New Page — Lydia Jessup

About

I am a Seattle-based visual and interaction designer creating, studying and exploring virtual spaces. I current work as a Senior Product Designer at Magic Leap.

I also work part-time as an Adjunct Professor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts’ Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) and Interactive Media Arts (IMA) program. I previously worked at The New York Times on the Research & Development team where I designed immersive and interactive augmented reality experiences for spatial journalism.

My work in the virtual realm began in the winter of 2019 when I was part of the team that won Best Mixed Reality at the MIT Reality Virtually Hackathon and later held a summer Artist-in-Residence at IrisVR that same year. My 2020 master’s thesis Urban_OS on augmented reality urban interface design was published in “A City is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences” by Shannon Mattern (2021). As a Research Resident at NYU in 2020, I worked on the development of YORB, a 3D virtual social space in the browser for the IMA and ITP communities.

I frequently speak on the history and ethics of technology and on designing immersive experiences, most recently at NYU, The Cooper Union, South Carolina School of the Arts and internationally at Ryerson University and The University of Toronto. I have led workshops and presented work at conferences and festivals including NYC Open Data Week, Radical Networks, the Computer Mouse Conference, IDFA DocLab and on Governors Island. My writing on virtual reality and the history of the internet has been published in Adjacent, Take Shape Magazine, the New_Public Newsletter, and more.

Previously, I worked in public policy research at UChicago Urban Labs and in Peru at Innovations for Poverty Action. I hold an MPS from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) and a BA in International Relations from Tufts University.

Manifesto

I believe that the next technological revolution needs to be in the public sphere. Most questions people ask about technology are about how we can be more efficient, have access to more information, or get to places faster, but these are tools, not ends in themselves. Instead, I think we need to ask: how do we design systems that enable our best humanity? Technology is not capable of building just and equitable social systems on its own. That ability and responsibility is ours.

I also like to teach, facilitate workshops, speak at conferences, serve as a guest critic and write things! Here are some recent examples:

Teaching

Learning the World One Thing at a Time, ITP, Tisch, NYU, Fall Semester 2021, 2022, 2023
Hypercinema, IMA, Tisch, NYU, Fall Semester 2021

Workshops + Facilitation

3D Modeling in VR @ YORB Club, April 9, 2021
Co-organizer, Investing in Futures: Beyond Policing, Summer 2020
Co-organizer, Tech & Society Book Club, Summer 2020
3D Modeling with Oculus Medium, NYU ITP, April 9, 2020 ~Canceled due to Coronavirus~
Theorizing a Future Urban Operating System, PhD by Design Symposium 2020 (link) ~Canceled due to Coronavirus~
Make Your Own Zine: Open Data Journeys (co-facilitator), NYC Open Data Week, March 6, 2020 (link)
Imploding the Computer Mouse, NYU ITP, October 25, 2019
Feminist History of the Internet Walking Tour, Radical Networks, October 18, 2019 (link)
Making Critical Art with Machine Learning, NYU ITP 40th Anniversary, October 10, 2019 (link)
Feminist History of the Internet Urban Hike, ITP Camp, June 22, 2019 (link)
Magnificent Maya: A Beginner’s Guide to 3D Modeling, ITP Camp, June 11, 2019 (link)
Intro to Data Wrangling for the Creative Technologist - ITP Unconference, January 26, 2019 (link)

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