubes (known as Siftables) at the MIT Medialab and started Sifteo Inc. shortly after Dave’s 2009 Ted Talk.


Creative Collaborations

2019
Spot Stands Up
I scored Zack McCune’s short film, Spot Stands Up, cut from 1926 archival footage featuring the first surfing dog caught on film. 

This project was the meeting point of our creative mediums of late—Zack has long been obsessed with archival footage and I've been trying to figure out how to make my Moog Sub37 synth sound like the ocean. Zack’s rotoscope illustrations on top of the original footage match my jagged analog synth sonic textures. 

Spot Stands Up premiered in October 2019 at Australia’s Noosa Surf Film Festival.

2015–2017
Long-Distance Music Making

I began collaborating with electronic music composter, producer, and singer, Eric Gunther in 2015.

After I moved to SF we managed to keep our work going through the magic of Dropbox. We performed a set of our original songs in 2017 at the Priceless Festival in Belden, California.

SELECTED SONGS:
“Elsing” by Eric Gunther

Eric Gunther: Lyrics, Vocals, Electronic sounds & Production. Larisa Berger: Vocals

“Treeline”
by Larisa Berger & Eric Gunther

Eric Gunther: Vocals, Electronic sounds & Production. Larisa Berger: Vocals, Keyboard, Piano samples
Lyrics from Scott Beal’s Feats of Pain and Daring


2015–2016
Comedy Hack Day is a hackathon series run by Cultivated Wit. CHD brings together developers, designers, strategists, and comedians to collaborate over a weekend to build hilarious apps.

The project that started it all was Well Deserved, a collaboration with Kasima Tharnpipitchai and Margaux Poupard. Well Deserved is a premium marketplace for unused privilege.

Exploring the space where technology, design, and business overlap.
© Larisa Berger 2019 All Rights Reserved