Resume: Vernon Reed

education | skill set | professional experience | other experience | honors | membership | publications

EDUCATION

MA-- The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Radio, TV, Film / New Media concentration, May 1998

BA-- The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Psychology, December 1971

SKILL SET

I excel at big-picture thinking and creativity; I can organize and motivate. Familiar with computers running under Windows 95/98, Mac OS and UNIX. Expertise in interface design, on-line communities, Director, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, PhotoShop, HTML, VRML. Self-motivated and work well by myself or with others. Excellent written and verbal communication skills, plus well-developed people skills. I am a fast learner and a creative, lateral thinker.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Human Code, Inc.

Associate Producer: Assist with project management, coordination of electronic and mechanical engineering firms, writing functional requirements for a Smart Toy project. I am responsible for all music and audio assets, and for coordination of graphic artists. I use MS Project and Excel for creating and maintaining deliverables lists and schedules. I use Dreamweaver to maintain the project web site.

Associate Producer (contract): Assist with project scheduling, asset management, VRML technical and design issues for an MPEG-4 project. I use Excel to maintain assets lists, and VRML editing tools to create and modify 3-D assets. I assist coordinating Java and VRML programmers, as well as graphic and audio artists.

Satellite Events Enterprises, Inc.

Designer (contract): Design and prototype electronic Smart Toys, which are conceived as game tokens to tie into a TV show and Web site. I also develop marketing and game strategies for the toys.

The University of Texas at Austin, Dept. of Radio/ TV/ Film

Lecturer, ‘Inhabited Virtual Worlds’: Teach and present the state of the art in this field, along with such collateral issues as VRML, on-line community building, and psychological and sociological implications of digital embodiment. System Administrator for a 3D virtual world, "Utopia".

Lecturer, ‘Introduction to New Media’: Teach basic skills and theoretical grounding in New Media concepts.

Teaching Assistant/Lab Manager: Conducted tutorials in Lingo programming. Prepared, researched and taught classes about advanced topics of Interactivity, including virtual worlds, on-line communities, distributed identity. Also helped students develop projects for Web and CDROM delivery, using such tools as Director, PhotoShop, HTML and VRML editors. Responsible for setting up and maintaining a computer lab with 10 Macintosh and 10 Wintel machines. System Administrator for a 3D virtual world, "Utopia".

The Logic Approach

Government Sales Manager: Computer sales to government agencies. Created a department where none existed before, went from $0 to $50,000 per month sales. Duties included initiating and following up contacts, negotiating contracts, purchasing of computer parts and supplies, customer relations. Developed a detailed knowledge of computer components and accessories.

Elektrum

Owner: Jewelry Design And Manufacturing Company with five employees. Performed all duties of running the company. Primary responsibilities included product strategy, production supervision, scheduling, sales and marketing, product design and evaluation, customer relations.

OTHER EXPERIENCE

Visual artist: I have created technologically advanced fine art jewels and sculpture, which have pushed the envelope beyond the state of the art (see Honors). My artworks are in many private and public collections. I exercise creative, lateral thinking, and utilize technical and esthetic expertise to create new and original work.

Producer/Director: A large Shockwave project for the UT ACTLab, favorably reviewed in the on-line zine ‘Hotwired’. Served as Producer for a group which created a VRML-based Virtual World for the ACTLab. I have also created several Director and Shockwave projects by myself.

HONORS

I was a very early (1985) pioneer of the wearable computer revolution. My cybernetic artworks have been exhibited such museums as the Louvre in Paris, the Smithsonian in Washington DC, the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo and the American Craft Museum in NYC. I have been written about in books, such as ‘Art of the Electronic Age’ by F. Popper, ‘Memphis: Objects, Furniture and Patterns’ by R. Horn, ‘Craft Art: a Collector’s Guide’ by B. Mayer. I have been featured in such magazines as ‘Smithsonian’, ‘MacWorld’, ‘Mondo 2000’, ‘Axis’.

My interactive, on-line artwork has been featured in ‘Hotwired’.

I have presented at national and international conferences, such as ‘Avatar! Avatar!’ in Banff, Canada; ‘SXSW Interactive’ in Austin TX; ‘National Computer Graphics Conference’ in Anaheim CA; ‘International Symposium on Electronic Art’ in Gronigen, Netherlands’.

MEMBERSHIP

Phi Kappa Phi; academic honor society

International Interactive Communications Society; professional association

PUBLICATIONS

‘The Legion Project: a Model for Distributed Subjectivity in Cyberspace, Based on Dissociative Identity Disorder’; Masters Report, U of Texas, 1998

‘Cybernetic Jewelry: Algorithmic Ornament’; Proceedings of the National Computer Graphics Conference, 1990

‘Cybernetic Jewelry: Ornament for the information Age’; The Visual Computer, June 1988

‘Beyond Hardware: Jewelry for a Brave New World’; Ornament, summer 1987

 
References and details of employment available upon request.