Spend your lunch hour hearing from Peabody Award-winning programmer Jarryd Huntley as he discusses the work he does in future tech and virtual reality (VR) while in conversation with Robert Lauer, a visiting assistant professor in Cleveland Institute of Art's Animation program and 2017 graduate of CIA's Game Design program.

Huntley and Lauer's talk will take place during Lunch on Fridays from 12:15 to 1:30pm Friday, January 17 in CIA's Peter B. Lewis Theater.

Prior to the talk, attendees will receive a brief introduction to CIA's Interactive Media Lab (IML), which is scheduled to open in early 2025 at the Cleveland Foundation's MidTown Collaboration Center. Among other state-of-the-art features, the IML will be home to an extended reality (XR) studio, leading-edge virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology, and an arcade that invites students to develop and test their own video games.

Bios
Jarryd Huntley is Sr. Lead Optimization Engineer at Owlchemy Labs, an Austin, Texas-based VR studio. He plays important roles in Cleveland’s game development scene as an educator running workshops and teaching classes and as an organizer with the Cleveland Game Developers community group. He was lead programmer on the 2022 PS4/5 & Nintendo Switch game/music project, We are OFK, which notably was a recipient of a Peabody Award in 2024. He was also co-author of the 2017 book Game Programming for Artists. Huntley was also an inductee in the Video Game Awards Future Class 2021.

With talks at universities and conferences in Uruguay, Kyrgyzstan and elsewhere around the world, Huntley brings a unique perspective by drawing on his experiences from enterprise software engineering and as a professional musician. He has marked his career by helping to create spaces and help more marginalized voices get into programming and game development. His studio, Polytundra LLC, has helped port console games such as Quench and EarthNight on Switch and PS4. Polytundra released its debut title Art Club Challenge in 2018, which was featured in the 2017 Smithsonian American Art Museum Arcade.

Robert Lauer is a freelance 3D artist, independent developer and instructor at the Cleveland Institute of Art. He loves the power of play and works to foster this love through his work and actions as a co-organizer for the Cleveland Game Developers. He previously was the Creative Director at 360 Alley, an augmented reality design studio where he used his passion to develop apps for museums and children's books and created design tools.

Lauer has a development and design background from the Cleveland Institute of Art and loves making stylized 3D worlds for players to enjoy. Outside of his professional work, he plays hurling for the Akron Celtic Guards.

Parking: Lunch on Fridays attendees may park in any of CIA's Lot 73 and Annex Lot, both of which surround our campus. Please note that signs posted around those lots correctly state that parking typically requires a CIA permit or visitor pass and that violators will be ticketed. However, to accommodate our valued Lunch on Fridays attendees, that policy won't be enforced during the program. Have questions? Please contact Reinberger Gallery at reinbergergallery@cia.edu or 216.421.7407.

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