Interactive Arts Commons^™

User Experience Design For Presence-Aware Spaces And Technologies, Samuel Foster

Honors College

User experience design is a diverse field of study that is constantly changing as unique technologies and modes of interaction are developed. Metaphors are a critical aspect of UX design, serving to acclimate users to new technologies by comparing them to existing objects and ideas. As newer technologies become increasingly distant from real-world objects, developers are quick to look to existing technology for metaphors. This results in a lack of experience-unique metaphors that would create a more immersive experience. This thesis focused on identifying potential real-world metaphors through the use of emerging technologies in an interactive art installation. Based on ...

Design & Communication: The Future Of Service-Learning, Ulrike Gencarelle M.A., Laura Gabiger Phd, Deana Marzocchi

Computer Graphics Department Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Poster for a presentation at the Eastern Region Campus Compact Conference 2012.

Depicted are online writing class projects, as well as web and print design examples created by Johnson & Wales (Providence Campus) Digital Media department design students for non-profit organizations in Rhode Island communities.

Visual Metaphor In Games Of Chance: What You See Is What You Play, Stephen Andrade

Computer Graphics Department Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Visual images have been a key element in the development of wager-based games. The legacy of visual metaphor in gaming can be traced through paper ephemera such as playing cards and lottery tickets. Both paper and printing technology ushered the age of wide spread playing opportunities in the 19th and 20th centuries. Modern play behaviors have given way to Postmodern gaming norms in digital space. The digital age has presented a new set of challenges for gaming architecture in wager-based play. Action research in prototyping games is beginning to reveal a new and different set of game characteristics.

The Magazine Industry Is Becoming Mobile, Alex Maxwell

Graphic Communication

Are magazine publications seeing an increase in profits since the rise of the mobile magazine application? My investigation focused on magazine publications that feel that producing their product for use on a tablet is worth the increase in resources. These applications allow the consumer to read their purchase on an array of electronic tablets, which are arguably beneficial for magazine publications in the future.

This study helped me discover that “developing a digital replica of a magazine is extremely cost effective because postage and material costs are no longer required.” (H. Glassie, Senior Project - Alex Maxwell, January 14, 2013) While ...

Cystema A Site-Specific Installation At The Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba, Patricia Villalobos Echeverria

Faculty Research and Creative Activities Award (FRACAA) Recipients

cystema @ 23°8’27.054”N 82°21’10.117”W is a site-specific installation on the façade and interior of the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wilfredo Lam, located at San Ignacio 22 and Empedrado, Plaza de la Catedral, Old Havana. The opening took place May 11, 2012. This project is part of Nicaragua’s representation at the XI Havana Biennial and has received generous support from Western Michigan University.

The attached file is a flier advertising the project in Spanish and English.

Creating With Code: Critical Thinking And Digital Foundations, Brad Tober

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

While students are often attracted to opportunities to learn how to use software applications commonly employed by digital artists and designers, the fact remains that time spent on purely software-based instruction in the classroom is time that could arguably be better spent on exploring the broader conceptual issues of making digital work. This presentation begins to frame an argument for the comprehensive integration of code-based technologies, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Processing/Java, openFrameworks/C++, and Objective-C, into digital art and design foundation curricula. This integration holds the potential to position code-based technologies as new media for teaching art and ...

The Unstable Ground Of Low Hierarchies, Joshua Dinsmore

The STEAM Journal

Broad Vision is a collaborative project between the Sciences and Arts. It involves students and lecturers from six different departments, across three schools at the University of Westminster, London, UK. In the first year of the project we worked with the microscope as the locus for our interconnections.

Form And Meaning: How Media's Representation Tells The Story Of The Berlin Wall, In Young Lee

Richter Research Abroad Student Scholarship

When the Berlin Wall fell, the first reaction of the citizens of Berlin was to destroy the loathed barrier altogether. As early as 1991, the city of Berlin firmly rejected and questioned the idea of attributing monument status to the Wall. Why should they have to preserve the border fortifications which marked the city with a sad universal notoriety? Today the Wall is approached and interpreted from a wider perspective that includes a border landscape and a sociopolitical landscape. The Wall serves as a visual object that illustrates a pictorial phenomenon in the context of political communication. Although the 'Iron ...

Because I Am Not Here, Selected Second Life-Based Art Case Studies. Subjectivity, Autoempathy And Virtual World Aesthetics, Francisco Gerardo Toledo Ramírez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Second Life is a virtual world accessible through the Internet in which users create objects and spaces, and interact socially through 3D avatars. Certain artists use the platform as a medium for art creation, using the aesthetic, spatial, temporal and technological features of SL as raw material. Code and scripts applied to animate and manipulate objects, avatars and spaces are important in this sense. These artists, their avatars and artwork in SL are at the centre of my research questions: what does virtual existence mean and what is its purpose when stemming from aesthetic exchange in SL?

Through a qualitative ...

Exploration Of Physical Computing: Digital Interfaces Using Microsoft Kinect And Peggy 2 Led Matrix, Jeffrey Franklin

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

Physical computing, or more specifically social immersive media, is an offshoot of New Media that incorporates interactive physical systems (software/hardware systems) to sense and respond to the analog world. This serves as a creative framework for understanding our own relationship to the digital world. In this project, computer vision is incorporated as a medium between both input and output through the use of two cameras, a typical webcam and a Microsoft Kinect. For the first part of the project, a webcam streams visual data into a computer program which interpolates the video data into a 25x25 virtual dot matrix ...

Narrative Brought To Life: The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter, Stefani Klaric

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores The Wizarding World of Harry Potter and the motivations for creating fictive, immersive environments. These can be defined as spaces that generate new physical environments or worlds that engage our senses. The theme park is the experiential space where entertainment, fantasy, and commodity consumption come together. By including recognizable objects, narratives, characters, and the like, taken directly from the Harry Potter books and films, audiences and participants are brought into The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in a way that immerses them in the space and allows them to experience the narrative by participating in a journey ...