Worldbuilding Professional Portfolio

Laura Cechanowicz

Worldbuilding is a design philosophy for envisioning solutions to real world problems, which incorporates holistic real world research in crafting fictional worlds with transmedia outputs. A single worldbuild can produce multiple linked transmedia outputs: including but not limited to films, VR and AR experiences, animation, games, workshops, patented artifacts, and even curriculums. Worldbuilders are polymaths who draw on their skills as collaborators, researchers, interdisciplinarians, problem finders, divergent thinkers, and designers, and they are characterized by their openness and respect for diverging viewpoints. As such, a worldbuilder can be evaluated for their different areas of expertise, as well as their experience and commitment to the range of skills that facilitate an effective worldbuilding project. Rather than viewing such candidates' proficiency in one primary skill based role, worldbuilders can be appreciated for their ability to work across mediums and disciplines to design unity and vision within a world.    

Laura Cechanowicz is Los Angeles based designer, facilitator, and theorist. She works across mediums, including animation, film and VR, production design, and sound design. Thematically and formally her work explores embodiment and memory through identity and neuroscience, the intersections of art and science, and the ways people record and transcribe personal histories. Laura's theory and practice research focuses on the human body, investigating four themes: conversations between bodies, the body in time, the body in space, and the body interacting with objects. Her passion is participatory art as social practice, and she views teaching as an integral part of this work. 

Laura earned her BA from the University of Michigan with Film & Video, Psychology and German majors, her MA in Film Studies from the University of Iowa, and her MFA in Animation from USC. She is currently a USC iMAP PhD student and a member of the USC World Building Institute. 

 

Contents of this path: