February 23, 2017
Meet the Staff: Chris Summers
Note: Meet the Staff is a new feature that ASCTech will be publishing over the next few months to introduce staff members to the College of Arts and Sciences. We welcome your thoughts on it.
What's your background? I have a BFA in Art & Technology from Ohio State.
What's something about you that other people find interesting or surprising? My first car was a 1987 Porsche 924. I'm a hobbyist grease monkey. I love working on cars. My dad was a huge car guy growing up and I've helped him fix cars just since I was seven or eight.
What's something that surprised you about your job at ASCTech? I was surprised about how open to assist everyone is. Everyone within ASCTech admires new ideas and new perspectives, and never shoots down a question, concern, insight or thought. It is a perfect incubator for innovation.
Google the phrase "Chris Summers vice" and the top result will surprise you.
Summers, the Media Manager for Instructional Technology, embedded in the Department of Dance, has an active artistic life outside of his job. Using his background in art and technology from Ohio State, Summers created the Hand-Cranked Hologram, a mashup of a Victrola record player, a computer, and an acrylic pyramid. When viewers (users?) turn the handle, a 3D video Summers recorded plays. The Hand-Cranked Hologram is the inevitable outgrowth of his personality: "I'm a visual artist by nature with a passion to push the envelope on how we use new media tools within the creative and educational process."
When Summers isn't creating new media sculptures and installations, he can be found in the Department of Dance fulfilling many roles: "I handle all of the department's documentation like videos and photographs that are so important to dance because it’s a time-based medium. I also work on the HoloLens and other augmented and virtual reality tools as creative and pedagogical mediums, and assist with other creative technology projects."
This means that on any single day, Summers may record a performance, help instructors find images in the large dance archive he manages, and give visual arts/aesthetic input into projects. He usually works inside the Department of Dance but branches out to other areas in ASC, like the newly created lightboard studio in Hopkins Hall.
If you need someone to help with your technology, request help from ASCTech and maybe you'll email or talk to Chris Summers.
