Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

On the Job: Jeff Carpenter

When Jeff Carpenter was a theater major at Illinois State University, the aspiring actor dreamed of a career in Hollywood working with iconic directors in the entertainment industry. And that dream has come true, although it has been Carpenter’s behind-the-scenes work with videography and high-tech communications that has sparked collaboration with the producer Mikel Rouse and garnered attention at the annual conference of SIGGRAPH, an international association for professionals in the computer-graphics and interactive-programs industry. After changing his major from theater to broadcasting and graduating from ISU with a degree in mass communications in 1988, Carpenter directed evening newscasts and public affairs shows at WICD-TV, directed fund drives for WILL-TV and did free-lance work for other media, including ESPN and MTV Sports. He joined the National Center for Supercomputing Applications’ staff full time as a multimedia specialist in 1996. Carpenter recently revived his acting career by playing three roles in the Champaign-Urbana Theater Company’s Production of “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” He also is a member of the medieval re-enactment group, The Order of St. Sebastian, and has taken courses in makeup artistry.

Tell me about your job at NCSA.

I am very lucky to be involved in a variety of interesting projects. I do video production and streaming media for the center, and the Access Grid has become a large part of my work. It’s a collaborative environment that allows people in multiple locations to come together in real time. I call it videoconferencing on steroids. You can share your data, do presentations, and recently people have been exploring interactive artistic performances with people at multiple locations thousands of miles away. My co-producer at Boston University and I have worked together to enable several conferences on the Access Grid, including the annual Supercomputing Conference and the SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles at the end of July. The Access Grid was part of the emerging technologies showcase at SIGGRAPH.

What are other uses for the grid besides meetings?

Using the Access Grid as an interactive distributed performance space is just starting to be experimented with. Also courses are starting to be taught over the Access Grid. We have participated in computer programming classes with a teacher at the Ohio State University and students from across the country, Canada and the United Kingdom. I’ve also been involved in the Seedbed Initiative for Transdomain Creativity, which blends the arts and humanities with technology. I and others at the NCSA worked with faculty members from the School of Architecture, staff at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts and producer Mikel Rouse on his multimedia opera “The End of Cinematics,” which debuted on Sept. 17 at Krannert. We provided a lot of the visual components. I took Rouse’s movie and split it up onto six projected screens, removed various actors from scenes and created the digital backdrops for the live performance. The production is now on an international three-year tour. The experience was amazing; I really loved it. It was a chance to be creative and stretch my skills in a way that I hadn’t done before. It was very rewarding and was very well received, so I was happy to be part of that.

What kinds of projects are you working on right now?

I shot a lot of video of the NCSA building being built, and we’re putting together a promotional piece about NCSA to be shown in a kiosk. If a scientist needs visualizations or a video on their work for a presentation, or if a student needs a video resume of their work, I also do that.

What do you do in the Order of St. Sebastian?

We portray characters from the Year 1347 that we’ve created. St. Sebastian is the patron saint of archers, so our group portrays a group of bowmen. The persona I created is named Gryffydd Saer, ‘saer’ being Welsh for ‘carpenter,’ and he is the son of a carpenter, as I am. I’ve been learning about bow making and have made two bows that we use in encampments at renaissance fairs, such as the Jubilee Renaissance Faire at Peoria.

How long have you been working with the Champaign-Urbana Theater Company?

That was my first show with them. The dancing was a challenge. In high school and college, I was in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Oklahoma” and “Lone Star.”

 

Read Next

Health and medicine Life sciences Veterinary medicine Two men in a lab. The seated man holds a hologram projection of a brain.

Mutation increases enzyme in mouse brains linked to schizophrenia behaviors

Researchers found a key role for an enzyme regulating glycine in the brain while investigating a rare genetic mutation found in two patients with schizophrenia.

Honors A photo collage featuring all three Sloan Fellowship awardees.

Three Illinois professors named Sloan Research Fellows

Three Illinois scientists are among 126 recipients of the 2025 Sloan Research Fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. According to the foundation, the awardees represent “the very best of early-career science, embodying the creativity, ambition, and rigor that drive discovery forward.” This year’s Illinois recipients are chemistry professors Angad Mehta and Lisa Olshansky, and materials science and engineering professor Yingjie Zhang.

Life sciences Graphic with the title "42nd Insect Fear Film Festival" in a scary font and with a picture of a tarantula.

Insect Fear Film Festival to feature ‘hairy, scary’ tarantulas

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The 2025 Insect Fear Film Festival at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will feature “Tarantulas: Hairy, Scary Spiders” as its theme and a Hollywood bug wrangler who works with the 8-legged creatures as a special guest. The festival, which is hosted by the Entomology Graduate Student Association and is in its 42nd […]

Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

507 E. Green St
MC-426
Champaign, IL 61820

Email: stratcom@illinois.edu

Phone (217) 333-5010