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Worldbuilding Professional Portfolio Main Menu Designer Laura works as a designer with spatial design, sound, interactive UI/UX, animation, film, and production. Facilitator Worldbuilders need to collaboratively work in teams, helping lead the project toward aims and create an environment for productive interactions. Research + Theory Research and theory are integral aspects of the worldbuilding process. Qualifying Exam Portfolio A brief guide to this portfolio project, with more focused media links.

Worldbuilding Design Portfolio

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Worldbuilding is a design philosophy for envisioning solutions to real world problems, incorporating 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.

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1. Worldbuilding Design Portfolio

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Glass Heart Excerpt
YADDDA, YADDA, YADA
Silent Secrets: The Body Language of the Confessor
The Infinite
They Had Horses
Dreaming Los Angeles - LA Animators An exquisite corpse by LA animators led by Amy Lee Ketchum as part of her September 2014 Artist in Residence at the Echo Park Film Center. Artists include: Jeffrey Fletcher, Ryan Gillis, Javier Barboza, Laura Cechanowicz, Dana Wilson, Yang Liu, Louis Morton, Eric Pato, Brandon Lake, Jovanna Tosello, Miguel Jiron, and Joshua Ketchum with music by A Magic Whistle and sound design by Laura Cechanowicz.
"Paint Punches" Interactive Installation Documentation
Specter, 2010 How does an image form? Specter utilizes exquisite corpse techniques to explore the process of perception in the human mind. Inspired by John Cage, the animators first created a visual and aural score to represent the movements of the film. They then 'performed' the score visually through animation using a multi-plane setup, cut-outs, clay, and other under the camera animation techniques. The process was spontaneous, but directed by the score. Similarly, the animators performed sounds designed to sync with the aural graphic score.
The Secrets of Nitrogenase
Dance
A Letter To You Documentation This video presents documentation of my installation "A Letter to You," as well as the full footage of the installation - which is a loop. This is an autobiographical installation investigating my memory of my grandma before she died from cancer. It explores the intense pain and beauty of life and death, including the process of healing through immersive experience in water and sound. The piece was initially designed to fit the architecture of the original installation space, but as it is shown in other spaces, I am interested in seeing it develop in the context of other architectural elements. It can now create arches, opening doors of possibility, where there once stood walls.
St. Ulmo's Fire
Rollover
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