mEET THE TEAM
Trace Dressen
Trace Dressen studied Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University in his undergraduate education. After a year of interning with the Design & Engineering team at the Walt Disney World Resort, he moved to Pittsburgh to pursue a degree in Entertainment Technology. His passions lie in experience design and game design, as well as the place where those two fields meet.
Kristian Tchetchko
Kristian Tchetchko is a sound artist, composer, and recording engineer in Pittsburgh. He enjoys creating sweeping orchestral soundtracks and intricate synthesized scores, as well as passing on his knowlege to others as a mentor and music technology instructor. He also really loves authentic fish tacos.
Faculty Advisors
Moshe Mahler
Moshe Mahler is an award-winning professional innovator and storyteller whose work has been featured in attractions at Disney Parks and Resorts and shown worldwide at prestigious venues including SIGGRAPH, UIST, Comic Con, and Ars Electronica. For nearly a decade, Mahler led The Creative Technology Team at Disney Research of The Walt Disney Company, where he served as the Principal Artist. Under his supervision, the team worked hand in hand with elite Research Scientists to invent and utilize new technologies across the Walt Disney Company, collaborating with Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Disney Consumer Products, Disney Television Animation, Imagineering, and more. Mahler has authored more than 10 technical paper publications at premiere conferences and is an inventor of four issued patents. He has also contributed to dozens of publications in the computer graphics and animation fields. Mahler’s art works and animated films have been featured in a number of venues internationally, including SIGGRAPH 2005, 2007, 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017.
Ralph Vituccio
Ralph Vituccio is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon and an Independent filmmaker. At the ETC Ralph lead a number of award winning student interactive projects dealing with social issues such as an interactive graphic novel addressing sexual assault on college campus and a Virtual Reality interactive experience exploring racial profiling which was presented at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival.
As an independent artist, Vituccio has received numerous grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Mid-Atlantic Region Media Arts Fellowship Program and the National Endowment for the Arts. Vituccio’s documentary, “PERFORMANCE: The Living Art,” won an Artist Distinction Award at the 1990 Berlin International Film Festival and has aired nationally on several PBS stations and internationally in several countries. His documentary, “When The Video Came,” considers the early formation of video as an art form and profiles many of the original pioneers in the field and has been shown internationally.
His 2010 documentary, “IN SERVICE: Iraq to Pittsburgh,” explored a different facet of the Iraq War as seen through the eyes of local soldiers, government officials and journalists. It tells the story of 15 men and women who served, survived, and returned from the battlefields in and around Baghdad. The film weaves war footage shot by soldiers themselves, interviews, and still photography into a cohesive narrative of how world events affect communities.
His film “Shipbreakers” (2014) takes place on the beaches of Alang, India where over 300 supertankers and cruse ships are run aground and torn apart by hand by thousands of impoverished workers. The film looks at the devastating impact ship recycling has on the environmental and the health of the workers. It asks the question should less developed countries be a dumping ground for the hazardous waste and pollution of developed countries. “Shipbreakers” won The Best Feature Documentary Award at the Global International Film Festival in San Francisco. It was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Madrid and Lucerne International Film Festivals and won the Best Editing Award at the Global Film Festival of Boston.
In 2015, Vituccio and Andres Tapia-Urzua were invited to present their interactive video art installation, “El Oraculo Caracol,” at the Havana International Biennale in Cuba. The Havana International presents artists from all over the world and “El Oraculo Caracol” was the only accepted entry representing the United States
