Born in Berkeley, California, Jeff studied philosophy and logic at Guilford College with John E. Cooley, a UCLA Ph.D. student of Richard Montague who studied under Alfred Tarski, C.S. Peirce with Richard Smyth at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Leibniz with Diogenes Allen at Princeton Theological Seminary and architecture with Horton Davies of Princeton University (where Jeff worked in both the Princeton Library Map Room and the University Store) and theory, literature and culture at University of Virginia, where he was a DuPont Fellow (left Ph.D. to pursue independent work.)
His films, videos, drawings, and photography have been exhibited in galleries and theaters throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia, including Berlin Directors Lounge, Galapagos Art Space (Brooklyn), Miller Gallery (Carnegie Mellon University), Center for the Arts in Society (Pittsburg), Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, Ohio), International Conference on Innovation & Creativity in Popular Culture (National Taiwan University), and the Mechanics Institute (San Francisco). He has received fellowships as a writer and artist at leading art centers including Experimental TV Center (N.Y.), Taipei Artist Village (Taiwan), Virginia Center for Creative Arts (VCCA), City of Breckenridge (Colorado), and Schloss Plüschow (Germany – selected for VCCA exchange). Jeff’s video art is collected in museums and archives around the world.
Jeff is also the writer-director-producer of the feature film, My Fool Heart with Merle Haggard and Ralph Stanley; the documentary film, Way of Dance: Lin Lee-chen and the Legend Lin Dance Theatre (Mandarin and English); and numerous music videos. He is also known for his collaboration with fashion designer Sophie Hong, Palais-Royal, Paris.
His fiction and nonfiction writing has appeared in TANK magazine (London), TEA magazine, literary journals and the Washington Post.
His new books are Philosopher’s Cup: The Book of Tea and The Philosophy of Hats.
Von Neumann’s Party, published in Nature. 2026. John von Neumann, game theory, robotics, language and AI.
He lives in San Francisco.
