*This dream is a post-project artifact, courtesy of Emily Steinberger.

Jason Webb
A portrait of Jason Webb taken inside Bird Library’s Digital Scholarship Space. Being immersed in technology is his happy place, he said, and in the Digital Scholarship Space, he has the resources to work on all different types of Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality projects.

“My American dream is to continue to grow and educate myself to, again, keep my family safe, and help them grow and educate themselves. That’s always been my biggest thing: make sure my daughters are well rounded, nice people.

And my, you know, my oldest daughter, I’m very proud of. She’s graduating from aerospace program at Clarkson this semester. She graduated high school in three years and college and three years, and through it all, she’s one of the nicest people that you’ll meet.

I’m very proud of her academically and I love that she’s pushing herself in her education, academics. But she’s also always been a nice person. And that’s that for me, it’s amazing. And my nine year old, just the nicest person in the world, will do anything for anybody. So that just that right there is a dream come true.

Jason Webb
Jason holds a pair of VR glasses in Bird Library. The technology he uses, he said, is the driving force pushing him to be more creative and a better storyteller.

I’m technologist at heart. I love playing with technology and exploring and telling stories using new technology in different ways. I teach a 3D animation and visual effects class where I teach my students how to animate and create life from nothing and have that life tell stories, whether it’s an inanimate cube or an avatar that they create. We use them to tell stories in different ways.

So technology always seems to be the thing I gravitate towards when I want to be creative, when I want to explore, when I want to educate. I’ve always kind of gravitated towards that and always had fun, just trying new things. … The technology that I use has been what’s helped spur me and push me forward to do more things and be more creative and be a better storyteller.

Jason Webb
While working on his Ph.D. dissertation in the Digital Scholarship Space within Bird Library, Jason poses for a portrait. His project focuses on how people learn in Virtual Reality spaces.

I’ve had a lot of privileges over my lifespan and I can safely move through spaces because of being a white cis male. I have a daughter, my oldest daughter is female but she’s in LGBTQ community – she’s bisexual – and I’ve seen the struggle she’s had and the way that people address her in public with me next to her.

Those are the things that bring very quickly to light the advantages I’ve had moving through a lot of these spaces. I have Middle Eastern descent, but just looking at me like right now in the wintertime, I’m whiter than the next white person.

But during the summertime, I get very dark and you know, it does show but I can very easily just code switch, you know, nobody even thinks of wiser that I have that is background. … But I know growing up like with an Irish English last name and a very generic first name … I fit the majority in every step of the way.

Over the years coming to terms with that, and understanding that and identifying that, especially going through this Ph.D. program, being able to identify that in the groups and communities that I became a part of, that was very eye opening, and helped me realize what I need to do to help others, especially my daughters, as you move through these spaces.”