Mana's Introduction - Hello HIVErs!

Hello HIVE community! Where to start... My name is Mana Momen, @SpectralMana online 👽

I grew up a couple miles out from Washington DC in Northern Virginia. I spent a lot of my early life playing computer games and making things out of anything I could get my hands on; dirt, leaves, cotton balls, gluing tissue wads together to make little animals and such. Originally, I had set out on my academic and professional journey hoping to be an artist, as I was terrible at 'school' but great at art. After a year in art school I realized that I didn't need to pay the money for school to do art that I enjoy doing, and that there might not be much of a return on my investment. I left art school and asked myself, what is it that I wanted to do? I wanted to create glow in the dark and UV reactive artwork for electronic music events, so I did just that for a while as I figured out what I wanted to do next.

As a first generation American confused by cultural differences in behavior at home and school, I was determined to understand why people behave the way that they do, and found solace in psychology. I was always fascinated by human perception and understanding the mind, questioning what “reality” is when different peoples perception of the same thing can be so varied. Naturally I developed an interest in Neuroscience, which I studied as an undergrad. After discovering what the field of human factors was during a cognitive psychology class, I knew that I had found my passion, which was in the intersection of design and psychology, and eventually found myself with a career as a UX researcher and designer after completing my masters in Human Factors psychology. In between my studies and work, I had also been very active in the maker community for a time, making brain-computer interface artwork and running a small campus makerspace.

Fast forward to the present day... After suffering from some massive burnout I decided to take the risk and pursue art full time finally. I spend most of my days creating artwork in VR, and have begun the process of minting my artwork as NFTs and learning more about the crypto community, which has brought me to HIVE! I was attracted by the @alienarthive community, as my artwork is somewhat otherwordly and visionary in nature 👽.

I hope you guys will enjoy my artwork as I continue to post and create. Thank you for letting me be a part of this community! I am excited to share more with you all 💙