Lachman - Bio Richard Lachman is an Assistant Professor, Digital Media in the School of Radio and Television Arts at Ryerson University, and a Technology and Creative Consultant for entertainment and software-development projects. A Gemini-award-winning member of the Canadian new media scene, Richard has worked on some of the highest-profile Canadian interactive and convergent-media projects in the industry. Richard is a computer-science graduate of MIT, and holds a masters degree from the MIT Media Lab’s “Interactive Cinema” group. While at the Media Lab, he worked on networked collaborative entertainment environments and ambient/character-based interfaces, and has published and presented his work in Canada, Japan, Australia, Europe, and across the US. In 1994 he worked on “Lurker”, one of the first multi-user narrative experiences to use email, digital video and the fledgling World Wide Web, which made the cover of American Cinematographer magazine.

Following his time at MIT, Richard developed highly-interactive and emotionally-evocative Artificial Life characters with San Francisco-based company PF Magic. After an acquisition by Mattel, Richard served as Lead Designer and Lead Engineer for the Petz line (“Dogz” and “Catz”), with over 3 million units shipped worldwide. The Petz series of CD-ROM software received awards from ID Magazine, Communications Arts, and Invision Children’s Entertainment, and has been featured in the New York Times, USA Today and Time Magazine. It was also part of an exhibition at the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York.

Richard returned to his home in Canada to work as a consultant on interactive entertainment projects, ranging from interactive television to hardware entertainment-devices to video games. He won a 2008 Gemini Award for Best Cross-Platform Project as Producer and Creative Lead, Interactive of The Mars Project with the Discovery Channel Canada, Galafilm and QuickPlay Media. The project is a major initiative featuring 10 hours of television, plus gaming, online community-activities, ITV, mobile content, books and an internationally touring museum exhibition. Richard is also co-producer and Principal Investigator with Diamond Road Online, which won the 2008 Canadian New Media Award in the New and Information category. DRO is an experimental enhancement to the documentary process; the software-recomendation system allows users to experience, combine, and rework documentary content to produce their own version of stories about the international diamond trade. The process is guided by an intelligent recommendation software engine that connects themes and user-interaction across a database of rich-media content in real-time. The engine as well as processes for creating and directing interactive media-exploration is the subject of his active research at Ryerson University.

Lachman also served as Tech Lead and part of the creative team on the Gemini-award winning “Degrassi.tv” project with Snap Media, Epitome Pictures and CTV. Degrassi boasts a vibrant community of 600,000 users who have collectively posted some 3 million message-board posts to the site. In the past, he has also served as Technical Director for the CNMA-nominated “Be The Creature” ITV project with Decode Entertainment and Videotron Quebec; Technical Director for the Interactive Genie Awards ITV/Web project with Xenophile Media; and Technical Director for “Code Zebra” with Sara Diamond at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Richard teaches and researches as an Assistant Professor in the School of Radio and Television Arts at Ryerson University. He has taught interaction design at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD), has appeared as a technology commentator on TalkTV and at various new-media conferences, and his interactive artwork has shown at the Next Door Gallery (Toronto), Outpost 42 (Toronto) and the Burning Man Festival (Nevada).