Sandra Rodriguez, PhD, is a creative director, filmmaker and sociologist of new media technology. A Visiting Scholar at MIT, she leads and lectures CMS.339/839 HackingXR, MIT’s first class focused on immersive media production, alongside the Hacking XR Speaker Series (in collaboration with MIT ODL).
A leading voice in immersive media, Rodriguez’s work focuses on storytelling, human-centered design and non-fiction. She has directed award-winning docs (We Were There; The Enemy Within), interactive and web projects, and acts as UX consultant for public, private media, and game design studios. In 2015, she was writer and episode director on the Peabody awarded webseries DoNotTrack (Brett Gaylor, Upian, NFB, ARTE). She arrived at MIT as a SSHRC Research-Creation PostDoctoral Fellow (2015-2017), with her project Rewriting publics. She has published a book and papers on networked cultures, public engagement, social media for change and digital arts.
Rodriguez was recently Head of a new Creative Reality Lab at EyeSteelFilm (Montreal), where she explored VR/AR work through award-winning projects (best immersive IDFA Doc-Lab, best VR Dok Neuland-Leipzig, premiered in Sheffield, Open City Fest, World VR Forum, PhiCenter, nominations for a Canadian Screen Awards, Winner of the prestigious Golden Nica at Ars Electronica 2019). She has been a jury, speaker and mentor for multiple VR/AR events, including: Cannes Next, SXSW, Facebook/Oculus Edu, IDFA DocLab, Sundance New Frontier, Venice Film Fest, MIT Reality Virtually Hackathon, Mutek, FNC, IA arts, Frontieres IA, and more. In 2019, she became a spokes-person for the Montreal AI & Arts initiative.
While at OpenDocLab, Sandra has worked on various other projects including _ReWriting Publics, Big Picture VR, and Manic VR. Her most recent project, CHOMSKY VS CHOMSKY, explores the sparks that fly at the crossroad of Artificial Intelligence and human creativity.