Denzel Walkes

Hello I’m Denzel

I build systems and make images. Most weeks that means infrastructure automation and security engineering; the rest of the time it means audio and video software, film photography, and research into how the tools we are handed at work end up watching us.

Software Art
Denzel Walkes, a black and white studio portrait
San Diego

Projects

Selected works from my professional and personal projects.

Software

  • The ADG web application answering one access question: a diagram headed “How the rights arrive”, running Alice Smith through the groups Domain Users, Everyone, Finance-Leads and Finance-Team, on through Finance-RW to two NTFS entries and a share entry, and ending at the directory \\fs01\finance. Beneath it a Routes table lists each path with the entry it reaches, what that entry says, and whether the route contributes to the answer or is redundant.
    2026

    ADG

    Windows-domain share-access auditing and governance. ADG collects identity, SMB share and NTFS permission facts and answers, with evidence, who can reach a given share, what a given user can reach, exactly why that access exists, and what would change if a membership or ACL entry were removed.

    Python · Active Directory · SMB/NTFS · Graph analysis

    Sole author

  • Open Decks Atlas on its browse page, headed “Find open decks with real gear and a beginner-friendly welcome.” A filter panel offers city, vibe and type menus, a verified-only checkbox and a row of equipment filters from Pioneer CDJ-3000 to monitor speakers, over a count of 14 spots. A map of San Diego beside it carries fourteen pins from Del Mar down to Chula Vista, and beneath the filters two listing cards — Monday Night Open Decks and Wednesday Beginners Night — show their nights, beginner-friendly and verified tags, vouch counts and the equipment at each.
    2026

    Open Decks Atlas

    A public map of places to practise DJing out loud — open-deck nights, jams and bookable practice rooms — where every listing carries the equipment actually in the booth, the room’s skill vibe, how a set is signed up for, and when a human last checked. Anyone may submit a spot and nothing reaches the map unmoderated; what the public can read is settled by row-level security in the database rather than by the pages above it, so a listing that is not approved is not merely hidden from a view.

    TypeScript · Next.js · Supabase · PostGIS · MapLibre

    Sole author

  • The Dynamic Tilt plug-in window: a spectrum graph with a live input trace across it, a brown compression band over everything below the 650 Hz pivot and a green expansion band over everything above it, and a readout beneath reporting LOW COMP −1.7 dB and HIGH EXP +1.2 dB. Under that sit Input, Tilt at +44.00 %, Pivot, Comp Range and Exp Range, with an advanced row of ratio, expansion, knee and per-band attack and release times below them.
    2026

    Dynamic Tilt

    A two-region dynamics processor built around one bipolar Tilt macro. Tilt decides which side of a spectral pivot compresses and which expands, and by how much: positive expands the high region upward and compresses the low one, negative does the reverse, and at exact centre all four ranges are zero, so the plugin is magnitude-neutral rather than merely subtle. Compression is ratio-based and expansion is slope-based — downward expansion is never substituted for compression — and the graph draws both regions against the live input, so what is being set is visible rather than inferred. Its fifteen parameter IDs are frozen as a host contract from the first release, because a saved automation lane refers to them by name.

    C++20 · JUCE · VST3 · Real-time DSP

    Sole author

  • The OGWA dashboard in its demo environment, with a DEMO ENVIRONMENT · Synthetic data badge and a SYNTHETIC store · LOCAL_SYNTHETIC badge in the header above a notice that the build cannot change Okta or Active Directory. Key figures for the fictional company read 1,800 active employees, 1,009 deactivated employees, 14 departments, 350 AD groups, 298 Okta groups, 81 Okta applications, 468 open findings and 44 actionable or blocking. Beneath them a Needs attention list links 41 actionable governance findings, 3 blocking dependency findings, 3 lifecycle candidates waiting for a decision and 46 recent deactivations, above bar charts of governance findings by severity, group health and deactivations per year.
    2026

    OGWA

    Identity and group lifecycle governance. OGWA correlates Okta applications and their assigned groups, Okta usage and Active Directory group state with dependency evidence, so a group that may be ready to retire reaches review with the facts behind it, and every decision from candidate through hold, approval, revalidation and retirement is recorded on an audit chain. A candidate is evidence for review, never authorization to delete: the Okta and AD integrations are read-only, remediation is dry-run planning only, and the build refuses production mutation at startup.

    Python · PowerShell · JavaScript · Okta · Active Directory

    Sole author

  • A corridor ending at a propped-open door onto a small server room: one rack of switches and servers standing under its own status lights, acoustic foam on the wall beside it and a flexible duct running up into the ceiling.
    2025–2026

    Infrastructure Automation Tooling

    PowerShell and Ansible tooling for governed infrastructure provisioning, deprovisioning, identity auditing and certificate lifecycle automation. PowerShell is the operator interface; Ansible Automation Platform is the execution and audit authority, and the boundary between them is the design.

    PowerShell · Ansible · Ansible Automation Platform · Active Directory · VMware

    Systems engineer

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Art

  • A frame of the Bitrot demo: a portrait breaking apart into a grid of displaced blocks, some carrying image from elsewhere in the frame.

    Bitrot

    Digital video / compression artifacts, 2026

  • Liquid Gradient

    WebGL / GLSL, 2026

  • A long, empty office corridor under recessed fluorescent panels, the pale walls and dark doorframes converging on a closed wooden door and a small red exit sign at the far end.

    35mm

    35mm color negative, 2024–2026

  • Denzel playing a club night under red light, leaning over a turntable and mixer with one hand on the controls. A Mexican flag hangs on the wall behind him and two people stand at the back of the room.

    friend from the club

    DJ sets and edits, 2022–2026

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