Bridge 5: Cross-Course Reflection
Hey. I’m Judah Mantell, professional magician, and founder of “indie” game studio, MidnightCoffee, inc, where I’m currently working on using VR to innovate on real-time rendering for filmmaking.
After taking a gap year to teach game design and programming to grades 3-12, I’m attending Parsons to pursue a degree in “Game Design and Technology,” in hopes of someday working at Disney or ILM for theme parks and/or immersive technology.
For the past seven weeks (wow!) I’ve been doing my best to keep the way I work consistent across my three classes. In the past, my work ethic changed between classes, simply based on how much I cared about or enjoyed them, resulting in poor performance in some studies. At Parsons, so far, I can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed each class quite a bit, and I think that definitely contributed to my success so far.
I think all of the talking notes and discussion questions from Seminar greatly improved my ability to construct more formal essays for Objects as History. Additionally, being given the context (historical, social, political, etc) for our works in Seminar made my creative process for Studio much more straigtforward–In the past I kinda just let my brain flow, sometimes ending up with good work, sometimes less so.
In Studio, because there was rarely an enforced medium that we were assigned to use, I appreciated the ability to use tools and creation methods that I was already familiar with. This let me focus on the content of the work, rather than get stressed out by having to figure out another medium–though I realize this won’t be the case in future classes. (I’m not the greatest at fine arts, which is kinda stressing me out for second semester!)
Looking back, I realize that moving out of my comfort zone with creation tools would probably have benefitted me in the long run, but I think it’s for the best that I minimized added pressures for my first year of college.
Two of my favorite assignments so far have been Bridge 2 and Bridge 4.
Bridge 2
As someone who isn’t the most social person in the world, being forced to get to know a complete stranger for Bridge 2 was an interesting and fun experience. Additionally, learning about Critical design was a ton of fun and exposed me to a bunch of super strange pieces of art, which I love.
When planning for bridge 2, I spent a lot of time coming up with questions that I thought Ken would respond well to, based on his “I Remember” poem. We also spent a long time talking before and after I started the formal Q and A, so I can get a better picture of who he is.
I think it came out pretty good! For the most part, I’m proud of how I compiled his words into a cohesive story, though I know there were a few elements that I had a hard time finding a place for. Additionally, for the studio project, I ended up using Photoshop to create a composite image based around Ken’s history, and I’m pretty proud of that as well.
You can read more about this project here.
Bridge 4
I think I can honestly say that this last project is my favorite. It allowed me to take an important moment in history that is important to me, and merge it with the type of art I like to create
(I did something similar for Bridge 3. Scroll to the end to see the work)
Interestingly, I’ve thought about creating some sort of Holocaust VR experience in the past, specifically for educational purposes, but I never found the time to do it, so this opportunity was perfect.
When writing up the proposal, I kinda viewed it as “what if I had unlimited time to create whatever I want?” Then, when it came time for the Studio project, I scaled down the scope of the memorial to something that I can reasonably build in a week. I ended up watching countless interviews with survivors (a difficult process in and of itself, simply because of how horrific these stories are) until I found one that I thought would work well.
The outcome of this project ended up being a VR experience with full 6-degrees-of-freedom tracking, where the user gets moved through the story of David Wisnia. Because I know most people won’t have access to PC-based VR hardware that’s required, I ended up converting it to a 360 video that can be viewed from any web browser or phone-based “VR” headset.
For both projects, my thought process was basically about how I can use the skills I’m good at (graphic design, VR, programming, etc) in the context of whatever was being assigned.
Overall, I think the first seven weeks have been extremely successful, and I’m looking forward to creating more works in the future, both in writing and for Studio-like classes. I’m really into immersive technologies, so ideally I could continue using that to convey different ideas, but I know that’s not always feasible.
To speak specifics, I would like to get better at 3D modeling for use in these immersive experiences.
To be perfectly honest, I feel a little frustrated because I know my skills and in-development software would be useful to many companies out there right now, but all of my time (quite literally) is consumed by doing school assignments.
Having said that, I want to honestly say that I enjoyed every second of all my classes, and sincerely thank you for a great introduction to college.
