Andrew Corpuz is a multiweaver, integrating and separating multiple strands of creative, design, and thought into consulting and artifacts that build meaning, immerse/engage, and shift how people think.

Andrew grew up playing competitive piano and in orchestras while pursuing intellectual, organizational, and technological curiosities. Andrew earned acceptance into USC’s prestigious Thornton School of Music that blends conservatory-style learning with broader academic interests. Andrew felt a bit limited by his trajectory in the music world as he knew it at the time; thus, Andrew left the music program, exploring different majors, eventually gaining enrollment into a pioneering new Interactive Entertainment program at USC’s top-ranked School of Cinematic Arts. Blending his gaming and creative media development background, Andrew created innovative games and other interactive technology experiences. He also further explored how games can be used to improve knowledge and global issue awareness.

Over the course of his career and personal life, Andrew has continued to build various creative and intellectual interests. For example, Andrew started creating and composing his own music after leaving the music program. He has also cultivated his more artistic side outside of music and interactive technology through film, photography, and digital art. He also did some early professional work in games, including quality assurance testing and serious game design for a non-profit organization.

Eventually, Andrew sought to further practical skills in media development, enrolling in a Master’s in instructional design. With such knowledge on how to enhance the audience experience through technology and design, he helped design online medical courses for UCSF and has more recently collaborated with faculty at Columbia University to co-lead and produce a variety of learning technology innovations, successfully improving learning outcomes for students.

Andrew took his experimentation with art, games, and music further through a doctoral program in art and art education at Teachers College in Columbia University. As the manager of a digital fabrication studio, Andrew blended learning design, administrative skills, and his classic penchant for exploration and experimentation to renovate a studio and integrate appropriate and fun use of digital fabrication technology with traditional three-dimensional materials, so that current and future studio guests would be encouraged to experiment with media in new ways that enlighten and enliven their voice. Andrew also successfully put on a co-gallery show with another artist, using a variety of digital and hybrid methods.

As a philosophically-oriented person who cares deeply about global welfare, Andrew also used his time in the doctoral program to explore the aesthetic role of interactive technology and its ability to engage with global issues. To do so, Andrew drew upon past learnings to conduct research into a wide interdisciplinary layering of topics including how games and simulations use systems, how people and professional futurists analyze and think about the world, the role of art and design in education, how people create and manifest viewpoints in media, and the aesthetic nature of games and other interactive experiences.

Andrew used his dissertation to create a knowledge-based framework that identified potential gaps in game design education, revealed through games’ potential to express systems complexity and designers’ viewpoints. Andrew was inspired by various research methodologies and further built on a novel research method, grounded ontology, to assess the relationship among industry, designers and their experience, and game design literature.

Andrew aims to push the boundaries of innovation, creative and systemic challenges, and thought in order to enhance output and well-being through global, organizational, and individual layers. Andrew continues to make music and remains open to other imaginative or playful endeavors that engage audiences or shift how people think about the world.