Interactive Arts Commons^™

The Effects Of Alternate-Line Shading On Visual Search In Grid-Based Graphic Designs, Michael P. Lee

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Objective: The goal of this research was to determine whether alternate-line shading (zebra-striping) of grid-based displays affects the strategy (i.e., “visual flow”) and efficiency of serial search. Background: Grids, matrices, and tables are commonly used to organize information. A number of design techniques and psychological principles are relevant to how viewers’ eyes can be guided through such visual works. One common technique for grids, “zebra-striping,” is intended to guide eyes through the design, or “create visual flow” by alternating shaded and unshaded rows or columns. Method: 13 participants completed a visual serial search task. The target was embedded in a …

Zuzu's Petals, Jeffrey James Jarot

Theses and Dissertations

Zuzu's Petals relates the travails of Jules and Julie, a couple whose marriage is in the process of breaking apart. Jules has a "fanboyish" obsession with the 1946 Frank Capra film "It's a Wonderful Life." Furthermore, he is fixated on his own past, and his eccentric behavior has caused his disenchanted wife to seek romantic and emotional solace in David, an old flame from high school. Their child, Zuzu, who was named at Jules' insistence after a key character in the Capra film, has herself sensed that something is amiss in her parents' dealings with each other. The story's narrative …

Embracing Change: Exploring How Creative Professionals Use Interactive Media In Advertising Campaigns, Adam Wagler

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

Advertising agencies are incorporating new forms of interactive media into campaigns as media continues to rapidly change. The purpose of this phenomenological qualitative study is to explore how five creative professionals at leading advertising agencies in the Midwest are integrating interactive media into campaigns. Through a series of interviews this project helps solidify what it means to integrate interactive media. The findings illustrate a fundamental shift in an industry that is moving away from “advertising.” An industry built around traditional media now requires creatives to incorporate dynamic, mobile, and social media into the marketing mix. Advertising agencies must engage audiences …

Pox And The City, Elizabeth S. Goins

Journal of Interactive Humanities

Pox in the City is a prototype of a social history game that focuses on the medical profession circa 1800 in Edinburgh. The prototype was research, designed and developed on a small budget (about $17,000) and in a short time frame (20 weeks). The experimental design goal was to create a narrative driven educational game that was engaging and delivered some basic educational goals to be used in the high school and college level classrooms. To experiment with writing historic game narrative and to stay within budget, the design was built around a point and click adventure framework. Narrative was …

Press Start: Video Games In An Art Museum, Georgina Goodlander, Michael Mansfield

Journal of Interactive Humanities

Art museums can be complex, confounding, boring, exciting, absurd, and breathtaking. They can be sad, enlightening, hurtful, alive, dead, mainstream and avant-garde. They can, at once, be all of these things. Or they can be any one of these things separately. Museums can be more. Art museums might provide a place for contemplation, a place for social commentary, a place for political discourse, a place for lunch. They can identify us, deconstruct us, or illuminate our experiences for everyone. They can be an index for the health and vibrancy of our culture and our time. The Smithsonian American Art Museum …

Embodied Tuning: Interfacing Danish Radio Heritage, Christian Hviid Mortensen, Vitus Vestergaard

Journal of Interactive Humanities

Most museum exhibitions favor vision, not hearing. When there is audio in exhibitions, it tends to take on a secondary role as a soundtrack or commentary. In some cases, however, audio should be the primary object of interest. Radio heritage is such a case. The traditional way of showcasing audio is through webaccessible archives or through listening kiosks in the exhibition. Neither one takes advantage of the unique affordances of the spatiality and physicality of an exhibition. We therefore propose an alternative way of exhibiting radio heritage in a listening exhibition where users move around and explore the physical gallery …

Modding The Humanities: Experiments In Historic Narratives, Elizabeth S. Goins, Christopher Egert, Andrew Phelps, Chandra Reedy, Joel Kincaid

Journal of Interactive Humanities

While the ludology versus narratology debate raged within game studies circles [1], game designers continued building games and developing methods to improve player experience. Today however, while designers may have their personal preferences, there is no longer any doubt that both mechanics and story can have an important role to play in a game [2,3, 4, 5, 6, 7].

You Have Died Of Dysentery: A First Attempt At Navigating A Course In Educational Games, Adrienne Decker, David Simkins

Journal of Interactive Humanities

This paper describes our experiences developing and piloting a course in educational games. We discuss the structure of the course, the topics we included in the course, as well as the final projects the students created for the course. Of particular interest to non-technical educators interested in exploring games in their courses is the fact that our course incorporated many critical thinking skills as part of the coursework. We felt that an important part of the student’s immersion in this material was not just the production of the game, but also a deeper understanding of the issues surrounding education and …

Real Time Visibility Culling With Hardware Occlusion Queries And Uniform Grids, Ilya Iseletsk Seletsky

Master's Theses

Culling out non-visible portions of 3D scenes is important for rendering large complex worlds at an interactive frame rate. Past 3D engines used static prebaked visibility data which was generated using complex algorithms. Hardware Occlusion Queries are a modern feature that allows engines to determine if objects are invisible on the fly. This allows for fully dynamic destructible and editable environments as opposed to static prebaked environments of the past. This paper presents an algorithm that uses Hardware Occlusion Queries to cull fully dynamic scenes in real-time. This algorithm is relatively simple in comparison to other real-time occlusion culling techniques, …

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

Faculty Research and Creative Activities Award (FRACAA)

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.

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 Unstable Ground Of Low Hierarchies, Joshua Dinsmore

The Transdisciplinary 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.

"Duchamping In Game Making": An Analysis Of Pippin Barr's Parodic Computer Games, Devin A. Wilson

Modern Languages and Literatures Annual Graduate Conference

Devin Wilson analyzes some of Pippin Barr's subversive videogames, examining the methods by which they parody game design conventions.

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) …

Forget The FlâNeur, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

This paper discusses the connections between the ‘flâneur’, Baudelaire's symbol of modernity, the anonymous man on the streets of nineteenth century Paris, and his contemporary digital incarnation, the ‘cyberflâneur’. It is argued that, although the flâ- neur could be successfully re-imagined as the cyberflâneur in the early days of the web, this nine- teenth century model of male privilege no longer fits the purpose. It is suggested that it is time to forget the flâneur and search for a new model to consider the peripatetic nature of location-aware networked devices in the digitally augmented city.

'A Century Of Transformations' Exhibit Design, Anne Giangiulio

Selected Works Temporary Series

I designed this bilingual exhibit for the Centennial Museum located on the campus of The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) to commemorate the University's Centennial in 2014. 'A Century of Transformations' follows the Texas School of Mines and Metallurgy, which opened as a mining school in 1914, and evolved into the University of Texas at El Paso, a nationally recognized research university. Featuring over 40 text panels in English and Spanish, as well as video slideshows and an interactive sticky note feedback wall, the exhibit highlights the University’s rich history and traditions. It also features significant milestones, distinguished …

Past And Personal, Jarret M. Wasko

The Mercury

No abstract provided.

Passages Through The Ordinary: Human Pyramid, Daniel Dean

Art & Design Faculty Research

A man picks his way across a wooded hillside, a curious reluctance in his step. In a small, two-door hatchback, pale mushrooms sprout from car seats. Drawings of edibles spread across the walls of a windowless room, where wooden furniture beckons to sit, linger, and enjoy the view. A dumpster doubles as a hot tub next to an arrangement of plywood benches and white ceramic tubs, inviting the weary to bathe their feet in salubrious salts. Close by, a set of coal-black bowls nestles into itself, while dust motes dance in a glow of orange light. Ladders and levels, carefully …

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. This …

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 design alongside …

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.

Ant Tribe, Yan Zhao

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

"Ant Tribe" describes the post-80s generation university graduates who live together in poor conditions without Social security in communities around China's major metropolises. They dream of a better life in big cities but struggle with low-paying jobs. These struggling "elites" have become the fourth weak Social group, after peasants, migrant workers and unemployed people. The reason why these college graduates are compared to ants is that they are like ants: clever, hardworking, politically weak and living in groups.

The real world is always different from the ideal world of the "Ant Tribe" in China. They often lose their purposes in …

Light, Data, And Public Participation, Dave Colangelo, Patricio Davila

School of Film Faculty Publications and Presentations

As practices in reactive architecture and locative media converge and urban screens and projection technologies proliferate we are becoming increasingly able to interact with data in public space. This confluence presents us with modes of digitally mediated participation in urban space that highlight bodily and architectural relationships with data rich environments as well as new sets of problems and possibilities regarding aesthetics, poetics, and politics. The article will analyze works by Alfredo Jaar, Krzysztof Wodiczko, and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, as they respectively exemplify the efficacy of the key components of public data visualization: mapping, expanded presence through architecture, and the ‘incompleteness’ …

The Culturator: Film Noir Meets Bike Culture, Daniel Dean

Art & Design Faculty Research

Part of this weekend’s nuit blanche Northern Spark festival, project Mobile Experiential Cinema invites goers to embark on a rambling, bicycle-mounted, multi-location cinematic experience that blends bike culture with locally-bred film. Created by artists Daniel Dean and Ben Moren, the project launched alongside the inaugural Northern Spark fest last year as an interactive projected film-focused group ride featuring live performance elements and urban exploration embodying all plot twists and theatrical curve balls we’ve come to expect from the mystery genre. We caught up with Mobile Experiential Cinema collaborators Dean and Moren to chat about the project’s creation, its noir influences …

Chaosocial - A Social Media Platform For Social Movements, Nathanael Hughes

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

Recent Social Movements have increasingly used social media as a driving component in recruiting, developing the cause, and mobilizing people to action. Chaosocial is a web application that provides a layer of organization over social media, allowing organizations traditionally limited in ability to leverage social media to use it to strengthen their social movements.

Women And Video Games: Pigeonholing The Past, Allison Perry

Scripps Senior Theses

Academic work dealing with the overlap between video games and female representation is limited in both volume and proper research. Most texts agree on three supposed flaws with video games: they alienate female participants, there are no games for female players, and female players cannot relate to female characters. This thesis sheds light on these points, not only citing specific counter-examples, but also showing how many of these issues reflect on a larger societal problems.

Dismantling The Monolith: Post-Media Art And The Culture Of Instability, Nora Almeida

Publications and Research

Art that falls under the “new media” paradigm is problematic, or rather, it renders many traditional assumptions about art as problematic. In a practical sense, new media art raises fundamental questions about the nature of curation and preservation and the role of cultural heritage institutions as stewards of digital assets. Curation and preservation challenges, while significant, are fundamentally a symptom of a more catastrophic failure of concepts and language to adequately address changing relationships between art, materiality, and audiences. This article explores how burgeoning concepts in information and media theory may help shape curation contexts and redefine approaches to preservation. …

Tablet Magazines And The Affects On The Magazine Industry, Kylee Staughton

Graphic Communication

The purpose of this study is to determine the affects tablet magazines have on the magazine industry. It includes research on past and present circulation trends for print and digital magazine consumption. Interviews of industry professionals were conducted, giving their insight into the development and consumer attitudes toward iPad tablet magazines. An online survey questioning subscription, functionality and general views of both tablet and print magazines was distributed as well as an in person case study that allowed users to physically navigate, observe and compare an iPad magazine and its print counterpart. The results of this study can be used …

Going Mobile: A Guide To Mobile Website And Application User Preferences, Kevin M. Weeks

Graphic Communication

Mobile devices are rapidly gaining popularity. There is an increasing demand for individuals who can develop quality mobile websites and applications. In the world of mobile, the most important consideration is the end user. Who is the application or mobile website trying to target and what do they want? This study was designed to determine what users value and whether current developers are accurately reflecting these values. Determining this was accomplished through surveys of mobile users, interviews with mobile web developers, and analysis of successful websites and apps through case studies. The survey included questions to determine what qualities mobile …

500 Year Documentation, Francis T. Marchese, Phd, Maninder Pal Kaur Shergill

Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship

Museum visitors today can regularly view 500 year old art by Renaissance masters. Will visitors to museums 500 years in the future be able to see the work of digital artists from the early 21st century? This paper considers the real problem of conserving interactive digital artwork for museum installation in the far distant future by exploring the requirements for creating documentation that will support an artwork's adaptation to future technology. In effect, this documentation must survive as long as the artwork itself -- effectively, in perpetuity. A proposal is made for the use of software engineering methodologies as solutions …