Brit Cruise

This site is intended as a growing time capsule which I started in 2007. It contains current & past research, experiments and multimedia projects. Contact me: britjcruise@gmail.com

Guelph, Ontario – 2018

I studied both Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Western Ontario & McGill. During school I spent my free time working on various experimental films, one of my first projects Time and the River was accepted into Canada’s National Screen Institute in 2008:

While in school I enjoyed building on novel algorithms such as an emotional equalizer for automated music generation. I developed a robot which could detect the beat in live music and provide rhythmic accompaniment using mostly hardware. Back then (and to this day) I thought about how and when we can predict the stock market.

After school I worked on algorithm design at a consulting firm in Montreal and found that I enjoyed drawing/sketching solutions more than coding the final implementation. Within a year I launched an educational series in my spare time titled: Art of the Problem on Kickstarter. Here was one of my first video experiments:

This lead to an ongoing YouTube series Art of the problem I continue to this day. These videos soon lead me to Sal Khan and the Khan Academy which I joined Jan 2012 – at the time the company was in its first year with 20 or so amazing people. It was an extremely exciting environment to be in.

The first ever annual meeting at Khan Academy (early 2012)

Over the next 5 years I developed interactive lessons on Cryptography, Information Theory, Science Discoveries, Math Warmups and experimented with narrative driven challenges. I co-produced some lessons with content partners such NASA, Google and Disney/Pixar.

Testing out interactive software in the classroom environment

In 2013 I became a father (I now have two sons). I also worked as employee #1 at a handful of education startups (apartments) along the way, such as Codecademy and Mystery Science. As part of the founding team of Mystery Science, I prototyped the content vision & production process for the first set of lessons. Mystery Science was acquired by Discovery Education in 2020.

Doing my “time” in the Mission District. (summer 2014)

In 2014  I co-created Pixar in a Box alongside Tony DeRose & Elyse Klaidman (blog post). My collaboration with Tony and Elyse continues to this day.

a Q&A at our launch with James, Sal, Ed. Tony and Elyse

Pixar in a Box is an initiative to create free interactive courses which demonstrate how concepts (from math, science & art) are used in the creative fields. For example lessons on the Art of Storytelling (my fav) and Simulation 101 as practiced at Pixar. Think of it as an interactive “behind the scenes” experience (or preinternship) for students both young and old involving sketching, writing and coding.

I had the pleasure of presenting this project at The Steve Jobs Theatre on Pixar’s campus with Tony in summer 2015.

In 2017 I began an ongoing collaboration with IEEE to communicate the ideas behind groundbreaking papers from Information Theory in a simple way. It’s been an intellectual joy to work with the core team on this project (Matthieu Bloch, Michelle Effros, Christina Fragouli & Suhas Diggavi) the content is also reviewed by the original authors during development which is very unique. Here is an example of an early prototype (or the full playlist)

In 2017 I published an introductory video series on Computer Science on YouTube. The most popular videos in this series were on Turing Machines and the P vs NP problem.

In 2018 I finished 4 years of work with Pixar and launched our last lesson on The Art of Lighting. Here is a shot of us workshopping this lesson with teachers at MakerEd.

In 2018 I began production on a new project with Disney (Imaginering in a Box). It was a chance to apply the model of Pixar in a Box to a new organization. In this case we takes students through the ride & attraction creation process. We launched this in summer 2019 on Khan Academy.

In 2018 I published an educational documentary on the mechanics and economics of Bitcoin. It was one of the most challenging concepts I’ve unpacked and was my first experiments with a longer form explainer video.

I was happy to see it endorsed by the Bitcoin.com twitter account:

In 2019 I began a new video series on Deep Learning, it’s a subject I had been pondering for over 10 years. I’m still at work on this series…

In 2019 I did an experimental ‘fly on the wall’ documentary film which relied on mobile phones. It was an exciting editing challenge to make a ‘film out of nothing’ (Say You Love Me). I learn a lot about storytelling in the process…

In March 2020 I launched a new educational company with my colleagues Tony DeRose and Elyse Klaidman X in a Box. Our goal is to connect students to the real-world and create the best online educational experiences we can imagine. After a year and a half of intensive experimentation we landed on an idea for a new kind of educational experience called Xperiential. Here is a video of the idea which came to life in late 2021 with our first offering Story Xperiential w/ Pixar.

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