I think of myself as a scientist and artist at heart. In past lives, most of what I did fell into these two categories.
See below my research, music, writing, and web design.
I've also been in some way connected to the Tbilisi Zoo, BlueDot Impact, Amoriem Labs, the Cortex Collective, the Center for Collaborative Arts & Media, the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project, the Yale Syntax Reading Group, LingLeague, the Franke Program in Science and the Humanities, the Bronfman Fellowship, Yale AI Policy, Yale AI Alignment, Yale Effective Altruism, the Atlas Fellowship, the Summer Linguistic Institute for Youth Scholars, the Institute on Collaborative Language Research, John Cabot University, and Yale University.
research
Garsten, David. Accepted, 2026. Local head-movement is fed by long-distance head-movement in Georgian. Linguistics Society of America Conference (talk).
Garsten, David*, Anton Hampe*, and Adriana Zhou*. Accepted, 2026. Inferring complexity of animal communication systems from small samples. International Conference on Grammatical Inference (talk). *Equal contribution.
Garsten, David. 2026. Appl's got gravity: head movement, have-raising, and the evolution of (have) got. Chicago Linguistics Society 2026. (talk, handout here).
Garsten, David. 2026. It's Giving Nonfactive Small Clause Selection. Yale Undergraduate Research Conference (poster here).
Garsten, David* and Anton Hampe*. 2025. Revisiting the subregular complexity of Bengalese finch song. SYNC 2025 (talk, slides here). *Equal contribution.
Garsten, David. 2025. It's Giving Nonfactive Small Clause Selection. Yale Working Papers in Grammatical Diversity 7 (3). 1-25 (paper here).
See more on my older website.
music
See also some daily improvizations.
> sinkholes, tethers, [catharsis]. 2026. Music (alongside art & short story). With Joy Zhou and Emily Yu.
> Fripp's Journey. 2025. Music (short film).
> Passing By. 2025. Music (short film). With Sophie Mo, Diana Omar, Kane Trundle, Carlo Barton, and Oliver Sweet.
> Sellamethe: a Tumble in Ultramarine (Ella's Theme, orchestrated). 2025. Live music.
> Ella's Theme. 2025. Music.
> Wall Town. 2025. Music.
> Ropes and Waves. 2025. Music.
> Thinking Hard, Life Decisions. 2025. Music (improv).
> A Soul is Taken. 2025. Music (improv).
> Soar Between the Trees. 2025. Music (improv).
> Slchld Improv. 2025. Music (improv).
> Scarlett I. 2025. Music (improv).
> ṣibbuleṭ. 2024. The first ever rap in Old Babylonian.
writing
See also my old conlanging channel.
> Visions. 2025. Print issue. Vol. VI of the Cortex Collective.
> Aquatica. 2025. Short story.
> 2025 Conlang Relay Torch: Gittza. 2025. Audio, visuals, translation, conlang.
> 2024 Conlang Relay Torch: Dorini. 2024. Audio, visuals, translation, conlang.
> The Duplicator. 2024. Short story.
> Nhemadu Pachi (My Father's Horses). 2023. Audio, visuals, poetry, translation, conlang.
> Gashi (Jellyfish). 2023. Audio, visuals, poetry, translation, conlang.
> Boa Trees. 2023. Poetry Compilation.
> Rahua's Dream Diary. 2022. Novella.
> Tikundu (The Forest). 2022. Audio, visuals, poetry, translation, conlang.
web design
> Mutation(s). 2025. Music & website. Vol. V of the Cortex Collective
> Nucleica. 2024. Interactive musical composition from DNA.
> Gobbler. 2024. Video game, music.
> Laughpod. 2024. Website.
> Digital Media Design Website. 2024. Website.
> Phylogenetic Analysis of Extant Pokémon. 2024. Website.