I am a fifth-year Informatics PhD student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, advised by Dr. Jenny Oyallon-Koloski (Associate Professor, College of Media).
My interdisciplinary Informatics research approach spans the history, theory, methods, and practice of serious games, immersive media, and videographic criticism.
In my RA position, I serve as Producer of the student-run university game stu/dio. In my TA positions, I lead discussion sections in film production and introductory game studies and design.
I run a speaker series at the VR Club on campus, hosting local and global Extended Reality (XR = VR/MR/AR) developers and researchers.
In my free time, I play games, play guitar and sing, practice yoga and endurance sport, go camping, and make small digital media projects.
The mv lab spatial trainer MR is a mixed reality research project developed by Robbie Sieczkowski under the supervision of his Informatics PhD advisor, Dr. Jenny Oyallon-Koloski, a Certified Movement Analyst in Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies. The goal of the app is to provide bodies an opportunity to incorporate Laban Movement Analysis information, such as movement scales, through interaction with a digital, spatial environment. The app guides users through a scaffolded experience with voiceover from Jenny Oyallon-Koloski as the subject matter expert. Initial app development was completed on a 2024 independent study supervised by Dr. Jenny Oyallon-Koloski in the mv lab environment, and the current version was upgraded to Unity 6 in the Game Studies and Design PLAYLab.
"A 360-degree experiment in deformation with The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)"
A 360° videographic essay about the camera as presence, or in other words, the camera as "being there." Through deformation and remix of two musical numbers from Jacques Demy's 1967 "The Young Girls of Rochefort", the wordless essay explores how a cinematographer's spatial choices map out our relationship with the three-dimensional space of a movie set in 2D.
"The movement visualization lab VR Tool Demonstration"
A 360° compilation of the mv lab VR tool's various scenes arranged for the 2021 UIUC Undergraduate Research Symposium. Dance data created by Sarah Marks Mininsohn and Kayt MacMaster.
