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This website uses a font I created! It's a variable font that can slide continuously between sans and serif.

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Enlightenment (2021)
(Indiana limestone, 1.3x life size)

Enlightenment is my first (and currently only) stone sculpture. I spent over 600 hours and 6 months creating it!

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Reverie is an orchestral score, but usually I write and perform songs for instruments and voice under the name Liam Hale (@LiamHaleMusic on all channels). I love to make creative videos of these songs! A few examples are below:

War on Rewind​

"War on Rewind"
A song for peace

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Like many people, I was stunned to see how prevalent misinformation had become in America, especially during and after the 2016 presidential election. As the 2020 election neared, the problem only seemed to get worse, and no one seemed to know what to do about it. I felt like I barely even understood how misinformation spread, let alone how to stop it, so I embarked on a huge research project.

The result was 31 Truths of Fake News, which I turned into a video series. The videos follow a "show don't tell" approach, illustrating the principle before describing it. The result is a series of very short vidoes (each typically a few minutes long) that explain and entertain.

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In September 2020, my brother Aidan and I launched Trump Donald, a site that let people donate small amounts of money to support Biden every time Trump tweeted. As we said: When Donald gives us his "two cents", you give his opponent 2¢ (or more). Let's make Trump (literally) pay for his tweets!

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My Box of Mirrors is a performance structure I designed and built to accompany a song of mine called "Mirrors", which uses the infinite reflections of a box of mirrors as a metaphor for identity. The box has six one-way mirror panels that create infinite reflections visible from the outside. The panels fold down to let the person inside the box step out.

Performance​

Here's a short video clip of my performance at Bing Concert Hall (Stanford University):

Performance at Bing Concert Hall (2018)
(video from an audience member)

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This a selection of some of my photographs. I'm a novice with lots to learn, but I hope you enjoy them!

Evening's Empire​

Evening's Empire
Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes — Death Valley National Park

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The fArtism website is the best source for this, but as a brief introduction:

A work of Art and a work o' fArt
(David by Michelangelo and Fountain by Marcel Duchamp)

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Be Heard (formerly ePluribus) is a civic engagement platform I built with my brother Aidan while we were college students. Be Heard makes it super easy to contact your representatives in government — from the president down to your local Superintendent of Public Instruction. And it uses Verified Inc. (formerly Unum ID) so you can verify your identity and send messages as a verified constituent. That way, your representatives can be sure you're not a bot or foreign actor.

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BIG DATA IS WATCHING YOU by Liam McCarty (2015)
(acrylic on canvas; 30 x 40 x 1 in)

Data and Power: Big Data and Corporate Control in Modern America is a book I published my freshman year at Stanford. The summer before I arrived on campus, I began researching technology and society, curious to understand the odd world of Silicon Valley. That research spawned what I thought would be a short essay but what then became a full-length book. It's available for purchase on Amazon.

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I played violin in orchestras throughout my youth, including the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra (MYSO) and the Stanford Symphony Orchestra. MYSO runs a competition called the John Downey Creation Project that allows young composers to write works to be premiered by MYSO ensembles. Reverie is a piece for full orchestra I wrote as a John Downey fellow. It was premiered by MYSO's Senior Symphony in 2014.

Premiere​

Here's a video of the premiere:

Premiere at Helen Bader Concert Hall (Milwaukee, WI) (2014)
(video from an audience member)

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By far my most significant piece of writing is the book Data and Power, which has its own section above. But I've included here two essays that may be of interest to some.

An American Delusion: Tiger Woods and the Tragedy of Scandal​

This essay explores the rise and fall of Tiger Woods in the context of American celebrity culture.

Click here to view PDF on mobile.
Click here to view PDF on mobile.

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As my entry for the Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge (a national youth science competition), I lead a team of four students to educate 275 local fourth-graders about renewable energy.

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The Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge is a national youth science competition. For me, it was one of the best experiences of my life. I entered by making a video about wind power and ended up going to New York City, meeting nine other kids like me, and having the time of my life learning about science doing experiments with the others.