Erika Tsuchiya

Biography

Erika is a media producer and artist, with an extensive background in media arts in the context of higher education. At Rowan University in New Jersey, she developed and taught courses in film and TV production, new media, post-production, motion graphics, and immersive media.

While at Rowan, Erika initiated several cross-departmental art and technology projects with Academic Technology, Rowan Art Gallery, and the Digital Scholarship Center in the Campbell Library. Erika’s projects included a grant-awarded interactive projection mapping project in collaboration with Urban Geography, highlighting the gender gap in public art across campus. Her Immersive Media Production course received a grant for Teaching Innovation, where students produced an original show for the Edelman Planetarium in commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo moon landing. The film won first place in the Emerging Technology category at the 2020 National Broadcast Education Association Awards, as well as being official selection at several international full-dome film festivals including Macon Film Festival, Minsk International Full-dome festival, Dome Down Under in Melbourne, and Fulldome Festival Brno. It also received Best in Animation at the RTF Media Awards, 2020.

Erika studied and worked in London, UK, with a BA in Social Anthropology from SOAS, University of London, and an MA in Photography from London Metropolitan University. She then worked as Digital Media Manager for Musion, a high-end holographic projection company, where she managed artist projects for corporate, educational and entertainment clients such as the BBC, Samsung, Sony, and Saatchi & Saatchi.

As a producer and artist, Erika has led community media-based projects as Lead Teaching Artist for Eastern State Penitentiary’s Hidden Lives Illuminated, which was supported by Pew Center for Arts and Heritage and culminated as a large-scale public projection event showcasing 20 short animation films made by incarcerated men and women. She taught college-level animation and filmmaking at SCI Chester for men and Riverside Correctional for women. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Erika led P.O. Box 34, a writing program developed in partnership with Annenberg School for Communication at University of Pennsylvania, hiring undergraduate students to mentor incarcerated writers during the severe pandemic lockdowns and throughout the Black Lives Matter protests.

Her musical collaborations include Aux 88 on Puzzlebox Records in Detroit, MI, and currently as part of ALKA on VeryRecords, USA.