Mark Bolas is a research scientist, artist, and designer exploring perception, agency, and intelligence. He is a Visiting Associate Professor in the USC Interactive Media Division, School of Cinema and Television at the University of Southern California, and Chairman of Fakespace Labs in Mountain View, California. The University of Southern Californias School of Cinema-Televisions Interactive Media Division first accepted students in 2002. ...

Bolas majored in Physics and minored in Music at University of California, San Diego. He holds an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. Bolas’s 1988-89 thesis work “Design and Virtual Environments” was done under the direction of Rolf Faste in Stanford's design program and Scott Fisher at NASA Ames Research Center. It was among the first efforts to map the breadth of virtual reality as a new medium. This effort led Bolas toward a basic model for immersive experience design, concluding that the medium’s power to deeply transport a user is closely tied to finding an appropriate balance between realism and abstraction. A Superconductor demonstrating the Meissner Effect. ... Music is an art, entertainment, or other human activity which involves structured and audible sound, though definitions vary. ... The University of California, San Diego (popularly known as UCSD) is a public, coeducational university located in La Jolla, California. ... The W16 engine from a Bugatti Veyron Mechanical engineering is a very broad field of engineering that involves the application of physical principles for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. ... The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly known as Stanford University (or simply Stanford), is a private university in Stanford, California, USA. Located approximately 37 miles (60 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco in an unincorporated part of Santa Clara County adjacent to the city of Palo Alto, Stanford lies at the... Scott Fisher is an artist and technologist who has worked extensively on virtual reality, including stints at NASA, Atari Research Labs, MITs Architecture Machine Group and Keio University. ... Aerial View of Moffett Field and NASA Ames Research Center. ... Virtual Reality (VR) is an environment that is simulated by a computer. ...

In 1998, Bolas co-founded Fakespace Inc. with Ian McDowall and Eric Lorimer to build instrumentation for research labs to explore virtual reality and grow the emerging field. This work resulted in the invention of display and interaction tools used by most VR research and development centers around the world, including the Boom, the Pinch, the Rave, and VLIB software.

Bolas continues to explore the nature of virtual reality through the design of immersive experiences. His work focuses on creating virtual environments and transducers that fully engage one’s perception and cognition, and create a visceral memory of the experience. His work has been exhibited in many venues including six Emerging Technology exhibits at Siggraph starting in 1991 with Flatlands, which used the illusion of perspective to transform a sculpture into Mondrian's Composition with Line, 1918; the music-driven worlds of Vacuii and StillLife created with Christian Greuel and Niko Bolas; and the invisibly structured Snared Illumination created with Perry Hoberman and Ian McDowall. SIGGRAPH 2005 official logo SIGGRAPH (short for Special Interest Group in Graphics) is the name of the annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. ... Mondrian can refer to: The artist, Piet Mondrian; A stimulus used in research into color perception, particularly color constancy. ... Perry Hoberman is an installation artist who has worked extensively with machines and media. ...

He has been a professor at Stanford University and KEIO University exploring tangible interfaces, augmented reality, and computational illumination. These projects have explored context sensitive audio interfaces, socially interactive toys, augmented reality, confocal illumination, and mobile phone web logging. Today he is a visiting associate professor at the USC Interactive Media Division, and Director of their Interactive Narrative and Immersive Technologies Lab.

 Mark has a daughter, EMB, age 11, and one son, TCB, age 8. 

External links

• Mark Bolas Personal/Professional Site