Digital Arts and New Media: MFA: Collaboration, Innovation, Social Impact

You are here

faculty research updates - brenda laurel

Computational Media Adjunct Professor and DANM Research Associate Brenda Laurel will continue her work in game design and augmented reality through the spring of 2015.

Professor Laurel will continue to consult on the IMMERSE project, which aims to produce a game-based training environment that teaches people how to be “good strangers”, supporting the practice of skills necessary to have successful social interactions when in novel culture and language contexts. With her background in games, theatre, and psychology, Professor Laurel will work the IMMERSE designers on the underlying social games and power relations that shape the interactions and scenarios within the game.

Professor Laurel will also continue to contribute to design and art direction on XYLEM: The Code of Plants and Binary Fission, two new games being developed at the UCSC Center for Games and Playable Media. Both games are part of the CHEKOFV project, an attempt to transform the process of testing software and algorhythms into dynamic, crowd sourced games.

Both IMMERSE and CHEKOFV have received funding from DARPA through June 2015.

 

In her personal research, Professor Laurel is seeking funding for STEAM PARK, a project that uses augmented reality to bring interactive STEM and arts content outside into nature. STEAM PARK is a kit that allows people to set up an outdoor sensor network that tracks a player's motion they move through the space. The players use an augmented reality display such as a tablet, phone, or Google Glass to reveal a layer of interactive content mapped over items and places in the physical world.

Professor Laurel teaches Creative Strategies for Designing Interactive Media, and Human-Centered Design Research in Computational Media, as well as Theatre and Interaction Design in Theater Arts.