About — Jordan Halsey

Technology, form, simulation, patterns & images —

I'm a Los Angeles multimedia designer and video artist. I teach at USC's School of Cinematic Arts and direct the Ganek Immersive Studio — an incubator for VR, AR, XR, and immersive work.

I've made work for Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Walt Disney Studios. I was on the seminal Amon Tobin ISAM 2.0 tour, and I was the first person to put Lytro's lightfield camera into full production — visual effects and lightfields combined.

As a technical director I've run R&D with Google, The Foundry, The Getty, Qualcomm, and Intel — always the same question: where do technology, installation, and art meet?

Jordan Reece Halsey portrait — Jordan Reece Halsey

Film & Television

1994 · Set Design · Art Direction

First job: set designer on Fox's VR5, hired by production designer Nina Ruscio — drafting a union show as an art-department assistant. Then art director and construction coordinator on Crossworlds with Rutger Hauer.

It was my last physical-production job.

Digital Entertainment Network stage — D.E.N. main stage

"I decided I liked working on a computer much better."

JNCO Jeans

1995–97 · Graphic Design · Store Architecture

Hired as a graphic designer; ended up designing and overseeing construction of the Melrose flagship store — modeled and drafted entirely in FormZ, finished in Illustrator, permits pulled by hand at Building & Safety.

Budget constraint: there wasn't one. The store got a rear-projection video wall — unseen at the time — and cabinetry by a Romanian master carpenter, finished in automotive paint.

JNCO flagship store — The finished store — note the projection screen

JNCO store render — FormZ raytraced render

Tribe Design

1998–2001 · Concept Art · Stage Design

Visualizing stages for Bruce Rogers' Venice studio: Britney Spears' first concert at Disneyland's Tomorrowland, Hanson, Joni Mitchell — then Ricky Martin's world tour, Mariah Carey, and the Windows 2000 launch.

Madonna

2001 · Parallax Productions · Maya 2.0

My company, Parallax Productions, produced every CG animation in Madonna's "Thunderpuss Mega-Mix" video — four artists in Maya 2.0 and a rented render farm pushing serious frame counts for the era.

"This Is It"

2009 · Michael Jackson World Tour · Stimulated

One of four on-site video artists for Michael Jackson's world tour — Burbank, then the Forum every day, then Staples Center.

We were all at Staples Center the day he died. One of the most surreal days of my life.

Projection Mapping

2012 — Present · ISAM 2.0 → Diriyah → Shenzhen

From the seminal Amon Tobin ISAM 2.0 tour to 22 projectors at BlizzCon, to hundreds of projectors mapping a kilometer of the ancient city of Diriyah, Saudi Arabia.

Recently: supervising projection at the Getty, and mapping a 100-year-old grain silo in Shenzhen.

USC & Ganek

Present · Teaching · Research

Full-time Professor of Practice at USC's School of Cinematic Arts — teaching Projection Mapping, Houdini, and Unreal Engine.

Directing the Ganek Immersive Studio: VR, AR, XR, Apple Immersive Video, and whatever's next. Current focus: real-time development, generative design, and AI.

Publications

2025 · SMPTE Optimizing 180° Stereoscopic Cinematography for the Apple Vision Pro
SMPTE Media & Technology Summit — with Stanley Lin, Nathan Fairchild, Spencer Lin, Akaash Tumuluri & Scott Fisher, USC

2017 · SIGGRAPH Video for Virtual Reality
SIGGRAPH 2017 Course — with Christian Richardt, James Tompkin, Aaron Hertzmann, Jonathan Starck & Oliver Wang · doi:10.1145/3084873.3084894

2022 · Structure A New Visual Design Language for Biological Structures in a Cell
Structure 30(4), 485–497 · April 2022 — Singla, Burdsall, Cantrell, Halsey, McDowell, McGregor, Mittal, Stevens, Su, Thomopoulos, Vaillant, White, Zhang & Berman · patented methodology