By: Elowen Gray
Stephen Medaris Bull is an American inventor, entrepreneur, mixed-media technologist, and media producer. His work spans entrepreneurial ventures, experimental technology prototypes, media production, publications, and public engagement in interactive storytelling and digital innovation.
Bull has established several companies that focus on healthcare technology and mobile applications. At Breathe-Global Devices Ltd., he directs the design and production of the Venti device, a project centered on respiratory innovation.
Bull founded Preminder Inc., developing platforms to improve patient–provider care plan monitoring and adherence. He also founded Cutlass Inc., a company specializing in creating functional mobile applications, and Home Care Reporter LLC, which provides caregivers with structured tools to submit detailed daily client reports.
His project, AI in the Cockpit, offers an emergency preparation training simulation that enables pilots to make informed decisions during crises. He also developed AzZa, a mobile interactive art app that creates algorithmic art and was distributed through O2 Network in the United Kingdom and Handango for Sony Ericsson devices.
Another project, AR War of 1812, developed with support from the New York Council for the Humanities, offered an augmented reality educational experience designed to bring history to life through interactive technology. Bull’s best-known media-art hybrid, Cellphonia, was funded by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA).
Combining mobile technology and live performance, it functioned as a cellphone opera engine and has been staged in more than fifteen performances across the United States and internationally.
Bull has been involved in experimental prototyping projects that examine the relationship between research, interactivity, and emerging technologies. At Interval Research, Paul Allen developed prototypes that explored playful engagement as a means of anticipating future trends.
Among these projects was the Story Island IoT Prototype, an interactive storybook that integrated Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, allowing narrative objects to respond dynamically to user interactions.
He also developed You-In-A-Movie, an immersive booth prototype that places visitors into a movie scene, offering a personalized cinematic experience. Along with his technological pursuits, Bull has continued a career in media production.
He has worked as First Assistant Director on hundreds of television commercials and documentaries, collaborating with filmmakers such as Sam Peckinpah, Stephen Frears, Eric Red, and Lindsay Anderson.
Bull also co-directed the experimental bio-documentary Margaret Sanger: A Public Nuisance with Terese Svoboda. The film was screened at the J. Paul Getty Museum and was recognized as one of the most important examples of experimental biography of its decade.
He further contributed as Second Unit Director and Production Manager on WHAM! in China, a documentary capturing the British pop group Wham!’s historic concert tour in the People’s Republic of China.
Bull has contributed to both academic and creative discussions on media and storytelling. He co-authored Neighborhood Narratives with Hana Iverson, a work included in a collection edited by Drew Hemment that explored locative media and community-based storytelling practices.
At the Institute for the Future (IFTF) in Palo Alto, he discussed the “Future of Pervasive Gaming.” Through these roles, Bull has combined academic teaching with the professional sharing of his ideas on storytelling, technology, and interactivity.
Bull’s innovations have been covered in multiple media outlets. NYArts Magazine profiled his mobile art projects in Molly Kleiman’s article “A Phone is a Phone is a…”. The Montreal Mirror reviewed his TouchToneTours initiative under the title “Our World and Others.”
His cellphone-guided audio tour of Greenport, New York, was featured in The New York Times in an article by Stacy Albin. Additionally, Jori Finkel reviewed Cellphonia in coverage of the ISEA ZeroOne Festival in San Jose, and CBS MarketWatch reviewed Rat Race USA, a real-time traffic reporting project.
Bull’s work has gained recognition at the crossroads of technology, art, and public engagement. He has also contributed to education in interactive media by serving as an adjunct professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, where he taught a course on Neighborhood Narratives.
He has also spoken at many conferences and professional events. At the Digital Storytelling Conference in San Francisco, he led a session called “Storytelling in Pervasive Game Space.” At Mobilized! at the Brooklyn Tech conference, he presented the technical foundations of Cellphonia’s Asterisk code.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It highlights the media recognition and public impact of Stephen Medaris Bull’s work based on publicly available information.
