Founder, Creative Director and Lead Engineer
Dave founded Lumieria to actively share his belief in a powerful ideal -- that technology can be a profound amplifier of the human spirit when it is elegant, intuitive, and inspiring. Over the course of his 25+ year career as an engineer, designer and artist, he has consistently, and passionately, worked to further that notion. This powerful ideal guides all work of Lumieria.
A Solid Foundation
Dave received his formal education from Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York. Originally enrolling in the School of Electrical Engineering, he became drawn towards the study of how we humans relate to technology. He realized that for it to be truly empowering,
it had to be understood. He received the school's blessing to redesign his degree program around furthering that concept. The result was a cross-disiciplinary blending of two areas: first, how learning itself works
(cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence), and second, some of the powerful ways we can use technology, to make technology itself intuitive
(computer graphics, human factors). Now able to leverage advanced graphics techniques, human psychology and artificial intelligence methods in the pursuit of making technology accessible, Dave received his Engineering degree from Cornell University.
Rocket Scientist
After college Dave moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, and put his knowledge to work at NASA's Moffet Field in Mountain View, California. There he worked with a team of researchers, including the inventor of our modern-day Liquid Crystal display technology, as well as leading researchers of the human perceptual system. His work was the design of an intuitive interface that would allow researchers to combine their undestanding of how the human eye sees, with foundational physics simulations describing how the 'liquid crystal' material behaved -- all in the pursuit of the ultimate flat panel display.
The Siren Song of Computer Graphics Calls
Meanwhile, the field of interactive computer graphics was growing fast. The ability of computers to manipulate pixels in reality-bending ways was mezmerizing to Dave, who had studied these techniques in abstract, but hadn't wielded many of them professionally. Although he enjoyed the world of research, user-interface design and simulation, he left the position to pursue the design of Special Effects software, at the fledgling startup Xaos Tools, in San Francisco. At Xaos, Dave put his skills to work and learned how, and how not, to design and execute a real-world software product. In joining the computer graphics industry, Dave was hooked. This was a technology, in his eyes, that allowed reality to be bent to a purpose. He wanted that purpose to inspire others. After Xaos Tools, Dave would leave the sofware business to join the film world.
Into Film Production
As an artist himself, moving into filmmaking was a natural leap closer to the creation process of this digital magic. It was an ideal merger for him, on one hand he was able to participate in the rapidly advancing technical field of computer graphics, and on the other, his audience was an industry built to inspire -- the movie business. It was a natural match for him.
Over the next decade plus, Dave worked to empower other artists to create movie magic. His skills in user-centric design, in developing and harnessing advanced graphics techniques in ways that the production artists could understand, found him naturally drawn to film R&D departments. He would work at Tippett Studio in Berkeley, CA, The Jim Henson Creature Shop in London, and finally, would make his way to Portland, Oregon. There he helped to launch the feature film studio, Laika Entertainment. As TD (Technical Director) Supervisor, he led a group of artists and technology designers in the ground-up design of the studio's new technical (cg) filmmaking process. Later, he would be instrumental in the build of the platform as well, as a Senior Software Engineer in the R&D department, and would later go on to found the company's internal Interaction Design group.
Maturing as an Artist
Meanwhile, Dave's other creative pursuits had been developing as well. As half of the electronic music project
Mystik Luminate he honed his live-performance skills, and became versed in the production engineering tools used in modern music-making. Having taught himself to weld, in 2001, from an artist warehouse in West Oakland, CA, he married his knowledge of electronics, with his love of the artistic use of light, and executed his first light sculpture,
Blade. This would be his first in an ongoing series of sculptural works using light, and electronics to achieve aesthetic result. He would also continue his research into learning, and explore software ideas based on that research.
A Focus on Design and Product Development
In 2009, after the runaway success of their movie Coraline, Laika Entertainment closed their Computer Graphics film division to focus on the film's Stop-Motion film production style. Dave and Laika Entertainment parted ways. It was a window of opportunity, and provided him the time to focus, full-time, on bringing more of his own ideas to light, through Lumieria. Since then, through targeted internal R&D, he has continued to advance the development of several Lumieria products. He has also been focused on building the business to support the new products, and working to realize a future Lumieria line of electronically animated light sculptures, film-studio techniques for their previsualization, and modern, technology-driven fabrication techniques for their construction. (See the
Wallships project description).
Looking Forward
Dave remains committed to his original ideal, now the guiding principle of Lumieria -- to leverage the power of technology to captivate, empower and inspire others.