Emil Polyak is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Digital Media. He received a master’s degree in Cross-Disciplinary Art and Design from the University of New South Wales in Australia. With background in 3D animation, interactive media, and digital arts, Polyak is actively exploring intersections of science, engineering and art. His work is focusing on research informed design practice with emerging and experimental creative technologies to expand disciplinary boundaries and to create meaningful experiences. The overarching goal of his scholarship is to reimagine creative practice with the possibilities and implications of computational creativity, and to find new connections between emerging digital trends and artistic approaches to tell stories. Polyak is interested in producing experiences that are emotionally impactful and present ideas in new and surprising ways as an interplay between machines and humans. He taught at the New York University in Singapore, at Media Design School in New Zealand, and at North Carolina State University.
Polyak has collaborated with engineers, scientists, and musicians on various projects that resulted in exhibitions, live performances, and in research. His work has been shown in museums, at festivals and conferences such as at ACM Siggraph, Smithsonian Institution, North Carolina Museum of Art, and the Museum for Contemporary Art and Design.
Polyak has recently completed the Immersive Scholar Creative Residency, funded by the NCSU Libraries and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and he was an artist member of the “Invisible Worlds” cohort by The Leading Strand.
Selected works, publications, and talks:
Games in Augmented Virtuality. Talk at the East Coast Game Conference 2019, Raleigh, NC.
E. Polyak, X. Zhang (2019) A Bioreactor in virtual reality and video games to enhance the learning experience in bioprocess labs, EDULEARN19, Palma, Spain.
E. Polyak, X. Zhang (2018) Incorporating an interactive 360 degree video game into a university-level biomanufacturing lab curriculum, International Journal of Management and Applied Science (IJMAS), vol. 5 no. 3.
E.Polyak, D. Papp (2018) Optimization for Radiotherapy, Accelerate Festival 2019, National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. and North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, 2018, Raleigh, NC.
O. Kleiankina, E.Polyak (2018) Our Passage to the Stars (Live performance), Accelerate Festival 2019, National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. and North Carolina Museum of Art, 2019, Raleigh, NC.
E. Polyak (2017) Mist DJ, Interactive art installation, Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh NC.
E. Polyak (2017) InLight Festival, Projection mapping in public space, Richmond VA.
E. Polyak (2017) Paper Town VR, Immersive Expressions WebVR exhibition, SIGGRAPH 2017, Anaheim, CA.
E. Polyak (2016) Word Wars, Interactive art installation, Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh NC.
E. Polyak (2016) Chirp, Science of the Unseen: Digital Art Perspectives, SIGGRAPH 2016, Anaheim, CA.
E. Polyak (2012) Virtual impersonation using interactive glove puppets, SIGGRAPH Asia 2012, Singapore.