Smile Walker is a creative director, systems architect, and experience designer who has spent the last 20 years building platforms, live systems, and immersive infrastructure that give people access to experiences they didn't know were possible. The through line across all of it is the same: technology designed to disappear so that what's left is purely human. Connection, creativity, spontaneity, agency. People doing things together they couldn't have done any other way, in spaces that didn't exist until Smile built them. Early work includes #LIVINGROOMTODAY, a live simulcast platform that connected physical venues across at least three countries simultaneously — over ten shows spanning NYC, Los Angeles, Tokyo, the Whitney Museum, a yacht in the Pacific, and bedrooms around the world — years before the rest of the world figured out that IRL and URL didn't have to be opposites. That work led directly to 8ball.tv, NYC's volunteer-run 24-hour public access channel online, where Smile directed and produced original programming including CompUSA.live, a live interactive theatre platform that collapsed the line between what was real and what was staged. The New Museum acquired it into their permanent collection. Smile co-founded GGGlue Interactive with Pointshader and Panasonic Connect to direct real-time visuals and lead systems for the Brooklyn Mirage at Avant Gardner, rebuilding the venue's 200-foot outdoor LED wall to SMPTE ST 2110 standards and making it the largest immersive entertainment experience in the United States. Through Smilesoft.dev, Smile led systems procurement, installation, and user experience for the NYC-Dublin Portal, the 24/7 live video connection between New York City's Flatiron Plaza and Dublin's O'Connell Street that has generated over 2 billion interactions since its launch in May 2024. Other work includes the Heineken F1 Smiledrop System at the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix, a real-time content capture and delivery platform that gave every fan at the event a personalized, movie-quality race video within seconds of their experience. Unlocked, an RFID-based interactive platform that turns any physical object into a media trigger with no app, no interface, and no visible technology. Azyros.world, an adaptive MMO where player decisions write the world in real time. And ongoing R&D in spatial computing for automotive, collaborative live music formats, and immersive platform development. Smile operates independently under Rebranding in Progress, taking on clients and collaborators whose problems don't have existing solutions.
Early projects include commissioned YouTube originals
(The SubCulture Club,
with Katalyst Productions in LA, 2012–14), the IRL/URL venue
#LIVINGROOMTODAY,
and the 24-hour online public access channel
8balltv.club,
where he directed and produced original content, including
CompUSA.live (2016),
the first live desktop theater, exhibited at the New Museum.
He co-founded GGGLUE Interactive to direct real-time visuals for live performances, powering the largest immersive LED wall in the western hemisphere; its successor
Smilesoft.dev
created original audience interaction technologies and developed computational interaction systems for the
NYC–Dublin PORTAL (2024).