Selected Crew of Molecularium - Riding Snowflakes

V Owen Bush is a designer, producer, and filmmaker who uses immersion and participation to create transformative social experiences. His works are presented in venues such as live concerts and events, digital planetaria, IMAX3D, broadcast television, mobile devices, and the web. He is a member of the Omnisensorialist Federation and Immersionists. V has had a principal role in notable projects including: Pseudo Programs Inc., MTV’s AMP, QUIET!/We Live In Public, SonicVision at the Hayden Planetarium, and the Molecularium Project at Rensselaer. As a freelance motion designer, V has developed broadcast television promos for NBC, MTV, VH1, PBS, Nickelodeon, Showtime, Discovery, History Channel, NY1, and others. V is a co-founder of Glowing Pictures, a company whose work includes televised concerts, music videos, commercials, multimedia operas, and visual environments. Glowing Pictures’ clients include Vh1, MySpace, the Beastie Boys, the Creators Project, Eyebeam, the American Museum of Natural History, Imagination and Lincoln Center, among many others.

Kurt Przybilla is an inventor, educator, writer and producer. He invented Tetra Tops®, the world’s first spinning top with more than one axis of spin. These award-winning toys have been featured in the New York Times, Popular Science, Baby Einstein, Child and Discover Magazine, as well as at the Smithsonian Institute. In 2005, he co-founded the Bamboo Institute to develop innovative ways to utilize bamboo’s potential to help solve a wide range of problems facing our planet. Kurt taught in New York City for over ten years. He also taught in Japan for three and a half years where he studied Japanese archery, flower arrangement, language and poetry. Since 2004, Kurt has been working with Nanotoon Entertainment on the Molecularium Project.

Chris Harvey is an Emmy winning art director who has created designs for an international roster of clients including MTV, VH1, NBC, ESPN, Vox (Germany), Viva-Plus (Germany), The Smithsonian, Hearst Publications, and The American Museum of Natural History. Additional awards include a Peabody, three Broadcast Design Association Awards, as well as recognition at film festivals in Chicago, New York, and Cologne. As art director for MTV, Chris generated countless on-air graphics for the network, moving on to direct broadcast design for Curious Pictures and Lee Hunt Associates in New York City. In 2003 he was creative director for the Hayden Planetarium's animated music show "SonicVision". Chris has provided visual support to pioneer composers of long-form contemplative music, producing imagery for La Monte Young, David Hykes, and Terry Riley. Making art since childhood, Chris has shown multimedia installations at several prominent galleries in New York City and the New York Capital District.

Steve Rein has been a professional computer animator for over twenty years, working as art director, technical director and animator for companies including Colossal Pictures, Protozoa, Digital Light and Acclaim Entertainment. From a “Virtual Bill Clinton” created for MTV to directing movies for PlayStation games, he specializes in bringing life to computer-generated characters. Rein is an adjunct professor of animation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

A veteran of the visual effects industry, Blake Holland is a specialist in the integration of 3D computer graphics with motion control photography and motion simulators. He worked at Imax RideFilm, and was a member of the visual effects team at Mass Illusion where he created signature looks for the Academy Award winning effects for the films Starship Troopers, What Dreams May Come and The Matrix. At Giant Studios in Atlanta, Holland integrated the various 3D systems and was technical director on the award-winning in-house animation Fruits of Labor, directed by Rudy Poat.

Joshua Minges works in many aspects of special format, immersive entertainment, from hardware integration to CG animation. Since 1992 he has worked in location based entertainment including a motion simulator attraction for the Luxor Hotel and Casino, an interactive motorcycle simulator for Mariah Entertainment, a series of productions and installations for Imax RideFilm, and an interactive multi-person simulator developed with Hitachi. Minges has worked with the American Museum of Natural History on all of their digital dome productions: Passport to the Universe, the Search for Life, and SonicVision.

Leona Christie is an artist whose drawings, installations, and animations have been exhibited at galleries and museums including the Drawing Center (NYC), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), G-Module (Paris) and the New York Video Festival. Her work has been reviewed or reproduced in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and New Art Examiner, and may be found in the collections of the New York Public Library and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. She has been an Assistant Professor of Art at the University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY) since 2003.