SCPS Faculty Profile
Fostering Digital Design Innovation in the Virtual “Workshop” of Second Life™
Mechthild Schmidt
Master Teacher, Digital Communications and Media,
Paul McGhee Division
Artist and motion graphics designer Mechthild Schmidt had worked for over a decade at major post-production houses and networks in her native Germany and in New York before coming to SCPS’s Paul McGhee Division. Now a master teacher within the digital communications and media degree program, Schmidt has taught classes in such areas as digital design, graphics, and animation for over 15 years.
“My constant interest in innovation in digital motion design has me on a search for equally innovative methods to teaching the subject,” says Schmidt. A few years ago, she discovered—thanks in part to the online activities of her teenaged son—Second Life™ (SL), the popular Internet-based virtual world within which users make use of created characters, or “avatars,” to socialize with one another and interact in the SL environment.
In SL, Schmidt saw a promising teaching platform. “Second Life™ already had dozens of colleges and universities using it to teach a wide array of subjects—science, languages, law, economics, history, media studies, to name a few,” she explains. “It fosters community and immersive learning while teaching students to use the open-source environment as active participants and producers of media.”
So, at the same time New York University was launching new campuses in the Middle East, China and Europe, Schmidt launched New York University’s first working outpost in SL in fall 2006 for use in her Visionary Concepts in Motion Arts course. In addition to traditional, in-person classes, her students met virtually in SL to explore issues like the acceptance of different media forms, as well as actually designing and building animated objects. Encouraged by this success, during fall 2007 Schmidt embarked on a more ambitious project: a short animated film based on Macbeth that was produced within and is streaming within SL.
Schmidt has a BFA/MFA from the ‘Universität der Künste’ (Fine Arts) and ‘Freie Universität’ (History) in Berlin and an MFA in Combined Media from Hunter College, CUNY. She has won numerous artistic and commercial awards, including the Design of the German Filmprize Statue, an International Monitor Award for ‘Interactive Multimedia’, a DAAD Grant (German Academic Exchange Program) for Media in New York, and a Fellowship for the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, NYC. Outside of Special Project classes, Schmidt teaches Motion Design, Media Convergence, Drawing for Animators, Broadcast Design and the Senior Project course within McGhee’s B.S. in Digital Communications and Media degree program and is the faculty adviser for the digital communications and media students’ club. Further, she developed the ‘CrossRoads’ panel series on digital art and technology, and helped launch the program’s video gaming concentration in fall 2007.