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About
  1. Personal information
  2. Short Bio
  3. Education
  4. Work experience
  5. Workshops & talks
  6. Skill-set
  7. Community
  8. Awards, festivals & exhibitions
  9. Press
  10. Publications
  11. Open Source

Personal information

Email: contact@orfleisher.com

                    

Short bio

Based in NYC, Or Fleisher is an award-winning developer, interactive creator and artist working at the intersection of technology and storytelling. His work combines computer graphics, machine learning and immersive experience development in virtual, augmented and mixed realities.

Or's career started as a sound designer and musician. After working in audio post-production he attended Tel Aviv University's film school and started coding, designing and releasing interactive storytelling driven experiences that fuse film and gaming.

Upon graduation, Or co-founded Phenomena Labs an award-winning visual effects and interaction design studio. At Phenomena Labs he worked as a creative and technical director designing, developing and publishing interactive brand and experimental experiences. Or is a graduate of the Tisch School of the Arts, and has previously worked at The New York Times, Vimeo and Viacom. Currently, Or is a Principal Front End Engineer at Nike Virtual Studios.

Things to know about Or - an advanced coffee drinker, cat aficionado, hobbyist musician. Or is very passionate about computational photography and open source software.

Education

  • New York University - M.P.S (2016-2018)

    Master’s degree, Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP)

    • Specializing in computer graphics, volumetric capturing and immersive experience development
    • Worked under Ken Perlin’s acclaimed research group, developing machine learning driven computer graphics software, which was featured in tech magazines, such as Wired
    • Worked as a creative coder under Gabe Barcia Columbo developing an interactive installation for SXSW

  • Tel Aviv University - B.A. (2011-2014)

    Bachelor of Arts, Film and television

    • Seminar research in interactive storytelling titled "The Choices we Hear" examining the use of sound in interactive narrative works.

  • Future Rhythm - Expert Certification (2010)

    Official Avid Expert Certificates in Pro Tools (310M, 310P)

    • Graduated from Future Rhythm, a certified Avid training facility earning 310M and 310P expert certificates.
    • Avid’s Pro Tools™ HD expert curriculum in music production and post-production.

Work experience

  • Principal Front End Engineer, Virtual Studios - Nike (2023 - current)

  • Adjunct Professor, ITP - New York University (Fall 2023)

  • Staff Engineer, Research & Development - The New York Times (2021 - 2023)

    • Establish and lead development of a realtime in-browser 3D visual editor tool and roadmap in collabration with the Graphics desk (used in Winter Olympics, Super Bowl, World Cup and other published 3D interactives)
    • Write technical documentation and CI/CD templates used across engineers on the R&D team to increase developer experience and productivety
    • Establish team vision for open sourcing internal tools and IP and contribute to tools and documentation published (examples include 1, 2, 3)
    • Mentor engineers across the R&D team and help identify professional growth oppurtonitues
    • Participate in public speaking engagements (examples include 1, 2, 3) and publications related to internal R&D work
    • Help establish and contribute to internal augmented reality engineering team focused on building 3D experiments and tools in collabration with the newsroom

  • Sr. Engineer, Research & Development - The New York Times (2019 - 2021)

    • Implement 3D rendering, data processing and 3D reconstruction techniques used in published interactives in collabration with other departments across the organization (examples include 1, 2, 3)
    • Develop computer vision based cloud pipelines for analyzing data used in Summer Olympics coverage
    • Research and develop internal tools and IP in 3D cartography and map tile creation (patent pending)
    • Help establish and contribute to an Open Source Community of Practice - setting organization wide Open Source guides and standards
    • Contribute to the development, maintainence and content writing of R&D's public facing site

  • Sr. Engineer, Emerging Technology - Vimeo (2019)

    • Establish and implement immersive player product roadmap
    • Analyze usage data using analytics tools to inform decisions and trends
    • Implement and maintain spatial playback features such as WebVR into the Vimeo web player
    • Research and develop internal tools and IP in machine learning and computer vision such as video classification and metadata injection

  • Principle Creative Technologist - Vimeo (2018-2019)

  • VR Research Fellow - Viacom (2017)

    • Designed and developed a web based Virtual Reality narrative experience currently in submission to festivals.
    • Collabrated in weekly feedback sessions about look-development and technical feedback.
    • Presented the project in a private Virtual Reality showcase at Viacom's NY headquarters, also covered by tech websites (e.g UploadVR).

  • Co-Founder - Phenomena Labs (2010-2016)

    • Co-Founded an award winning visual effects and interaction design studio with Ronen Tanchum and Guy Fleisher.
    • Directed, developed and published 5 Virtual Reality titles in Oculus, GearVR and WebVR app stores, featured in prestigious international festivals such as Cannes Festival, Game Developers Conference, SIGGRAPH and SXSW
    • Received awards such as Design and Art Direction, Urban MediaMakers Best Interactive, Worldfest NASA Remi Award, FWA, Awwwards and CSS Design Awards

  • Sound Supervisor - Rishon Hall of Arts (2009-2010)

    • Sound design and mixing of performances ranging from art installations and theatre to dance groups.
    • Daily maintanance of gear and stock.
    • Specification sheet preperations and forigen performances coordinator.

  • Recording Engineer - Savion Studios (2006-2008)

    • Preparing, tracking, editing and pre-mixing music recording sessions.
    • Overseeing and operating the rehearsal spaces.
    • Recruit and train new staff members.

Workshops & talks

  • Adobe Research - The New York Times R&D (2021) - Applying Emerging Technologies In Service of Journalism at The New York Times.

  • Brown Institute at Columbia Journalism School - The New York Times R&D (2021) - Applying Emerging Technologies In Service of Journalism at The New York Times.

  • The Machine Learning Center at Georgia Tech - The New York Times R&D (2020) - Applying Emerging Technologies In Service of Journalism at The New York Times.

  • NYC Media Lab - Guest Speaker - The New York Times R&D (2020)

  • Volumetric Accessibility with Vimeo - Volumetric Filmmaking Meetup (2018)
    This talk (2:08:40) by Casey Pugh, head of Creator Labs at Vimeo, presents the work we have been doing in volumetric video distribution and live streaming.

  • Making music with social data - ITP Camp, New York University (2018) This workshop was focused on creating generative music with Twitter data (Twitter API) using Node.js, Express and Web Audio API (Tone.js)

  • From Tzina to Volume - Volumetric Filmmaking Meetup (2018) A talk in the first Volumetric Filmmaking Meetup in NYC about creating Tzina and how it led to developing Volume

  • Volume - Thesis presentation, New York University (2018) My master's thesis presentation at the Interactive Telecommunications Program, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU

  • Volume - HyperCinema - New York University (2018) A workshop about using Volume in Unity3D to create augmented and virtual reality experiences. The workshop took part at IMA, New York University as a part of a class called HyperCinema taught by Prof. Gabe BC

  • Counter Histories, Alternative Narratives - Magnum Foundation (2018) A presentation and demonstration of Volume in front of Magnum Foundation's current research residents. The presentation took place in Columbia University's Brown Institue for Media Innovation

  • Making music with data - NYC Media Lab (2017) This workshop was focused on creating generative music with Twitter data (Twitter API) using Node.js, Express and Web Audio API (Tone.js)

  • Volumetric capture using DepthKit - ITP Camp, New York University (2016) The goal of this workshop was to learn hands-on how to use DepthKit's software (with a Kinect and a DSLR) to capture a human performance as a volumetric capture and to render it in Unity.

  • Interactive Film (roundtable) - Anilouge Animation Festival (2015) A roundtable about current possibilities in film-making, virtual reality and interactive storytelling

  • Animating with MIDI - Budapest University (2015) During Anilouge Animation Festival I conducted a workshop in Budapest University's Interaction Design department about using MIDI in real-time to drive animations and visual effects in WebGL.

Skills

  • Spoken Languages: English, Hebrew.
  • Team player who strives for a collabrative work atmosphere.
  • Strong networking affinity, with great personal and social skills.
  • High tenure under deadlines, with an ability to multitask and simplify problems, finding creative and technical solutions in variegated situations.
  • Ability to communicate simple and complex issues in a clear and concice way.

Technical skills

  • Graphics programmer experienced with WebGL, 2D Canvas, OpenGL and advanced shader programming (GLSL, HLSL).
  • Extensive knowledge in Virtual and Augmented Reality content development (WebVR, WebAR, ARKit, Unity for Rift, Vive and GearVR).
  • Graphics Libraries: Three.js, openFrameworks, GLEW, GLFW, JUCE
  • Front-end & Web Development Libraries: React, Redux, GraphQL, Express, Node
  • Software: Unity, TouchDesigner, Nuke, Avid MC, Adobe Creative Cloud, Blender, Octane Renderer, Vue, Pro-Tools, Ableton Live, Max/MSP/Jitter.
  • Programming languages: Javascript (ES5/ES6), Typescript, C++, C#, Swift, python, HTML5, CSS3D
  • Further knowledge in Depth sensing and 3D scanning, Frontend development, Websockets, Arduino programming, Raspberry Pi programming, Machine learning (tensorflow, CoreML, Jupyter, Matplotlib, OpenCV), PCB design, electronics.

Community

Awards

Festivals

Exhibitions

Press

Publications

Open Source