About Us

An indie label for handmade soundtoys and diy instruments, ThinkingHZ is a collective of NYC-based electronic music artists, building and selling the objects of their dreams. The collective's contributing creators are Johann Diedrick, Mark Kleback (founder), Michelle Cortese, Nick Yulman and resident designer Danne Woo.

GROUP BIOS

MICHELLE CORTESE  |  ellecor.com

Michelle Cortese is a Toronto-born designer, maker, futurist, and typophile. Her background is a twisted medley of interface design, art direction, physical computing, fabrication, VR, and graphics programming. Her work navigates the intersection of digital and material worlds, focusing on designing and developing next-generation user interfaces. Michelle is currently a senior design technologist at Refinery29 and has exhibited work at CES, Tribeca Film Festival, Engadget Expand via Make Magazine, Sundance Film Festival, Absolut Nights, Moogfest, BLDG92, and more.

Nick Yulman  |  nysoundworks.org

Nick Yulman works with sound and interactive media in a variety of ways including installation art, oral history and music. His Bricolo Mechanical Music System offers an introduction to musical robotics for musicians, composers, and artist looking to make digital music making more physical. He is currently Senior Curator for Design and Tech at Kickstarter and formerly worked with the national oral history project StoryCorps. His work has appeared at venues including Paris' Palais de Tokyo, MoMa PS1, The Museum of the Moving Image, Warsaw’s Centre for Contemporary Art, Flux Factory, UnionDocs, the New York Hall of Science, the ISE Cultural foundation.

Mark Kleeb|  kleebtronics.COM

Mark Kleeb is a creative technologist and musician living in Brooklyn. He works professionally on public art installations under the moniker Kleebtronics, and was part of the team that built the Convergence sculpture at MoogFest in 2016.

Mark started building guitar pedals with the Death By Audio collective in 2009 and branched out into his own designs during the past two years. The DrumSynth is his first product, and is built for drummers who want to add a synth element to their kit.

Johann Diedrick|  johanndiedrick.COM

I make installations (🏗),
performances (👯),
software (📱),
objects (🔊),
and workshops (🛠)
that let people
play with sound.

danne Woo  |  dannewoo.COM

For more than a decade Danne has been working as a graphic designer, interaction designer and web developer in New York for a large number of corporate clients. He has his MPS from NYU’s ITP where he focused on data driven projects, musical innovation, alternative energy and large crowd interactions. His projects have been featured on a number of blogs and magazines including Fast Company, The Guardian, Engadget, Gizmodo, The Verge, CNet and Make Magazine. He is the Founder of Datavisual (www.datavisu.al) a web-based platform for designing data driven graphics, Co-Founder of BigPlay (www.bigplay.me) a multiplayer gaming technology allowing large crowds to interact with large screens, and Creative Technologist at Danne Woo Design (www.dannewoo.com) focusing on combining emerging technologies with design principles. He also holds the Guinness World Record for the most people playing the same video game on the same screen for his game Splat.