Episode 44: High Tolerance For Tools That Don't Work Feat. Raqi Syed

This episode is sponsored by Autodesk. Raqi Syed is a writer, VFX designer, and researcher.

She began her career in animation as a Lighting Artist for Disney Feature Animation on films such as Meet the Robinsons and Tangled. She then went on to work as a Senior Technical Director with Weta Digital on films like Avatar, The Planet of the Apes films, and The Hobbit Trilogy.

Her practice and teaching focus on the materiality of light, hybrid forms of non-fiction and genre storytelling, and using media archaeology and software studies methodologies to better understand contemporary practices in VFX.

Her actual research focuses on developing an anti-racist critical aesthetics of VFX.

In 2020 Raqi co-directed MINIMUM MASS, an interactive narrative experience for Virtual Reality.

Minimum Mass won the 2020 Annecy International Animation Film Festival Crystal Award for “Best VR”, was a winner at ANIDOX Denmark, and has played at the Tribeca, Cannes, and Venice International Film Festivals.

Her areas of expertise are VFX feature film lighting (see imdb profile), VFX education/research (see VUW profile) and narrative

VR---> https://minimum-mass.com/ Website: https://www.hydroxandhorlix.com/

Social Media: https://twitter.com/hydroxandhorlix

https://www.instagram.com/likeambernz/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/raqi-syed-ba70b93/

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1673490/

https://people.wgtn.ac.nz/raqi.syed

Ted Kim's talk which I mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROuE8xYLpX8&t=2609s&ab_channel=TheodoreKim