Ralph Vituccio

Ralph Vituccio is a Full Teaching Professor in the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon. He holds teaching appointments in the IDeATe and the Film Major in the English Depart at CMU. Outside of his teaching responsibilities Ralph is an independent filmmaker with his film company, rTv media (https://www.ralphvituccio.com/)

He’s led several award-winning student and individual transformational interactive and Virtual Reality projects addressing social issues such as sexual assault on college campus (https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/course/53-610/),
racial profiling (https://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/kalpana/), the Holocaust VR and I-Doc (https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/modlang/kenner-global/current-experiences/poland.html), and the most recent interactive documentary on the food cultures of Israel and Palestine; “Tastes of Two Lands: An Odyssey into the Culinary Landscapes of Israel and Palestine”. (2024)

As an independent artist, he has received several 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. The documentary has been televised and screened in the United States and 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. It tells the story of 15 men and women who served, survived, and returned from the battlefields in and around Baghdad. The film weaves war footage shot by soldiers themselves, interviews, and still photography into a cohesive narrative of how world events affect communities.

His 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. The film looks at the devastating impact ship recycling has on the environmental and the health of the workers.
“Shipbreakers”, (http://www.shipbreakersthefilm.com) 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 were invited to present their interactive video art installation, “El Oraculo Caracol”, at the Havana International Biennale in Cuba. The Havana International presents artists from all over the world and “El Oraculo Caracol” was the only accepted entry representing the United States.

In collaboration with Martha Harty, a Conflict Mediation professional, Vituccio has been awarded several academic Simon ProSEED grants for their interactive educational training projects teaching collaborative skills training and conflict mediation skills. The modules are currently being used in the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) across campus as well as other academic institutions.

He’s produced/directed several interactive VR and I-Docs. His film “Haenyeo” (2018), was about the women free divers of Korea. His current work in Virtual Reality and interactive documentary won a 2018 Google-Tribeca grant and has shown in numerous festivals nationally.