The Sentient Street – Audrey Banks, BFA, Art
The Sentient Street is a public art installation and performance in which a hundred objects in a public space are inhabited by individual personas that interact with the general public. By layering a fantastical anthropomorphized world of sentient objects over mundane environments, this project privileges emotional complexity over algorithmically-designed efficiency and invites the public to question our technophilic attraction to coldly intelligent environments and objects.
PhantaNoir – Jacqueline Barnes, BHA, Creative Writing and Art
PhantaNoir is producing three things: the beginning of a graphic novel, an explanatory article, as well as a short animation introducing the world of the graphic novel. PhantaNoir delves into the population of black fantasy fans, and calls not only for their representation, but for their dominance in a genre that has long ignored, debased, or derided its black fan base. It was inspired not only by the need for representation, but for those within creative social circles who created and made black art so unapologetically.
Multipurpose Mobile Manipulator – John Choi, BCSA, Computer Science and Art
As it stands today, access to human-size mobile manipulator robots is mostly limited to well-funded technical research institutions, often manned exclusively by a handful of engineers and scientists who find it difficult to imagine their robots being used outside of their labs in the name of art. In contrast, the objective of the Multipurpose Mobile Manipulator is to build a series of research-grade mobile manipulator platforms that anyone can use and work with.
Sanctum – Madalyn Gryger, BHA, Psychology and Art
Sanctum, the Luna Gala clothing line, explores the experience of living with mental illness. Sanctum is a place to feel safe. It explores the idea of safety in relation to mental illness by recreating boundaries in which people with mental illnesses live in the form of fashion. By using different materials, forms and transparencies, the line creates variations of boundaries between the model and the audience, thus mimicking the mental boundaries that living with a mental illness can create.
Story House – Alicia Iott, BCSA, Computer Science and Art and Charlotte Stiles, BFA, Art
Story House takes the shiny new toy, virtual reality, and combines it with a traditional age-old toy, the dollhouse. Inside the dollhouse, an observer can peer through pairs of windows, to see a universe created with VR. The dollhouse will have multiple pairs of windows so several viewers may observe different parts of the narrative simultaneously, thus each observer can create their own narrative. This project addresses the chasm that exists between cutting edge technology, material culture, and the domestic, plain-Jane realm. By uniting a feminine childhood toy with a relevant and intriguing narrative about domestic characters using virtual reality, Story House may bridge that gap.
Memory Slugs – Ralph Kim, BFA, Art and Maryyann Landlord, BFA, Art
The interactive animation, Memory Slugs, utilizes multiple Oculus Rifts to deliver a novel storytelling structure, in which the virtual space reacts to the direction of the viewer’s gaze. Whereas virtual reality typically entails isolation from immediate reality, this project facilitates social interaction by encouraging multiple participants viewing unique, emergent stories to verbally share their experiences, as well as provide a spectacle for viewers outside of the Rift.
ChalkBot – Lina Pulgarin-Duque, BSA, Physics and Drama
ChalkBot is a CNC chalk plotting tool that aims to improve the way people interact with their cities and communities by promoting the adaptability of public spaces and establishing a sub-community through interaction with technology. ChalkBot is a new concept in digital manufacture and part of an exploration to discover how robots can become a part of our modern society. Initially developed as a tool to aid event planning, the overlay of different software enables a wide variety of professional and amateur applications. This iteration will be exploring how to use ChalkBot to create an interactive art experience.
Body Electric – Lauren Valley, BFA, Art
Body Electric is a sound reactive robotic dress that takes input in the form of pitch from the wearer and outputs it as motion through an eight-foot, motor-actuated skirt. The final performance will feature a vocalist wearing the dress while acting as the controller through the performance of an original composition.