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Vol. 89, No. 3 2013 BY Alumni Publications IMAGE BY Dominic Flask August 30, 2013

Left Brain, Meet Right BrainMixing creative passion and logical thinking

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Pop psychology has long positedthat people can be divided intotwo camps,those whoare left-brained (logical and focused) and those who are right-brained (creative andopen-minded).

Viewing the world through that lens, Georgia Tech appears to be an unambiguouslyleft-brained institutiona university renowned for its engineering, math and scienceprograms, with no fine arts curriculum. But Techs alumni long have been making amajor impact in the right-brained realms of arts, creative writing, film, video games,music and design. Ask them about their experience at Georgia Tech, and they describeit as a great help, not a hindrance, in pursuing careers in those fields.

Take Susan Bonds. She came to Tech having been inspired by the Apollo moonlanding, both as a triumph of technology and as a triumphant story for humankind.Bonds, IE 84, loved engineering, but also adored fantasy series like LordoftheRingsand TheChroniclesofPrydain. While a student, she spent seven quarters as a co-op

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with Walt Disney World in Orlando, whereshe worked on the construction of Epcotthrough its opening in 1982. The projectcombined engineering hurdles with artisticchallengesimagining an immersiveexperience and then finding the engineeringand technological solutions to create it.

Bonds went on to become a DisneyImagineer, working on the Alien Encounters,Indiana Jones Adventure and Mission: Space rides. I looked at what really makesentertainment work, Bonds said. How do we immerse people in a story?

Later, she worked for Cyan Worlds, creator of the video game Myst. And then, in2003, she started 42 Entertainment, a marketing company behind several successfulviral campaigns, including the Why so serious? promotion for TheDarkKnightfilm. While this is far from what she studied at Tech, Bonds said her education pushedher to constantly analyze and write, and those skills have been critical to her success.

And while she doesnt draw or paint or play music, Bonds does consider herself anartist. I didnt know how creative I was until I was given the opportunity to expressit, she said. And there is a tremendous amount of creativity in engineeringdisciplines.

Over the past decade, the arts connection atTech has become more prominent, includingthe establishment of the Center for MusicTechnology. That has drawn arts-mindedpeople like Andrew Colella, an accomplishedviolist who chose Tech to pursue a mastersdegree. Its not quite where I expected toland, he said, but it turned out to be great.

Colella, MS MT 11, focused on computerprogramming while at Tech and hoped to find a career in the video game industry. Hespent most of his time around architects and programmers, not musicians. Butcreativity was still ever-present. Everybody is making something, Colella said ofTech. Programmers are heavily math oriented, but theyre still very creative. Werenot just spinning numbers and solving equations.

Tech challenges students to not just study but to build and create, Colella said. Whilea student, he played with the Georgia Tech orchestra, and a connection through thatorganization put him in touch with the musician Janelle Monae, who was in desperateneed of a violist to join her tour.

Soon, Colella was winging around the globe, playing at the Coachella festival and theNobel Peace Prize concert in Oslo. I cant imagine anything like it, any professionthat takes you to these places, and you get to meet these kinds of people, he said. Its30 people on a bus or running through a foreign airport, trying to pack gear on aplane at 6 a.m. after playing until 2 a.m. The highs are extremely high; the lows arepretty deep.

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When hes not on tour or working as a programmer for a finance company, Colellafinds time to write music, a task he describes as finding an interplay between twodisparate things, spinning them out into something bigger, teasing them into a newdirection, merging math and artuniting the left and right halves of his brain,metaphorically speaking.

Here, we introduce you to just a handful of the many alumni who, like Colella andBonds, are making noise in creative fields. VanJensen

Film

Before Julian Adams shared a submarineOK, fine, a submarine moviewith Ed Harrisand David Duchovny, he was a film-obsessedWreck. I always had a love for movies and aninterest in filmmaking, but I wasnt sure howto go about finding my way into a profession,he says.

I knew Georgia Tech had one of the finestschools of architecture. I had always lovedAtlanta and felt a connection to the city. As I made my way through architectureschool, I began to investigate local independent filmmaking. While working for aSouth Carolina architecture and interior design firm, Adams, M Arch 98, tinkeredwith filmmaking on the weekends. Eventually he teamed up with his father to makeTheLastConfederate, a small-but-well-received (it won several awards during itsfilm-festival run) movie about his family during the Civil War. In the years it took tocreate it, Adams met and worked with a great deal of people, including ToddRobinson, an Emmy Award-winning director who would become his producingpartner. The pair eventually made Phantom, a Russian-submarine thriller that hittheaters in March and is available on DVD. Adams is currently producing and starringin Robinsons next feature, TheLastFullMeasure, which stars Morgan Freeman andRobert Duvall, and is slated for a 2014 release. Its a lot of work, but Tech preparedhim for the long hours. I have very fond memories of my time there, Adams says.Even though they almost worked me into an early grave.

Osahon Tongo, Mgt 10, can relate. The 24-year-old Naperville, Ill., native playedlinebacker and defensive end for Georgia Tech but now is an MFA student infilmmaking at USC. Doing the Georgia Tech campus movie festival in 2008 and 2009helped ignite his passion for film, but visiting a fraternity brother who attended USClaw school after Tech sealed the deal. Tongo now spends nearly every waking hourwriting scripts, critiquing fellow students films, attending production meetings, andworking with lights, cameras and plenty of action.

I feel really blessed that every day I am working toward literally making dreams thatwere written down on a piece of paper turn into reality, Tongo says. At the end ofthe day, youre exhausted, but working in the business of make-believe never getsold. AustinL.Ray

Music

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0011104/

If it wasnt for Georgia Tech, Julienne Kungnever wouldve worked with Rick Ross. Theconnection came through a classmate andfellow member of the Georgia Tech SymphonyOrchestra, and Kung, EE 11, ended up playingviola on the Miami rappers 2010criticallyacclaimed album, TeflonDon.

As a child, Kung frequently told friends andrelatives, I want to be a builder. True to herword, she now splits her time between engineering and music endeavors. Spendingher weekdays as a quality assurance engineer at Applied Global Technologies inKennesaw, Ga., and her evenings and weekends performing at weddings, rehearsingand teaching others, Kungwho also plays cellolooks back warmly on her time atTech. My memories become sweeter as time passes, she said. I am excited for thosestudents who mightve gained valuable knowledge and life experience while in schooland have yet to reap the benefits of graduating. They have so much in store for themin their future.

Pat Alger, Cls 69, chose Tech because it wascheaper than Auburn, and he was going tohave to pay for it myself. He showed up witha suitcase and a guitar, enrolled in thearchitecture program, even though he didnteven know what architecture was, andquickly started meeting fellow bohemianneo-hippies with whom he could spendmore time playing our guitars thanstudying.

During his second year, he started performing at folk-rock venues, and thats wherehis true passion took hold. Going up at various clubs fulfilled him creatively, but ittook a toll on him academically. I realized I should drop Georgia Tech before theydropped me, Alger says. At the end of my sophomore year, I was gone.

Alger toured the world with The Woodstock Mountains Revue, Artie Traum and as asolo artist. He recorded albums for labels including Rounder, Sugar Hill and Capitol.Finally, he ended up in Nashville as a professional songwriter, penning tunes recordedby the Everly Brothers, Dolly Parton, Nanci Griffith and Garth Brooks. Most recently,he co-wrote the title song for GoodRoadtoFollow, the ongoing digital-single seriesfrom John Oates of Hall & Oates. Inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall ofFame in 2010 and the Georgia Music Hall of Fame this year, Algers thankful for hisbrief Tech tenure. It was an incubator for my fledgling talent, he says. Although Iwas academically a mediocre student, I did well in all my creative classes. I remembervery well my drawing teacher John Hardy inspiring me to follow my dreams. ALR

VideoGames

http://www.nashvillesongwritersfoundation.com/a-c/pat-alger.aspxhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teflon_Don_(album)

Kurt Margenau, CM 07, chose his career pathfor a simple reason: I always knew videogames were the coolest thing ever. Aftermaking his own Flash side-scrolling shootergame while in high school, Margenau enrolledat Tech based on the reputation of itscomputer science program. I didnt reallyknow how to program, so I figured I shouldprobably learn, he said.

After switching his major to computational media, Margenau interned at gaminggiant EA Tiburon, worked as a programmer at a web startup and finally landed at asmall gaming studio in Austin, Texas, working with a Tech roommate. He worked onGhostbusters:TheVideogame for the Wii, and then a call came out of the blue to joinNaughty Dog, an L.A.-based studio behind Uncharted and other top games.

While much of his work is technical, the process of building a game offers an artisticchallenge, particularly at the conceptual stages. Its the most freely creative timethere is, and its really important to have a time set aside to just think really hardabout the game you want to make, he said. Ill come up with a crazy set piece idea,maybe a crashing plane that you are having a shootout in, and just start making it.

And that abilityto merge engineering and storytellingdeveloped at Tech. Techwas the perfect place for me, Margenau said. When trying to create an emotionalimpact through gameplay, I have to stretch deep into both halves of my brain to makeit happen, and Tech trained me for that.

Holden Link, CM 11, shared that experience.He knew he wanted to make video gamesfrom age 5. I guess I havent really grown upsince, he said. At Tech, some professorswould allow students to turn in homemadegames instead of papers or presentations.

He also credits the alumni network withboosting his career. He joined the GeorgiaTech Los Angeles Network, which includesdozens of members, several of them working in the video game industry. Thoseconnections helped Link land a job as a producer at Magic Pixel Games, where herecently oversaw a iOS game, SticktoIt, that was inspired by Links senior designproject.

Were still finding new things to do with games as entertainment, Link said, andwere only beginning to scratch the surface of what games can be as art. VJ

VisualArt

http://gtalumni.org/pages/networks

As a PhD student at Tech, Amy K. Flattensuddenly realized she liked abstract art. It beganas a search to find attractive posters to decorateher apartment walls and then, over the pastdecade, evolved into an urge to create art of herown.

Flatten, MS ESM 86, PhD ESM 93, took anabstract art class as a summer diversion and hasbeen painting ever since, building it into a sidecareer as she works full time as director ofinternational affairs for the American PhysicalSociety. The two endeavors offer a nice balance,and they overlap more often than she expected.

One day in art class, I noticed how often my art teacher also used the term problem-solving. That commonality with my science studies really struck me, Flatten said.When beginning an abstract piece, I often start with a terrible mess of lines andblotches. I have to analyze the piece and find a way out of the mess by creating abalance of line, shape and color. It really draws upon my analytic nature.

Rosa Younessi, EE 05, on the otherhand, grew up in the arts. Her father,GH, is an internationally knownartist, and she grew up watching himin the studio. At Tech, Younessiorganized a group of studentpainters who met on Friday nights.

Tech was a great starting point todiscover, learn and create, she said. You build a foundation, discover new thingsabout yourself, and you learn new skills.

For Keith Prossick, Arch 93, art offers a similar structure to his background inarchitecture. After struggling to find work during the recession, Prossick becameinterested in mandalas, the spiritual symbols in Hinduism and Buddhism. Prossickhad been interested in art, and he began to paint mandalas.

It gave me the perspective of seeing astructure on all levels as a unified whole, hesaid. Mandalas are depictions of thearchitectural floor plans of the multi-dimensional palaces of deities. The patternsand structures were used to bring a sense oforder and understanding to philosophical andspiritual beliefs.

http://amyflatten.com/home.htmlhttp://kprossick.wix.com/keithprossick

As he has moved fully into a career as anartist, Prossick has found the creative life tobe a perfect marriage of his logical and artisticsides. I visualize the designer perspective asbeing the left eye, and the artistic one, theright, he said. Together they bring myimagination into focus, ultimately pushing theartist in me up into the clouds while thedesigner in me finds stability with its feetlogically standing on the ground. VJ

VisualEffects

Dave Lo, CS 00, grew up in Atlanta watchingcartoons and trying toredraw them. By thetime he was ready to choose a university,computer-aided visual effects had come todominate Hollywood, and Georgia Tech wasan easy choice.

Lo also picked up an art degree from theAcademy of Art University then ventured toLos Angeles with both technical and artisticskills.

Lo has since worked on films including Transformers and the Oscar-winning Rango.As a child in the 1980s, Transformers was one of my favorite cartoons and toys, Losaid. Getting to work at Industrial Light and Magic and blow up robots and buildingsfor a job [was a] childhood dream come true.

Tech has a strong presence in the industry, with alumni working for SonyImageworks, Pixar and ILM, among others. Lo recently completed a contract withWalt Disney Animation Studios and is taking time off to build web and mobileapplications, but hes eager to jump back into moviemaking. VJ

Writing

Bruce McEver has ensured that future GeorgiaTech students with love for engineering and poetry,two seemingly disparate interests, wont have tochoose one or the other like he had to.

When I was a student at Georgia Tech, it was acultural wasteland, said McEver, IE 66, who wenton to be chairman of Berkshire Capital Securities.He also went on to write three chapbooks and twofull-length poetry collections, the latest of which,ScaringuptheMorning, came out this spring.

In 2009, he created the McEver Chair in Poetry atGeorgia Tech, a program that brings a rotating slate of poets to campus to let students

study writing. Its a great program not only for Georgia Tech, McEver said, but alsofor the whole writing community around Atlanta. He writes when he can, he said,and spends time with other writers in New York. For the past 40 years, I have beenworking with some of the greatest writers in the world here. They inspire me.

Terry J. Benton, IE 07, spends his days working inindustrial engineering and the rest of his timewriting about his own imaginary world. Bentonsfirst novel, PreludetoanEmpire, came out inOctober 2012. Its the first in a planned trilogy. Asa kid, I loved to read, particularly fantasy, Bentonsaid. I love getting lost in different worlds.

The second book in the series comes out this fall,and Benton is also working on a series of youngadult novels called ShadowChronicles. Benton saidpeople are amazed that he can manage to work fulltime, go to schoolhe just earned an MBAandturn out novels. I enjoy writing so much, its not like work to me, he said.Someday, my dream is to have my books turned into movies. SarahBakerHansen

Design

Karl Backus, Arch 79,was alwaysinterested in urban environmentsand the architecture that fills them.That was what drew him to GeorgiaTech.

I wasnt familiar with theprograms, said Backus, whose firm,Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, received a lifetime achievement award from ArchitecturalRecord and the American Architectural Foundation for its work on designing Applestores and Pixars studios, among other projects. It was that I wanted to be immersedin architecture, and the environment let me do that.

Techs mixing of art programs, technology and design in the curriculum and thechance to study abroad in Paris appealed to Backus.

http://www.bcj.com/

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All those influences come together, he said. They are all part of what it takes tobecome a good architect.

Pam Walz never would have become a costume designer had it not been for her twokids. They regularly appeared in church pageants and plays, and they werent the onlykids who needed costumes. I was one of the few moms who could sew, Walz said.What once was a side project for Walz, IM 82, is now her full-time job. She hascreated pint-size costumes for many musicals, plays and other performances starringyoung people. My favorite part is just after the point when the kids have learned theirlines and the music and they get into their costumes for the first time, she said. Itreally lifts up their performances and their professionalism increases tangibly.

Walz also works with high school students to create art and design portfolios forcollege applications. She got into it after her daughter needed help creating one, andrealized other kids might, too. She created a company, Art Scholars Educational, tooffer assistance. SBH

3 Responses to Left Brain, Meet Right Brain

MaryAxford says:September 4, 2013 at 11:16 am

Another GT alum who fits into this category is Anthony Francis, who got his PhD in artificialintelligence here at Tech and has now written two books in his fantasy series about a magicaltattoo artist. The books are Frost Moon and Blood Rock. They are set in an alternate Atlanta,and I enjoyed both of them very much. The library was lucky enough to have Anthony give atalk around this time in 2011, and the guide we created for the event is still available http://libguides.gatech.edu/frostmoon.Reply

BarbTownsend says:September 4, 2013 at 7:47 pm

What about foreign language skills?Reply

MarkMcFarland says:September 5, 2013 at 12:10 pm

Clearly I am left-brained and this article reminded me of an experience when I first cameto Ga Tech. I started as an Arch major, alas my only artistic talent was drafting. In one classwe were told our assignment was, and I quote space is lighter than orange. So I raised myhand and using my left-brain asked simply what does that mean; I am not clear on theassignment. In my mid-term feedback I was told you have a bad attitude. Happy ending I subsequently left Arch and was a cum laude graduate in Engineering and have had asuccessful career. McReply

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In the World

A Passion for the PerfectCup of Coffee

Coca-Cola FreestylesWinning Formula

An Engineer Returns toHis Restaurant Roots

Dollars and Sense: LeslieZinn

At Issue: What AboutClimate Change?

Building a Gas PipelineHalfway Across theWorld

Creating a New Foodfrom Scratch

Dollars & Sense: KenMuncy

Flagging Down HisSoccer Dreams

Making Movie-Set Magic

On The Field

Fueling Techs Student-Athletes

Matt Kuchar: Mr.Consistency

Passing Grade

Learning the Game

Its Important That WeSet Our Sights High

Office Space

Making Movie-Set Magic

Running a Tight Ship

The Lizard King

Head in the Books

Office Space: Al Merrill,Corn Star

Alumni House

Young and Restless

Publishers Letter: Food(and Drink) for Thought

Irelands Forty Shadesof Green

Publishers Letter: TechsCrucial Role in the Futureof Energy

Publishers Letter: AtTech, Good DesignMeans Solving Problems

Tech History

Fraternity Brothers inArms

The Hounds of Techwood Drive

A Yellow Jackets ManCave

Before the Wreck wasthe Wreck

Sparked to Life

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