Benjamin Poynter
Title: Assistant Professor
Department: Digital Art & Design
Campus: Beijing
Area(s) of Expertise: Independent Videogames, 3D Animation and Art, Sculpture, Illustration, Video
Education Credentials: M.F.A.
Joined New York Tech: 2015
The mission is no longer escapism, but excavation. Benjamin Poynter is a practitioner of digital media and independent video games in the contemporary art world. At New York Tech in Beijing, he can be found lecturing about 3-D modeling and computer animation. Longful fantasies he has within his mind are at the labor of belonging in a world with concrete expectations of survival and political discussion. The game and video work he authors commonly dimensionalizes when propelled by a grasp for experimental narrative and storytelling methods. It is here, the necessities of the world are framed with an escapist’s lens. Fantasy twines into reality, and vice versa. Poynter’s existence and work explores how reality dissolves into a representation of its own being through the access of new media, imagination, and prosthetic capability. His work is project based, where entire bodies revolve around a single centrifuge [usually a game and/or narrative] and accompanying, role-playing philosophy. From such baggage as disorders surveying along the autism spectrum, he has begun to adopt in the digital context a modern 'allegory of the cave.' Poynter takes temporary snapshots of the 'default world' with his own eyes, only for those memories to be reinterpreted within through intensive, escapist visuals. The default world is a sociopolitical and unorthodox place which piques the childlike imagination of his pen. With arrays of coding and time-intensive development, the real world becomes his inner child’s plaything. Poynter’s Master of Fine Arts was attained at the University of Nevada and my Bachelor of Fine Arts was attained at the University of Oklahoma in the United States of America. Exhibitions and lectures have presided around the globe, including Sydney, Melbourne, Newcastle, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dubai, and more.
Recent Projects/Research
- Lumen Prize 2015 Global Exhibition Tour, Gallery Exhibition at JIN SPACE Gallery and Lecture at Shanghai Institute of Visual Art, Shanghai, China, 2015
- ISIS Arts, International Visual and Media Arts Residency, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, 2014
- IndieCade E3 Showcase, 19th Annual E3, Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA, 2013
- NOW’ 13, New Media Art NOW, Dark Horse Experiment Gallery, Melbourne, Australia, 2013
- UCLA Game Arts Festival, The Hammer Museum Courtyard, Los Angeles, CA, 2013
Publications
- Pots Weekly, The Indie Game That Challenges Power of Technology and the Culture of Production, Taipei City, Taiwan, 2012 http://www.pots.tw/node/11286
- Games for Change, Inside the Colorful Mind of a Man Banned from the App Store, 2012 http://www.gamesforchange.org/2012/10/banned-iphone-game-foxconn/
- ARTiculAction, Monthly Art Review, Benjamin Poynter, 2014 http://issuu.com/articulaction/docs/articulaction_art_-_may_2014_-_spec/40
Honors & Awards
- Nominee for Best Serious Game at 9th International Mobile Gaming Awards in San Francisco, CA, 2013
- Games for Change Festival 2014, EU Play Today, 1st Place Honor, New York City, New York, 2014
- 3 time GFSRC Grant Recipient, New York Institute of Technology, 2015
Courses Taught at New York Tech
- Advanced 3D Modeling and Animation, , ARTA 752
- Thesis Proposal (CG&A MFA), ARTC 851
- Digital Compositing and Special Effects, ARTE 801
- Multimedia Production Tools, DGIM 601
- 2D Design, ARTD 101
- 3D Modeling and Animation, ARTA 701
- Advanced Storyboarding, Character, Concept, ARTA 802
- 3D Design, ARTD 102
Contact Info
- bpoynter@nyit.edu
- www.benjaminpoynter.com
- Skype: benjipoynter