wray.pro

The polyamorous relationship of music, programming, and visual arts.

Sam Wray, cross legged on the floor, in front of an interactive artwork made from zip ties

Creative Technologist, musician, visualist and artist based in London, UK.

Sam holds a degree in Digital Art and Technology from Plymouth University, attaining Second Class Honours (Upper Division) with Certificate of Professional Industrial Experience.

He enjoys creating immersive and thoughtful digital works, irl and url.

Skills

Software
  • JavaScript
  • Vue.js (& Vue ecosytem)
  • Svelte
  • React
  • Recoil
  • A-Frame
  • THREE.js
  • WebXR/WebAR (& ZapWorks, 8thwall)
  • ARCore
  • Webpack
  • XHTML
  • CSS (& extensions)
  • Websockets
  • WebRTC
  • Canvas2D
  • WebGL
  • Electron
  • Playwright
  • Jest
  • Processing
  • Unity
  • TouchDesigner
  • Mongo DB
  • MySQL
  • Heroku
  • PostgreSQL
  • GraphQL
Physical Computing
  • Arduino
  • Teensy
  • ESP8266
  • IoT
  • Raspberry Pi
  • Pi Pico
Additional
  • Music composition
  • Audio visualisation
  • Blender
  • GLTF model optimisation
  • Adobe CC
  • Figma
  • Sketch
  • Event management

Experience

George P. Johnson

Creative Technology Director

07/2023 - present

Working in the Creative Technology department of experience marketing agency GPJ, with clients ranging from global brands to museum visitor centres.

Understanding client needs to transform strategic and creative briefs into meaningful activations whilst advising and supporting creatives with interaction design.

Presenting complex ideas to clients in simple terms and translating concepts into roles for production and costing.

Leading client technology tours in the GPJ Lab space, providing student mentorship and staying up to date on the latest technology trends.

Related Work

A giant blue portal-like screen sits within a minimalist white stand at GITEX, a technology expo in Dubai.

Virtonomy

Lead Software Engineer

04/2022 - 07/2023
  • A-Frame and React
  • Implementing Webpack, JSX, linting to a 2 year old codebase
  • Leading application (re-)architecture
  • Playwright e2e testing
  • Student mentorship

publicis•poke

Senior Experience Technologist

10/2019 - 04/2022

Working in the Brand Experience team, I created works over a range of mediums. AR, web, real-time interactive games, embedded computing, low-latency livestream video, and combined many old skills with newly learned ones.

  • Real-time web apps (THREE.js, A-Frame, Websockets)
  • Unity with ARCore
  • WebAR (8thwall, Zappar, WebXR)
  • Prismic and Vue.js website builds

Related Work

Young girl holding an iPad in front of the Piccadilly Lights screen.Maya Jama in camera viewport of a Samsung Galaxy Fold with 3D material flying around her in ARYellow robot on 8 large screens in an EE storeHand holding a phone with a welcome screen to an application. In the background a display card advertising EE's Unbox Gaming on the Go experience.

TMW Unlimited

Senior Creative Technologist

12/2018 - 09/2019
  • Ideation and contribution to pitches and briefs
  • Interactive website prototyping and build with WebGL and Canvas
  • Infrastructure and devops with Azure
  • Sitecore and Vue.js integration

Choreocracy

Host & Creative Technologist

11/2018 - 11/2018

Stepping in for BAFTA award-winning Digital Artist Seb Lee-Delisle, I took over the role of co-host alongside the Record Breaking Dance Artist Tim Casson, for audience-driven interactive dance show Choreocracy. I learned the tech stack, the show routine and how to present over two practise runs - even helping out developing an integration for wirelessly synchronised LED shoes.

I had an excellent time working with the dancers, hosts and crew. I only wish I could've stayed on for more!

Kitty

Creative Technologist

09/2017 - 10/2018

Production of engaging SPA microsites using Canvas, SVG and CSS for interactive flair

  • Development of a large-scale eCommerce website with full internationalisation
  • Built the tool to create the industry first Voice Search Ranking Report with sister agency ROAST

BetVictor: Bet Calculator

Lead Developer

04/2017 - 06/2017

Working with BetVictor and Kitty, I built a dedicated betting engine using JavaScript for use within BetVictor's calculator.
The calculator was required to be a PWA. VueJS and a webpack/vue prerender plugin was used to ensure SEO results were kept high.

Related Work

BetVictor's bet calculator shown running on an iPhone

Dyson: The Smart Rooms

Technical Lead

12/2016 - 02/2017

Involvement with the game design to make sure the challenges made sense from a software engineering aspect and building anything technical the Smart Rooms required, either for its puzzles or general use.

Related Work

"The Smart Rooms" logo, over line-drawings of a kitchen

Tellonline

Junior Developer

05/2014 - 06/2015
  • Designing and assisting within a team for the development of websites and digital media
  • Attend meetings with prospective clients
  • Quality control of websites and digital media during development and before handover
  • Handling clients daily, face to face, and via various communication mediums

PJ Studio | Creative Media Ltd

Web Developer

01/2012 - 01/2014

Part-time consultant and web-developer. Work includes templating websites in HTML and CSS, developing plugins with jQuery, JS work, PHP scripting and working with Wordpress.

Rewired State

Web Developer

10/2013 - 10/2013

Edited a hack day app with involvement from the Department for International Development.

Blue Flame Media Limited

Web Developer

04/2013 - 05/2013

Edited websites with a Wordpress CMS, added a booking system built in PHP and jQuery for a local client. Templated a website in HTML and CSS for their partner company Payment Nexus.

Southwest Film and Television Archive

Software and Systems researcher

06/2011 - 06/2011

Researched the best web player and video codecs for their online library service.

Film and Video Technician Volunteer

05/2009 - 08/2011

Cataloguing film and video, digitising video recorded on 1" tape, Betamax, VCR, sVHS, Telecine with 16mm film and also editing all the aforementioned formats using various editing processes with new and old equipment.

I thoroughly enjoyed giving my time to SWFTA, I learnt a lot about the older machinery, video production and Plymouth's history from working with the great team they have.

Awards and Achievements

Hack the Visual

06/2016

'Splatmap' - First place

The idea for this hack was to build a piece of software that would help people use their to phones capture 3D images and terrain of the streets, roads and landscape around them for use in videogames, architecture, modelling and history.

Read more about Splatmap

Webster Award

06/2016

Awarded by the Webster family for my final year project, Melodal.

Dropbox Hackathon

01/2015

Honourable mention

McDonald's Hackathon

11/2014

'Big Hack with Fries' - First place

McDonalds held their first hackathon in November 2014 which aimed to bring their millennial target audience into stores and to retain their custom.
The winning idea was inspired by Activision’s Skylanders; using purchasable figurines with built in NFC identification to change the characters you can control in the game. It was intended to make use of the existing McDonald’s Happy Meals structure, in which toys are included with the purchase of the meal. However for our idea to work, McDonalds would have had to upgrade the quality of their toys, include the NFC technology within the plastic of the toys and include NFC readers with large screens as tabletops in-store.

Watch McDonald's video on YouTube

Talks

ZapWorks: EE Unbox Gaming on the Go

09/2021

Tom DeFraine (Senior Customer Success Manager) talks to Andy Dobson (Head of Technology) and Sam Wray (Senior Experience Technologist) from creative agency publicis.poke about their innovative AR campaign for EE, Unbox Gaming On The Go. 

In the webinar, Andy and Sam cover everything from ideation, why AR was the right choice for the project, through to the creative process and the end result. 

https://zap.works/webinars/publicispoke-ee-unbox-gaming-go/

Beyond The Chip

02/2020

In-depth interview with Marjorie Becker Shah, professional photographer and chiptune scene documentarian since 2006, delving into my roots, involvement and endeavours within the scene and beyond.

https://chiptography.com/beyondthechip/2xaa

2xAA live - Dorkbot London #98

12/2019

A small explanation of my music set-up, accompanied by a live music performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BuERJi9mhw

"Woah! Is that OffscreenCanvas?" - dotJS 2018

11/2018

A small explanation and demo of the new OffscreenCanvas API, including the stuff that doesn't work and some potential use-cases.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FhGZ50XRz4

https://slides.com/twoxaa/woah-is-that-offscreencanvas/fullscreen

"Woah! Is that OffscreenCanvas?" - Reactivate London

10/2018

A small explanation and demo of the new OffscreenCanvas API, including the stuff that doesn't work and some potential use-cases.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWvRA9E0DqU

https://slides.com/twoxaa/woah-is-that-offscreencanvas/fullscreen

"{ live : js }" - FrankenJS

02/2017

Presenting how NERDDISCO and myself came together to use the browser to perform a full A/V show.

"{ live : js }" - dotJS 2016

12/2016

Presenting how NERDDISCO and myself came together to use the browser to perform a full A/V show, to 1000 attendees. Read more: dotJS 2016

2xAA plays his Game Boy - EMF 2014

08/2014

A performance and talk about the chiptune music I create on my Game Boy, along with specially written audience controlled visuals to go along with the set.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDMrgklcEoQ

/ Sam Wray