Melissa Painter heads MAP Lab. She has deep experience in narrative design, augmented and virtual reality, content strategy, interaction design, storytelling, both cinematic and live, and in leading large and small teams in creative collaboration. MAP is focused on the intersections of emergent technologies and human intent and on employing design to tackle challenges of today and the future.

Painter is an award-winning filmmaker and author. Her work has been featured at Sundance, New York Film Festival, Unity Vision Summit, Future of Storytelling, The Huntington Library, and Botanical Gardens, Siggraph, Cannes, CES, SXSW, on Microsoft Holo Lens, Magic Leap, Gear VR Oculus store, and Windows Mixed Reality. 

MAP’s strategic partners and funders include: Microsoft, lululemon, Nike, Clif Bar, NASA, Unity Technologies, Intel, Boeing, Oculus, AMD, HP, San Francisco Bay School, Technicolor, USC Center for Body Computing, and NVIDIA. 

Painter has been selected as a Fellow of both the Sundance Screenwriters Lab and Sundance Directors Lab, and as a mentor of Sundance’s New Frontiers Lab. She has directed three feature films, and over 150 short form documentaries focused on innovation, education, and social justice. Melissa holds a BA in Ancient Greek from Columbia University where she graduated summa cum laude and phi beta kappa, and an MFA in film from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.  

Chosen Interviews:

• David Bowie’s Heroes Inspires Quest into New Technologies at Sundance 2017
• Heroes // Shift

Creative Resources:

• http://opendoclab.mit.edu/
• https://nycmedialab.org/
• http://longnow.org/
• Poetry: The Poetry Foundation
• City Architecture + Mapping: http://rebeccasolnit.net/, https://www.spur.org/
• All of the LA Museums: https://hammer.ucla.edu/
• Jim Hodge: https://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/2014/jim-hodges-give-more-than-you-take/, http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/3d-double-vision
• Dancers: https://walkerart.org/calendar/2017/common-time, http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/merce-cunningham-clouds-and-screens
• Earth Artists/Light Artists: http://jamesturrell.com/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrGMkXukeEo
• Athletes: High School Basketball in LA, Track, Adventure Athletes
• Music: All