Ralph Vituccio

Biography

Ralph Vituccio is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), as well as teaching in the IDeATe and the English Departments at CMU. At the ETC, Ralph lead a number of award-winning student interactive projects dealing with social issues such as an interactive graphic novel addressing sexual assault on college campus and a Virtual Reality interactive experience exploring racial profiling which was presented at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival.

As an independent artist, Vituccio has received numerous grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Mid-Atlantic Region Media Arts Fellowship Program and the National Endowment for the Arts. His documentary, "PERFORMANCE: The Living Art", won an Artist Distinction Award at the 1990 Berlin International Film Festival and has aired nationally on several PBS stations and internationally in several countries. Another documentary, "When The Video Came", considers the early formation of video as an art form and profiles many of the original pioneers in the field and has been shown internationally.

His 2010 documentary, “IN SERVICE: Iraq to Pittsburgh”, explored a different facet of the Iraq War as seen through the eyes of local soldiers, government officials and journalists. The film weaves war footage shot by soldiers themselves, interviews, and still photography into a cohesive narrative on the human cost of war.

Ralph’s film, “SHIPBREAKERS”, (2014), takes place on the beaches of Alang, India where over 300 supertankers and cruise ships are run aground and torn apart by hand by thousands of impoverished workers. "Shipbreakers”, won The Best Feature Documentary Award at the Global International Film Festival in San Francisco. It was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Madrid and Lucerne International Film Festivals and won the Best Editing Award at the Global Film Festival of Boston.

In 2015, Vituccio and Andres Tapia-Urzua presented their interactive video art installation, “El Oraculo Caracol”, at the Havana International Biennale in Cuba.

Vituccio has received several academic Simon ProSEED grants with Martha Harty for their interactive educational series teaching collaborative skills training and conflict mediation skills. The modules are currently being used in the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) across campus.

Vituccio has produced and directed several interactive VR and i-docs on the Holocaust as well as on the Haenyeo, the women free-divers of Korea. His current work in Virtual Reality and interactive documentary have won a 2018 Google-Tribeca grant and as well as showing in numerous festivals. Haenyeo, Virtual Reality, won best VR at the VRE festival in Rome. Italy.

Haenyeo, his short documentary, has recently been an official selection in several film festivals including Docs Without Borders, Paris Ethnographic Film festival, Rome DOC festival, Rome Prism awards, and Pgh Shorts film festival among others.

Ralph has presented at South-By-South-West, SIGGRAPH, i-Docs Symposium, Games for Change, Tribeca Film Festival and many more.