About
I'm Steve Sype, working out of a metro Detroit studio where retro-futuristic art meets fabrication technology. I’ve been tattooing professionally for 24 years, but that's only part of the creative output. The rest goes into music, sculpture, painting, woodworking, photography, graphic design—whatever medium fits the idea.
With EchoWave, the work lives at the intersection of craft and technology. Some pieces start as hand-drawn sketches. Others begin with photo references or generative AI that I shape and refine. The process adapts to what the piece needs—sometimes it's all traditional craft, sometimes it's a conversation with machine intelligence, sometimes both. That variability is part of it.
Once the design is set, it moves through software for the technical work, then gets laser-cut from wood and acrylic. From there it's all hand-finishing—sanding, painting, assembly. The collaboration changes depending on the piece, but it's always this back-and-forth between human craft and machine precision.
The aesthetic lives in that tension between vintage warmth and future tech. Films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner set the tone—humans navigating their relationship with technology, nostalgia meeting optimism. Mid-century modern design captures that same thing: rooted in the past, looking toward the future. With AI evolving exponentially, these themes feel more relevant than ever. HAL 9000 was exploring machine consciousness in the 1960s. Now we're actually building it.
Some pieces are relatively simple wall sculptures. Others push into interactive territory—microcontroller systems with proximity sensors that trigger lighting changes, LED arrays that give them a glow and a life of their own. The technical complexity scales to what works for the concept.
Beyond sculptural work, I create functional pieces and artistic signage for businesses and collectors in the area.
