Stephen Black is a writer/photographer/visual artist/ AR expert, and filmmaker.
Stephen Black has been fortunate to explore life from many viewpoints. He has produced, written and/or directed for companies like Cartoon Network, CNN, Fuji TV, Fox and France 2, as well as collaborated with hundreds of musicians, dancers, artists, and poets. He immersed himself in the world of butoh in Tokyo, documented the performance art world of Singapore, and traveled throughout Southeast Asia to research the culinary heritage of Southeast Asia. He began his creative life in the art/music scene of the Lower East Side of New York. With Amith Narayan he co-founded 3how, an improvisational theatre/music collaborative that released one album (The Riverwalk Session) and performed at several festivals. SPOKEN (2015), a virtual gallery collaboration with Eugene Soh, highlighted works from a great variety of artists, including Stelarc, Yasumasa Morimura, Arleen Schloss, David Severn, Kembra Pfahler, Godwin Koay, Dan Lacey, Hans Lagner, Vincent Leow, Christophe Charles, Paul Dodd and the Icelandic poet Sjon. With a BFA in Photographic Illustration from the Rochester Institute of Technology, Stephen has had photographic and video works exhibited worldwide. He contributed visual ideas and text to Michael Lee’s Office Orchitect installation at the 2011 Singapore Biennale. Stephen is also well experienced with 3D game making, spatial computing, virtual reality and augmented reality. With Sayuri Okayama, he co-developed Bubiko Foodtour, “the finest chef in all of AR”. Ongoing collaborations with cutting edge AR companies like Novaby, Flamingo Filters, Scandy, Tranzient and others, continue to propel Bubiko towards her dream of appearing in AR-based movies. A book project, Bubiko Foodtour’s Unusual Guide to Augmented Reality, is the result of years of research, experimentation and making presentations at venues such as MIT(2x), the Altimetrik (in Detroit), 105 Hong Kong PolyU, TechCrunch Shenzhen; and cities such as Paris, Munich, Washington DC and London. Stephen’s 360VR film, Beach Road, was featured at festivals in Singapore, Brisbane and Las Vegas. His triple themed presentation about AR, Bubiko and GeoPose was part of VIEW in 2020. VIEW is an annual conference on computer graphics, known for showcasing the technical side of movies like Star Wars, Spiderman and The Incredibles. The son of a book salesman, Stephen was born in Toledo, Ohio. He wrote for the high school newspaper, then magazines, and began writing books in 2007. Stephen established Book Merah to function as an incubator, for his own books, as well as those of others.