Jared Bendis

At Johns Hopkins, Jared Bendis is a lecturer for the MA in Cultural Heritage Management and MA in Museum Studies programs.

Bendis is an artist and teacher from Cleveland, Ohio, who specializes in game design, virtual and augmented reality, photography, and interactive and new media.

In addition to his role at Johns Hopkins, Bendis is chair of the Department of Game Design and an associate professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he teaches courses on tabletop game design, arcade game design, serious game design, and virtual and augmented reality, with an emphasis on the design of experiences. He is one of the faculty champions of CIA’s Interactive Media Lab.

Bendis is also an adjunct faculty member at Case Western Reserve University, where he teaches courses on virtual reality, game design, and new media literacy, and is CWRU’s creative new media officer. In that role, he serves as the senior expert for the Kelvin Smith Library, designing digital media strategies for content digitization, creation, and use. He also researches and develops new media applications for education and digital scholarship, weaving together cutting-edge technologies with proven, innovative pedagogical strategies to create rich media experiences.

Bendis is an installation artist, photographer, teacher, playwright, and filmmaker. As a visual artist, Bendis focuses on the way people see, augmenting their reality via technology and visual perception. As a photographer, he prefers to view the world through a wide-angle lens and specializes in spherical panoramic and stereoscopic photography. On his first trip overseas, in March 2000, Bendis visited the Chateau de Pierrefonds in France and became driven—if not obsessed—with capturing and sharing cultural and architectural experiences. He has photographed over 500 architectural, archeological, and cultural sites, primarily castles, in 15 countries. Bendis’ art practice also includes game design and creating immersive installations that provide interactive social and sensory experiences for viewers.

Bendis has extensive experience in the museum world digitizing collection materials from The Cleveland Museum of Art, where he served as the virtual reality specialist; The Cleveland Botanical Garden; The Western Reserve Historical Society; The Cleveland Natural History Museum; The Cleveland Zoo; The Cleveland Police Museum; The Musée des Beaux-Arts Dijon, in coordination with the French Regional American Museum Exchange; and the Isparta Museum in Turkey.

Bendis owns and is lead developer and designer for ATBOSH Media Limited, a publishing company that specializes in traditional print media, game design, web design, and app development for iOS and Android platforms.

He received a Bachelor of Arts in psychology, with minors in music and art studio, from CWRU and a Master of Art in art education from the CWRU and CIA joint program. He received his MFA in contemporary dance, with a focus in performance media, from CWRU.