Where Art Meets Engineering: Visual Endeavors' Aron Altmark at Santa Cruz New Tech
A few of Visual Endeavors selected projects across culture, technology & live experience.
A Santa Cruz studio that's built stages for The Sphere and toured with Green Day is bringing its story home on September 9.
Aron holding his dog.
Santa Cruz's tech and creative scene is coming together on September 9 for an event spotlighting the people building the future of immersive experience design, and one presenter in particular embodies exactly why this intersection matters: Visual Endeavors.
Half Creatives, Half Nerds
Visual Endeavors sits at the intersection of art and technology, blending creative vision with technical precision to build immersive experiences that are both visually striking and built to perform. The team combines storytelling, design, engineering, and emerging technology to turn ambitious ideas into memorable experiences.
Based in Santa Cruz out of the Wrigley Building studio and R&D space, Visual Endeavors works with brands, concert tours, and experiences across the globe.
From Theatre Lighting to Touring with Tiësto
The studio's founder, Aron, got his start in lighting design for theatre and dance at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, then went on to study at CalArts, where he encountered electronic music and ended up touring as a production designer with Tiësto. That path, art school discipline meeting club and festival chaos, is basically the DNA of everything he's built since.
In 2014, Aron founded Visual Endeavors. Over the past decade, that's meant real-time video and screens producing work behind residencies at The Sphere for the Eagles, Backstreet Boys, and Zac Brown Band, tours for Green Day, Deftones, and Morgan Wallen, and a long list of intriguing, smaller experimental projects: a fabric-embedded tracking system for a Louvre Paris Fashion Week installation, a real-time virtual air hockey table, and public art pieces at San Francisco City Hall.
The team also developed PixelCannon, their own software-agnostic rendering platform and workhorse entertainment workstation. It runs Notch, Unreal Engine, and TouchDesigner instead of locking clients into one ecosystem, letting them bring experiences of every scale to their clientele.
Technology as a Tool for Connection
What Aron loves about this work isn't the technology itself, it's what it unlocks. Tech on its own doesn't do anything; the fun part is creating new ways for people to interact with technology. He's especially drawn to experiences that create something collective rather than isolated, which is why he's excited about the current push for more art in public settings. Making that kind of experience more available, not just more spectacular, is the through-line.
In February 2026, Visual Endeavors joined Hovercraft Ventures, opening the door to ideas that used to be too big for a small studio: bigger public work, shows that span multiple locations, and more chances to put art somewhere people just stumble into it.
Join Us September 9
Come hear Aron and the Visual Endeavors team talk about building experiences at the edge of art and engineering, right here in the town where it all started.
