Las Vegas, NV
John Doffing
CEO of Walls360, Inc.
Entrepreneur John Doffing has pursued two parallel passions: technology and art. Early in his career, John worked with a number of bleeding-edge startups in Virtual Reality (first-generation HMDs for consumer gaming applications), 3D Graphics (stereoscopic display, NURBs modeling, full-body laser scanning, motion-capture), and Human-Computer Interaction (haptic interfaces). During this period, John also worked on a series of groundbreaking online art projects and exhibitions and curated his first ‘real world’ art show in a small San Francisco art gallery in 2002. This first show was called PROPAGANDA and featured the artwork of Shepard Fairey, Winston Smith, and Aidan Hughes. PROPAGANDA would grow into a global series of traveling art exhibitions, featuring hundreds of artists from around the world. John founded the START SOMA art gallery in San Francisco in 2003, and over the past seven years has curated dozens of exhibitions, including a pioneering series of Video Game Art Shows. John is also the creator and curator of the ‘Painted Rooms’ exhibitions at the Hotel des Arts in San Francisco, in which 50 guest rooms were completely transformed by artists. In 2004, John was one of the executive producers of ‘Quality of Life’, an independent film created and shot amidst San Francisco’s burgeoning graffiti scene. In 2005, John founded START MOBILE to bring the artwork of emerging and underground artists from around the world to the nascent mobile medium and is a former juror (2007) and member of the emeritus board of INTO THE PIXEL. His most recent project is LTL PRINTS, a Philadelphia startup company that is bringing characters, artwork, and imagery from video games and ‘virtual worlds’ to real-world walls.
John earned his BA from Marquette University (Phi Beta Kappa – Triple Major in Philosophy, History, and Political Science; Minor in Psychology), along with a graduate BA/MA with Honours from St. John’s College, Cambridge University, where he was a Davies-Jackson Scholar. At Cambridge, John was the recipient of the Mansergh Prize in History, was appointed to the President’s Committee at the Cambridge Union Society, played rugby and rowed crew for his college, and played American Football for the University. John firmly believes that ‘art should be for everyone’, and his favorite video games of all time include Temptest, Berzerk, Dragon’s Lair, and Jet Set Radio Future.