Polymathic Pizza: A.I. at Play

Holly Willis is the Chair of the Media Arts + Practice Division in USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and Co-Director of the new Center for Generative AI and Society. She teaches classes on digital media, post-cinema and feminist film, and is the author of Fast Forward: The Future(s) of the Cinematic Arts and New Digital Cinema: Reinventing the Moving Image, as well of Björk Digital, and the editor of both The New Ecology of Things, a collection of essays about ubiquitous computing, and David O. Russell: Interviews. She is also the co-founder of Filmmaker Magazine dedicated to independent film; she served as editor of RES Magazine and co-curator of RESFEST, a festival of experimental media, for several years; and she writes frequently for diverse publications about experimental film, video and new media, while also exploring experimental nonfiction and poetry. Her work has appeared in publications such as Film Comment, Afterimage, Los Angeles Review of Books, Variety, River Teeth and carte blanche.

As a creative director for experiences and media campaigns, Carsten Becker has advised a diverse clientele of innovation brands, tech companies, non-profit organizations, and media outlets on impactful and tangible representations of ideas that provide dialog with audiences through engagement and interaction.

Leading teams at agencies across immersive storytelling, visual design, brand identity, film marketing, and sports, Becker gathered a vast amount of insights into the creative process. He has worn the hats of strategist, visual designer, technologist, pitch-maker, department head, problem solver, and studio owner.

At the USC Iovine and Young Academy, he has developed and is teaching undergrad and master-level courses exploring intersections of extended reality with a range of applications like productivity, collaboration, embodiment, health, the arts, and virtual fashion. In his courses, students also pursue new connections of technology with human expression and experience. With previous teaching assignments at art schools, Becker describes the difference in teaching at the Iovine and Young Academy in the natural tendency and capacity of IYA students to connect the human senses, curiosity, technology and purpose into new realms of innovation.

Becker’s professional credits include work for A24, Apple, Cirque du Soleil, Marvel, Meta, Netflix, Nike, and Snap, to name a few.