Paul M. Christian

Software engineer building web apps, XR, and musical interfaces.

Approximately 20 years of hands-on engineering across React, TypeScript, Node.js, and real-time interactive systems. From production web applications to mixed-reality instruments and custom hardware, I build the interfaces that connect them.

GitHub LinkedIn Get in touch Résumé (PDF)Software experience Featured work Systems practice Project index

Paul M. Christian inside a mirrored light installation

01Embodied control

Bike rigs, custom sensors, data gloves, haptics, and hand tracking.

02Playable sound

XR instruments, additive synthesis, theremin interfaces, and xenharmonic systems.

03Live worlds

Realtime VFX, projection, virtual puppetry, and performance environments.

Software experience

Production applications, from interface to backend.

Based in Minneapolis. My work spans full-stack product development, frontend architecture, integration, debugging, and ongoing maintenance.

February 2022–present

Wooorld

CTO since May 2024 · Previously VR Software Engineer

Hands-on technical cofounder maintaining and extending an existing multiplayer VR exploration platform and related game projects.

Own the Node.js/Express/MongoDB backend, APIs, admin tooling, and embedded React UI. Extend roles, permissions, subscriptions, credits, and usage accounting.
Before becoming CTO, built the React/Redux interface and its bidirectional Unity messaging, the admin tools, an AI-generated VR tour pipeline, geospatial curation, and shared drawing.
Continue work on network ownership and state synchronization, socket authentication/recovery, rendering performance, and platform integration. Extended an existing AI assistant with room-wide streamed spoken responses.

October 2015–January 2022

World Singles Networks

Frontend Lead · Hands-on technical contributor

Maintained and extended one configurable React/Redux application supporting approximately 40 branded dating sites, with distinct branded deployments through Bamboo CI and AWS.

Architected client-side Socket.IO messaging, GraphQL integration, Redux message state, read/seen status, UI, and tests.
Built internationalization and right-to-left interface support, plus a React Native WebView wrapper with native/web communication, push notifications, and deep links.
Improved initial loading with custom server rendering/prerendering and selective hydration. Collaborated on technical decisions, code review, and mentoring rather than line management.

2012–2017

Earlier software work

Full-stack, frontend, and Unity engineering

Enterprise applications, product MVPs, and cross-platform VR clients.

Wingspan Technology: contributed to a team-led React modernization, Scala REST services in a Java backend environment, streaming PDF/XML exports, and the open-source wingspan-forms library.
Scayne: sole frontend developer and architecture owner for a React coaching-platform MVP, implementing supplied designs. Panasonic: contributed React patterns and screens during telehealth modernization. Capella: maintained existing JavaScript/jQuery course interactions.
Realvision: sole Unity developer for a real-estate touring client, integrating an existing spherical-panorama API and adapting navigation, input, performance, and builds across four VR platforms.

Selected projects

Instruments, installations, and interactive systems.

20221:1 VR installation

Human Powered Virtual Airship

A recumbent bicycle transformed into a sensor-driven VR airship controller for REM5 VR Labs / ESC 3.0.

I designed and built the mechanical controls, electronics, custom optical encoder, and Unity integration. A Raspberry Pi Zero W running Node.js sent sensor data over OSC/UDP to the VR application. Tim Skrivseth created the NPC model and animation; Nature Manufacture supplied the mountain environment assets.

Watch documentation REM5 ESC 3.0

2020-presentExperimental XR music environment

Musicality VR

An experimental instrument and composition environment for spatial interaction, custom gestures, alternative tunings, and live synthesis.

I develop and use Musicality for live performance, including solo sets and jams alongside other musicians. The work explores embodied ways to compose and play; native multiplayer remains a future direction.

Visit project

2025-presentStandalone Meta Quest app

Theremin

An independently developed commercial mixed-reality theremin with hand tracking, configurable pitch and amplitude controls, and FAUST audio synthesis.

I conceived, programmed, published, and maintain the Meta Quest app. Ghost Hands adds motion-loop recording and playback as a feature of Theremin, alongside tuning, timbre, and spatial-audio controls.

Meta Quest store

Research hub

Musicality.computer

A place for refactoring music.

Musicality.computer is the home for my experiments with exotic approaches to working with music theory, alternate notation systems, instrument design, and embodied ways of thinking through sound.

It acts as a host for prototypes, sketches, and playable research: tools that treat theory as something you can touch, move through, retune, and reorganize.

Visit Musicality.computer

Systems practice

Connecting interfaces, runtimes, and the physical world.

React / TypeScript applications and frontend architecture

Node.js APIs, admin tools, roles, and permissions

Explicit message contracts and real-time state across runtimes

XR prototyping from concept to embodied install

Sensor, controller, and input-device invention

Spatial audio, synthesis, and instrument design

Realtime visual systems for stages and installations

Playful interfaces for learning complex technical ideas

Project index

Additional work

2025–2026 · Early access

Jetpack Clankers

A Wooorld-linked multiplayer Quest racing and social game. I build physics-driven locomotion, jointed robot-avatar behavior, game interactions, FAUST sound synthesis, motion recording/replay, and the in-game credit economy. My cofounder primarily creates environments, levels, and avatar cosmetics.

$Mandelbrot Muse fractal audio interface with colorful pixel bands and circular synth controls$

Web sound toy

Mandelbrot Muse

A fractal explorer that maps Mandelbrot escape-time values to harmonic overtones and sequences them with a Hilbert curve.

Open toy

Audience silhouettes moving in front of blue sound-reactive Xibaba projections

Live visuals

Sound Reactive Projections for Xibaba

A rear-projection tarp installation where audience silhouettes merged with sound-reactive visuals across a sidewalk.

Watch video

Mike Olson performance setup with large green and orange projection mapped visuals

Live visuals

Mike Olson Six Projects Release Show

A multi-projector Processing environment mapped to analog synthesis, using a virtual camera rig across perpendicular projectors.

Project page Watch video

VR data glove prototype beside monitors showing a virtual hand interaction demo and code

2014

Homebrew Data Glove

A functioning wearable with homemade Velostat/copper-tape finger sensors and Razer Hydra-based 6DOF tracking. Arduino I/O and a Processing application mapped virtual collisions to 16 independently controlled haptic motors at corresponding locations on the glove.

Watch demo

Digital Dalang virtual shadow puppets projected on an ornate Wayang Kulit screen at night

2018

Digital Dalang Virtual Light / Shadow Puppets

I built Unity software and physics-based digital puppets from artwork supplied by the art team, using Leap Motion wrist and finger movement to control them. Unity projections lit a hybrid of physical and digital Wayang Kulit puppetry at Burning Man; I also helped set up and run the installation.

Facebook clip Facebook clip Photo Photo album

2021

Raya and the Last Dragon Crystal Shards

I developed performer-controlled Unity VFX Graph smoke and crystalline shards for a shadow puppet production tied to Raya and the Last Dragon. Leap Motion gestures let another performer separate and orbit the shards, then bring them back together and make them glow by closing a fist.