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Even the briefest, most cursory glance at Mattaniah Aytenfsu’s TikTok offers incredible insight into the 27-year-old engineer’s wildly imaginative, boundlessly innovative brain: There’s a touch-sensitive hairclip she wired to the vocals of Solange Knowles’ “Don’t Touch My Hair;” there’s a darling planter she designed and 3D printed at home; there are light-up clips she fashioned for a Matrix-inspired Halloween costume; there’s a painting she turned into a musical instrument.
And the responses are as effusive as they are abundant: “You are so cool.” “You are the coolest.” “You inspire me so much.” “Exactly why I’m studying CS so I can do cool stuff like this.”
Her fans — of which there are nearly 200,000 on that platform alone — are right. Aytenfsu is, undoubtedly, very, very cool. Because what she has inadvertently done is demonstrate how versatile, how diverse, how creative coding — and computer science at large — can be. It’s more than just a pipeline to software engineer jobs, but a skill that opens up endless possibilities — a big, beautiful world in which coding sits at the intersection between technology and whatever field imaginable, whether it be fashion, or beauty, or art.
“Coding feels so technical, but once you get past that initial learning curve, it’s a whole new world,” says Aytenfsu, who recalls her first software engineering internship on a product team in which she was able to build and release a feature by the end. “It was such an empowering moment for me — to feel like I could build basically whatever I want on the internet, which is such an insane power to have in the digital age.”
But Aytenfsu didn’t always know she wanted to be a coder — or even carve out a career in computer science. What she did possess was this insatiable curiosity to take things apart, to study them, to figure out how things work, which she could trace all the way back to childhood. (Her favorite show was How It’s Made, after all.) Nothing was safe from her inquisitive eye: old remotes, old cell phones, and much to her parents’ chagrin, a cell phone that was still being used. “I’ve always loved seeing the inner-workings of something,” says the New York-based, Bay Area-native engineer, likening it to her IT days in college, because to her, it felt like adult Legos. “Seeing the process of how something was made was so exciting to me.”
She describes her mind as two halves of a whole: a technical side and an artistic side. Her favorite subject in school was math, specifically algebra, because she loved how it encouraged abstract thinking — to recognize patterns and to know there are multiple ways to solve a single problem, like a puzzle. (As someone who was homeschooled until the sixth grade, she didn’t know enjoying math was uncommon — it was a subject that came naturally to her.) But she also loved drawing and music. By the time she reached college, she didn’t really know what she wanted to do, so she landed on architecture as a major, because she loved the idea of building environments in a way that blended technicality with art.
But in the second semester of her freshman year at Azusa Pacific University, Aytenfsu took her first-ever CS class and she immediately fell in love.
“It felt similar to what I love about algebra; the way you think becomes, in its own way, an art form. And it’s similar to what I love about architecture: You can build digital environments for people to navigate. It’s a very rhythmic way of thinking,” she explains. “After my first course, I went in guns blazing and decided to major in it, and that led to where I am today.”
What she means by that is: Today, she’s a full-time new media artist that’s thoroughly immersed in the world of creative technology. But nearly a decade ago, as a college student pursuing a major in computer science and a minor in graphic design, those two worlds had always remained separate. They didn’t collide until her senior year when she interned as a user experience (UX) engineer at NASA, where her project was to rebuild one of the organization’s outdated mission websites. It involved talking to scientists to rework the content, while taking into consideration the needs of its users, which ranged from NASA engineers to fifth grade science teachers. For Aytensfu, the job served as something of an overture — a preclude to a career that’d allow her to use her skill set to blend design, science, and coding.
So, it’s not surprising, then, that once she graduated in 2019, after logging a year as a software engineer at Google, she wound up pivoting into a UX engineering role at YouTube wherein she helped unify the visual design of the brand. Aytensfu describes her position as a hybrid of a product designer and a software engineer, and it was there that she really thrived. She was able to build tools for designers — like a generative pattern tool — and partake in experimental art projects that incorporated generative art and technology.
“I worked with our illustrator to build these pattern tools — pre-approved presets — that allowed people to quickly customize and build their own pattern without having to worry about the technicalities behind it,” says Aytensfu, who was so inspired by this that it led her down the path of creative technology. “What other art tech tools exist out there? During the pandemic, I wanted to explore different technologies and build tools for my personal art practice, whether that’s coding frameworks or softwares. I’m really interested in building technologies that really empower people to explore their creativity. I think technology can open up such a world of creative outputs, and I want to be able to build interfaces that help people.”
As an artist, she draws inspiration from everywhere, but more specifically, from natural sciences — and even more specifically, “the ability to use technology or algorithmic thinking as a way to interpret the natural world.” That’s evident in her recent installation, titled “Between Today and Tomorrow,” as part of the Earthbound exhibition at the Tulsa Artist Fellowship that was curated by Cheynne Smith, an aspiring astrophysicist and artist, whose goal was to prioritize dark sky preservation, or in other words, reduce light pollution in order to see the universe.
“I find a lot of my inspiration in learning how to feel more connected to the natural world; I think there’s a way to use technology to feel connected, like interpreting data sets around nature and science and visualizing it in a way that feels spiritual or meditative,” says Aytensfu, who acknowledges the irony of using digital technology to feel more offline. “I’m interested in finding ways to help us be more attuned with ourselves and attuned with the world around us — perhaps building systems that help us live slower lives.”
The art work she’s proudest of reflects just that. Called “Take Root Among the Stars,” the idea stemmed from wanting to create a light-up necklace inspired by one worn by Beyonce on her Renaissance tour. She started sketching different iterations of it, but as she was flipping through her sketches, she noticed a pattern — and that inspired her to code a generative program that would result in various outputs similar to her sketches. Then, she had one of those lightbulb moments during the 2024 solar eclipse, when she saw, in New York City, how everyone came together to experience this one celestial event. And that’s how she pivoted to create a generative video series featuring archival images from the US Naval Observatory’s records of solar eclipses between 1896 and 1937. From there, she used data — drawn from the Earth’s orientation, like the polar coordinates — to code animated diagrams based on her original sketches.
“It felt like a full-circle moment: using data of when and where that solar eclipse happened and how we were oriented — those numbers were a poetic reference. [The solar eclipse] was just a beautiful moment because it brought people together and had us contemplate our universe,” she says. “I’m proud of this one because even though the origin story is long and convoluted, it also felt natural, and it’s reflective of the way I want to approach my future projects where I’m using different inspiration sources, technologies, and history to build a very meditative experience that helps connect us to ourselves and feels like there’s something greater out there.”
A great deal of her art works are rooted in themes of connection — whether it be to one another or to nature. And it’s also one of the main reasons she chose to uproot her life in the Bay Area and move to New York City nearly two years ago: to foster a community with other artists. And she’s already doing that as one of a 12-person cohort at New Inc — New Museum’s incubator for art, design, and technology — that’s focused on art and code. “Coming from an engineering background, I always thought I would need an engineering tech job to fund my practice, but being around artists who are doing this full-time is so exciting and inspiring,” she says. “I want to be able to build interactive experiences that help connect people, that encourage people to play in a space together.”
It’s especially important to her because so much of Aytensfu’s early days in computer science was spent…alone. In college, she was one of maybe two or three other women in her CS classes — and among them, she was the only Black person — and she was also the only Black woman to graduate with a CS degree. In those days, she says she felt like she was often underestimated or overlooked. Being “the other” meant feeling like she had to overcompensate or constantly prove herself in a way that was detrimental to her learning, because she felt like she couldn’t ask questions, she couldn’t ask for help. And so, she sought out a community in Code2040, a San Francisco-based nonprofit whose mission is to lead racial equity in tech, which gave her the confidence, the validation, and the affirmation that she belonged.
“Being surrounded by other people who looked like me, who had similar experiences to me taught me that I don’t need to enter these spaces and be the most confident; it is okay. If a situation isn’t the most inclusive, I now know it’s not a reflection on me — it’s more of a reflection on them — and it’s not my job to change them,” she says. “I sometimes do talks at colleges or CS conferences and it’s exciting to see more women — and more Black women — than when I was in school. And a lot of people reach out to me about using technology as an artist, and I feel very humbled to be that point of reference for people. I hope that by continuing to do the work that I do, I can show people that there are creative ways to use coding.”
Aytenfsu eventually plans to launch a design studio that does two main things: 1) to carry out her artistic vision, and 2) to offer a wide range of creative tech services, from working on commissions, to building out tech experiences or environments for creatives who may not have the technical expertise, to consulting for museums on how they can bring in programming around creative technology.
“I essentially want to open up the world of creative technology,” Aytenfsu says. “I hope to expand people’s ideas of what a coder or a programmer can look like — and what you can make with coding. You can make art, you can make music, you can make fashion — you can do whatever your passion is. I hope to show people they can take technology and make it their own, whatever route they want to take.”
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