Jack Ruddat – Introductory Portfolio

I have extensive experience with digital 3D modeling coming from AR2101 (3D Modeling I), AR 3101 (3D Modeling II), AR205X (3D Environmental Modeling), and ES 1310 (CAD – SolidWorks). I have also played the oboe in the past from 3rd grade until my sophomore year of high school. I currently still play the piano from time-to-time having taken lessons from age 8 until age 15. My musical interests tend to be more ordered towards the Renaissance and Baroque eras due to their mathematically-ordered styles and extensive use of multi-layered voices and strings. In terms of craft, I am a self-taught wood-worker and have carried out various personal projects such as the building of a wood lathe, tennis-ball-launching pneumatic air cannon, blacksmithing forge, d20-style board game, etc. I also have a passion for writing whether it be scientific or theological. I published an article through the Connecticut Woodlands Magazine titled Connecticut’s Oldest Living Thing and am current writing a paper on the remaining virgin woodlands in my home state of Connecticut. I have been studying Catholicism for the past 4+ years and have acquired a large set of notes which I have now organized for the purpose of eventually writting a statement of faith. For my major I am pursuing a B.S. in electrical and computer engineering, and so have experience programming microcontrollers (in C), FPGAs, wiring breadboards, and circuit theory. For example, in a previous ECE class we programmed our board to implement the Simon says game where successive random sequences of LEDs are flashed which the user needs to repeat in corresponding inputs from a keypad. The next project involved the implementation of the guitar hero game using the LCD display and LEDs. Furthermore, I once pursued creating a realistic lightsaber using PVC, sheet metal, polycarbonate piping, light-diffusing film, EL wire, high-powered LEDs, and LED strips.

               Light art has been an interest that I have not fully come to realize until reflecting upon it now. I have always found the interplay of shadows and light to be most interesting in photos, paintings, or digital environments, especially in complex settings such as a dense forest. The lightsaber, for example, is something I find to be most elegant; an art form in and of itself. The way in which I would summarize the merits of light art would be as sources of light in dark environments having the ability to illuminate or reveal the mystery surrounding it. This leads to a highly anticipated discovery and uncovering of previously darkness-hidden knowledge with mystery just beyond the fall-off of its boundary.

The humanities serve as medium in which I can share with others the glory of God through what I discovered in nature, people, or even myself. Just as past artisans have served to inspire the sciences by attempting to describe the beauty around them, so too do I seek to do the same in the lives of other people. I very much like the way Jordan Peterson describes them, “The mystics and the artists are the mediators that live in that buffer zone between the articulated and unknown”.

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