Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Van Belleghem.
Emily, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
When I tell people I work in virtual space… they’ll usually give me a funny look. It’s a look of curiosity and confusion combined with a general sympathetic yet understanding eyebrow-raise — as if to say “ah yes, so you’re crazy”. And honestly who could blame them? I mean, the words themselves sound entirely oxymoronic.
It’s probably one of my favorite reactions to see because, to be completely honest, it’s the closest I’ll get to seeing how I looked when someone said the same words to me so many years ago.
I grew up in the heart of Silicon Valley as the black sheep artist in a family of engineers. Between sketching, painting, writing, and playing music, I was always preoccupied with an art project. It was in high school that my parents finally convinced me to take a computer science class. I remember thinking, “wow, imagine what art I could make with this!”. I was hooked.
From there, I left California and flew cross country to freezing Boston to pursue a bachelor’s and master’s degree at MIT. While in school, I conducted research at the MIT Media Lab where I studied the latest advancements in holography and light field displays. It was there that I really fell in love with experience design and human computer interaction (HCI). The more I dove into the prospect of creating future technological interfaces, the more I wanted to understand how people might interact with them day to day.
These combined interests ended up being the perfect storm to what led to a career in experience design and development for virtual spaces. Since then, I’ve been creating art, designing user flows, and writing software for any and all aspects of digital world-building that I can get my hands on. This has ranged from developing Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Reality applications on head-mounted displays to cell phones, to conducting facial and full-body motion capture sessions on massive stages to personal web-cams, to even deploying on platforms ranging from university research-based holographic displays to even the simplest at-home Pepper’s Ghost illusion. It’s safe to say that my eyes have seen more screen time than necessary!
Although the road has been a bit windy, I am still always looking for new ways to combine both my technical and creative sides to bridge the gap between art and technology. As a designer, I continuously try to understand the psychology behind our smallest everyday interactions, keeping in mind that clear interfaces are not only simple and intuitive but ones that people can emotionally connect with. In all of my work, I try to focus on the bigger picture and keep in mind that there is still so much to learn.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I think in any medium if you’re really pushing the envelope, there will always be continual and inevitable bumps along the way. But that’s how you really know you’re challenging not just yourself but the world around you to rise to the occasion.
Having one foot in engineering and the other in art/design is not easy. There is a constant push from general society to force a decision to pursue one or the other. I’ve never really understood this since I’ve always felt that my work in one field informed and inspired that in the other. I counter this by unapologetically sharing my story of many interests in multiple fields; it’s who I am and I was never one to limit myself.
That said, I’ve always been a big planner. It’s been my natural instinct and defense in trying to prevent any form of “failure”. However, my interpretation of what failure is has tremendously changed over the years, but in the best way possible. When I was younger, I always wanted to be a character designer for Disney Animation, and I originally thought that any deviation from that plan would have meant certain failure. Several years later, I had switched interests from character designer to technical director, and this was years before I had discovered what virtual space even was! We can only make the best decision we can with the information we have at the time. As we learn more information, we must modify, adjust, and adapt to make space for ourselves to grow. Plans change, and that’s a good thing — I couldn’t have asked for it to go any other way.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
My most recent work I’m proud of is on a project named Elixir, a virtual reality experience created to launch and guide users through the newly released hand tracking features of the Oculus Quest. Elixir featured an entirely digital sorceress’s laboratory that allowed users to transform their hands into different appendages. It was debuted on stage by Mark Zuckerberg as well as on his personal Facebook and Instagram accounts at Oculus Connect 6. I was the Lead Designer on Elixir, which was created with the help of many colleagues while I was working at Magnopus. It was the first time I was a part of a team of that caliber and size and is a true testament to what can happen when a very passionate group of people get together to create their vision of what the future of technology can be.
After years of industry work, I decided to take a step back and return to academic research during these Covid times to pursue a few personal questions of mine about the future of music technology. Music is the one language we all understand without ever needing to learn; it’s power to emotionally affect even the most staunchly opposed of listeners is unparalleled. It is one of the great equalizers and bridges across all cultures and ages, and yet our standard experience with it has remained unchanged for years. Perhaps in rare shows or concerts, we encounter brief glimpses of its multifaceted intricacies, but in daily experience, music is the singular lone sense of recorded sound. In my years of composition and performance, I’ve found music to be a multidimensional field, and I believe it should be experienced and studied as such. For these reasons, I’m pursuing a doctoral degree in Media Arts and Practice in the School of Cinematic Arts at USC.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
This list could be miles long. There are so many people who have impacted not only my career but my interpretation of the world and where I fit within it.
My parents and family have supported and mentored me in incalculable ways. Their impact on my work and my future are truly immeasurable.
The friends I made at MIT are timeless and have taught me not only how to overcome the impossible but also how to grow where planted. If not for my friends in OBM at the Media Lab, I may have still been working on my master’s thesis to this day.
My industry mentors at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Walt Disney Imagineering paved the way for me to explore some of the greatest reaches of the virtual space and entertainment industry.
I also could not forget my colleagues from Magnopus, who are some of my closest friends to this day. These mentors and teammates here in DTLA have been instrumental in developing my understanding of business and the VR industry.
It is because of all of these people that I am who I am today.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evb.png/
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-van-belleghem-09b1588a/
Image Credit:
Miranda Due
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