We recently connected with Matt Bell and have shared our conversation below.

Matt, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

Back before I really started doing anything creative professionally, I was working as a software developer from this advertising company called VML. I had graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute a number of years prior. One day I saw a video of this crazy machine that would print images in sheets of falling water. I thought it was amazing. Back in college I had dabbled in incorporating electronics into my art, so I thought, how hard could it be and decided to have a go at it. Now, I should mention that the machine I had seen was huge. Something like 15-20′ tall. I decided this was a little impractical for me to pull off directly so I decided to flip the idea over and instead of having water fall through the air, I would have air float up through water. I set about making a little desktop sized machine, and it went well. I made a few prototypes and before too long I had this loud clicking machine that could print letters into water well enough to read. I was proud of my creation so I took it to the office to show my coworkers. I had this thing on my desk printing at random letters when one of the creative leads from the Gatorade team walked by and exclaimed that I should make a giant one for the Gatorade exhibit at the Super Bowl. Well, let me tell you, that was an exciting proposition. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons it did not work out for my first creation to end up at the Super Bowl, but it did end up helping me meet people higher up in the company, and eventually allowed me to start and grow an Innovation Lab inside the company. It was a dream job. They built me a fancy glass room where I could experiment with creative uses of technology. Everything from 3d printing, and virtual reality, to brain scanners, and golden Baconators for Wendys. Which end led me down the path of becoming a freelance creative technologist. Since then, I have had the opportunities to do a projection mapping project at the Met in New York, a beautiful cg short film for a smell artist in China, and worked with people at Dreamworks to bring a How to Train Your Drago virtual reality experience to life. That loud clicking bubble printer was the start of it all for me, so I always look back at it fondly

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I think of myself in many terms. Sometimes, I am Chief Technology Officer of the virtual reality education company I founded during the pandemic. Sometimes, I am artist creating animations of weird simulations, or welding together giant metal sculptures. Other times I am a freelance creative technologist talking clients through why we can project map the Met in New York but we can’t projection map the sun into looking like a giant branded orange for orange juice company. Sometimes I am just a guy that sitting in chair cruising around the sky flying my paramotor (that’s the thing where you have a parachute above you and a giant fan on your back)

I try not to be one thing. I am constantly exploring, trying to find new exciting skills.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I have the normal spread of social media outlets between YouTube, Instagram, ArtStation, etc, and I have a habit of not really checking the private messages very often, but one day after some corporate restructuring I found my lab shut down, and myself discretely ushered out the side door, and suddenly I had some time to catch up on things. So I am looking through my messages and run across one from a producer out of LA who is working at a virtual reality startup and how it would be really great to work together. Fast forward a bit and I find myself walking into a little shop just down the road from Venice Beach in LA where I met some brilliant people. We made some cool things for about a year before the pandemic hit and the company dissolved. It was really a shame because we were working on some fun stuff, but out of that dissolved company I met my business partners which allowed us to form our virtual reality education company

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding part of what I do is all the new areas I get to explore. In high school I felt like part of being a grown up was learning how to focus on doing one thing well. You were suppose to develop some skill and stop flitting about chasing every random thought that pops in your head. To be honest it sounded really boring. I think its fair to say, I never learned that lesson well. I have made a habit of falling down every rabbit hole I can find. I like to think that all these seemingly unrelated explorations allow me think very laterally and find ways to connect areas that others might not even be aware. I love that when I read sci-fi books now, I often find myself getting lost in speculation about how we could actually make some of the crazy stuff a reality       

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.intervrse.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/greengiant83
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/infamousbell
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-infamous-matt-bell/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/mattbell
• Other: https://www.artstation.com/greengiant83