Faculty
Gabo Arora
Gabo Arora is a world renowned award winning immersive artist, professor and former UN diplomat who works with the most cutting-edge emerging technologies, such as virtual and augmented reality, to tell some of the most important stories of our time. His work has made measurable social impact as part of campaigns for the United Nations, USC Shoah foundation and the Nobel Peace Prize committee, amongst many others, and is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has had the honor of being the UN’s first-ever creative director; a Davos World Economic Forum Arts and culture leader; a member of the Council of Foreign Relations; and is the Founding Director of a new academic department and lab dedicated to Immersive Storytelling and Emerging Technologies ( ISET ) at Johns Hopkins University.
Matthew Neiderhauser
Matthew Niederhauser is an award-winning photojournalist, filmmaker, and artist. He studied anthropology and economics at Columbia University before moving to Beijing to focus on documentary projects delving into urban development and the rise of an unsustainable consumer culture across China. During this time, his work appeared in numerous publications such as Wired, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Le Monde, and Bloomberg.
Matthew then earned his MFA in Art Practice from SVA while acting as a visiting scholar at the Center for Advanced Urbanism at the MIT Media Lab, visiting artist at the MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology, and member of New Inc. At New Inc, he co-founded Sensorium, an experiential studio working at the intersection of art, commerce, and technology. He also teaches immersive storytelling as an adjust professor for the Immersive Storytelling and Emerging Technologies (ISET) concentration at the JHU-MICA Film Centre and for the NYU Tisch Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP).
Notable experiential credits include: Co-creator, Zikr: A Sufi Revival (Sundance, New Frontier ’18); Co-creator, Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear (Tribeca Storyscapes ’18); Technical Director and Cinematographer, Lincoln in the Bardo (Emmy-nominated 360 Video for NYTVR); and Technical Director and Cinematographer, Hamlet 360: Thy Father’s Spirit (Google Daydream).
Graham Sack
Graham Sack is an award-winning writer, director, and academic whose intellectual and creative work explores the intersection of emerging technologies and narrative. Graham is the founder of Chronotope Films. He wrote and directed Lincoln in the Bardo, a virtual reality experience for New York Times VR based on the acclaimed novel by author George Saunders that was shortlisted for an Emmy for Innovation in Interactive Programming. He wrote and directed The Interpretation of Dreams, a four-part episodic series for Samsung’s VR Pilot Season that explores immersive dreamscapes based on Freud’s case studies of the unconscious; he co-created “objects in mirror AR closer than they appear,” an immersive theater + augmented reality installation at Tribeca Storyscapes 2018 that transferred to Next Door at New York Theater Workshop; and he produced “Hamlet 360: Thy Father’s Spirit” with Google, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, and WGBH. He is currently developing an original XR episodic series with Felix and Paul Studios. Graham previously wrote and directed Don’t Look Away an interactive cinematic VR experience about aging, time, and the scarcity of attention and subject:object, a VR experience for New York Theatre Workshop about the private life of objects. He served as creative director on Power in Hand, a VR documentary about solar power for the Rockefeller Foundation and Matter Unlimited, and he is a former member of New Inc, the New Museum’s art and technology incubator.
Kat sullivan
Brooklyn-based artist Kat Sullivan exists at the intersection of movement and technology. After earning her Bachelors in Computer Science and Dance at Skidmore College, she worked as a software engineer and free lanced with various dance companies in the Boston area. At NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), she developed a practice around creative coding, live performance, machine learning, motion capture, and other emerging technologies. She has presented works at Lincoln Center, National Sawdust, Pioneer Works, SXSW, 14th Street Y, and the Liberty Science Center, and was selected for residencies by Ponderosa Dance, Yale, NYU ITP and Pioneer Works. Currently she is a Visiting Industry Assistant Professor at NYU Tandon's Integrated Digital Media program, teaching courses on motion capture, live performance, and programming.
Navid Khonsari
Navid Khonsari is an Iranian–Canadian video game designer, virtual/mixed reality, film and graphic novel creator, writer, director, and producer. As a distinguished video game director, Khonsari is known for having developed the cinematic look and feel for the iconic AAA franchises such as Grand Theft Auto/Vice City/San Andreas, Max Payne, The Warriors, Midnight Club, Manhunt, Red Dead Revolver, Alan Wake, Homefront and most recently, the AAA hit Resident Evil 7.
Khonsari’s celebrated original titles; 1979 Revolution, Hero VR, Fire Escape VR, Blindfold VR – have earned him the industries top honors including Best Game Direction and Independent Game of the Year Nominations by Academy of Interactive Sciences (DICE), BAFTA, Winner of Facebook’s Game of the Year, Lumiere Award for Best Immersive, Winning Indiecade Jury Prize, NY Game Critics Nominations for Writing, Best Narrative Game, Tribeca Film Festival’s Storyscape Award and more.
Under the direction of Khonsari, his independent studio is at the forefront of video games and immersive experiences – that Fast Company calls “an Innovation Agent”. Featured in more than 70 notable press outlets including, New Yorker, Vice, BBC, Fast Company, NPR, Wired, Time, Buzzfeed, and The Guardian. Khonsari guest lectures sharing his unique vision, bold success as a director for games and immersive experiences for classes at Yale University, Princeton, Columbia, Duke, Northwestern in Qatar, University of North Carolina, White House, United Nations, Sundance and more.
Khonsari often speaks and lectures on the convergence of technology and storytelling to incite empathy, challenge stereotypes of within mass media – at venues such as Sundance, Hot Docs, DICE, Games For Change, FoST, Game Developers Conference (GDC), White House, Canadian Embassy, SXSW, VIEWS, NY Film Festival, UN and universities including Princeton, SCAD, Columbia, Northwestern. Khonsari is an advisor and fellow of the New Frontier Lab at the Sundance Institute and recipient of support from Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, IFP and Made in NY.