Masters Projects Gallery
Masters Projects from 2007
Virtual IKEA: Principles of Integrating Dynamic 2D Content in a 3D Virtual Environment
[website]Paul Amsbary
IKEA.com, with a database of thousands of furniture items and
customization options, is a rich environment in which to explore the
interaction framework of a complex ecommerce experience. My project is a web-based application in which consumers are present in a
real-time 3D environment. My project explores the design
implications and intersections between rich media 2D and real-time 3D
interactive environments. My design research examines how the
choices in 3D virtual spaces are reflected and visualized in the 2D
components of the application and how a user transitions between a 2D
navigation structure integrated with or adjacent to, a 3D virtual
environment. I examine the assignment of
directional value to navigation movement in the environment and the
relationship of those assignments in different spaces of the
application. I explore a broad range of examples, including
experiments in interactive television, console video games, websites,
and emerging 3D platforms.
Tagging for TV
[website]Angelique Lausier
In recent years, television has developed from a limited set of shows constrained by a fixed timeslot into a veritable viewer’s choice of channels, shows, and times. In addition, we have seen the rise of the complex episodic series that encourages replay. This increased complexity, however, has not been met with a more sophisticated solution for navigating shows. The Internet, however, has grown into a media-rich, customizable experience for users who have become familiar with the concept of tagging items with keywords to foster the organization of a network. Broadcast has begun to merge with broadband in many forms, but viewers still have little to help them navigate through a show. This project, Tagging for TV, brings tagging from the Internet to television as a social, viewer-generated means of organizing data.
The Virtual TV Couch: Enabling Shared Viewing Experiences of Television for Micro-social Networks
Sergio Goldenberg
Watching television is not only an entertainment or aesthetic experience, it is also a social experience that is capable of triggering conversation and discussion, and of creating special communities around its programming.
Currently, the television industry has not been able to offer an adequate
product that facilitates the interaction of viewers who are watching the
same program, but who are not in the same physical space. In fact, current
interactive television applications available focus on programming guides,
video-on-demand, and voting features, but not communication tools. Some
people have solved this problem using other kinds of communication devices.
For example, there are people who talk on the phone while watching
television so they can discuss the programs they are watching. My project develops novel interactive television applications
that enable enhanced communication to promote the sharing of experiences and active
discussions of small viewing groups, such us those composed of family members, friends, and
classmates.
Masters Projects from 2006
Key and Lock Puzzles in Procedural Gameplay
[website]Calvin Ashmore
This project is an attempt to model and simulate key and lock puzzles in the style of Shigeru Miyamoto games, specifically the Zelda and Metroid series. Much of the gameplay in these titles is oriented around encountering obstacles, and then locating an item that allows the player to circumvent the obstacle.
The project is built on top of Charbitat, another project built on Unreal Tournament 2004, which produces procedurally generated space in response to the player's actions.
Switchboard: A real-time art toolkit
[website]Jeffrey Crouse
Emerging technologies have made it possible for artists to use a wide range of live, external data sources to give their work relevance and impact. Works that use these live data sources share certain strategies, values, and influences. Not only does this type of art have much artistic potential, but it can help the Web by encouraging the development of machine-understandable, Semantic data formats. What kind of tools would give some coherence to real-time art and facilitate its creation?
Broadband News Aggregator
[website]Negar Farhi
The dramatic increase in the amount of news content available has created the problem of finding what is actually of interest to the individual viewer. It has become harder to keep up with all the news information available and there is a great need for effective filtering mechanisms. Broadband News Aggregator proposes a broadband interactive TV application that delivers news from multiple sources. The prototype offers features such as feedback, enhanced content, immediate access, archive and retrieve, and personalization.
Masters Projects from 2005
On-Demand Advertising Model for Digital Television
[website]Engin Erdogan
An on-demand advertising interface, where the ads are visible if and only if they are triggered by the viewers.
This project is based on the assumption that if the medium is desaturated from deceptive advertising conventions, and more user friendly ones are introduced, consumers will be eager to explore ads.
Lab 27: Learning About Biology
[website]Grace Ou, Jeff Weese
An example of the possible use of experiential media in the classroom - a 3D real-time virtual environment of a eukaryotic cell to augment teaching core concepts in cell biology to beginning life science students.
Masters Projects from 2004
eLive Sports
[website]Drew Cogswell
eLive Sports is an Enhanced Digital Television service designed to enhance the experience of watching and interacting with broadcast sports. The service delivers real-time game data and player statistics, on-demand video of game plays, custom highlight reels, and customizable game and player notifications, all within a single television medium.
Agency: A Character Centric Role-Playing Game
[website]Heather Logas
The table top role-playing game offers an experience unique in the gaming world, an experience somewhere between interactive narrative, improvisational performance, and games. It has the potential to allow for powerful moments of transportation of a player into the role of another person in another time and another place. Although many attempts have been made at translating the role-playing game into the digital medium, this sense of transportation has never been successfully carried over.
Masters Projects from 2003
Bronc Busters, Bomb Designers and Me
[website]Gunthar Hartwig
Bronc Busters, Bomb Designers and Me is a multi-media documentary work on DVD-Video. There are two components to the piece. The first is an exploration of the United States defense laboratories located in the town of Livermore, California. This element combines personal memoir, interviews, and historical research to paint a picture of the community. The second component is a work of experimental documentary that incorporates interactive digital technologies and storytelling techniques. These techniques were selected for their ability to enhance the presentation of the content and provide a more powerful experience for the viewer.
Miniature Gardens and Magic Crayons: Games, Spaces, and Worlds (thesis)
[website]Chaim Gingold
Discusses the structure, construction, and aesthetics of game worlds, branching possible worlds, point of view in games, and the design of Comic Book Dollhouse.
The Crystal Cabinet
Stephen Guynup
The Crystal Cabinet is a VRML piece which gives a visual voice to William Blake's text. Virtual space offers a unique opportunity to fold meaning and metaphor inside an explorable enironment. Although The Crystal Cabinet is a 3D environment, it is not a game. Because this is not what most viewers are accostomed to when entering 3D environments, we decided to pull our content from an earlier artist, poet and visionary in order to help set the stage for a greater understanding of the medium. It is poetry that surrounds, a painting becomes a journey, a realization of the philosophy of William Blake.
Masters Projects from 2002
Triptych
Alex Cook, {James} Yu-Cheng Hsu
Triptych is a digital installation that explores the narrative possibilities of a hybrid environment. The three sided architecture merges with a projected video, sound, and the image to create a dynamic story space. Unlike the cinema screen or computer monitor, Triptych gives the viewer multiple perspectives and an active role in the experience through their own participation and performance. When viewing the installation, navigation becomes a physical act. Users choose which screen to view and what characters to follow. Their users spatial location creates their narrative perspective and their trajectory determines the outcome.
CinemaScape
[website]Patrick Quattlebaum
CinemaScape allows researchers to analyze, annotate and compare films in a collaborative environment. The project integrates multiple tools from film studies into a single interface, bringing scholarship closer to the the object it examines and comments upon.
Masters Projects from 2001
Reliving Last Night
Sarah Cooper
Reliving Last Night is an interactive narrative video in which the protagonist, Claire, lives out the possibilities of her parallel lives at the whim of the interactor. The interactor can both influence the story by making choices for Claire and navigate between the alternate realities that these decisions generate. Claire wakes up one morning and finds herself in a small mystery. Upon returning to her room from her shower, she finds something or someone tossing about in her bed, and she can't remember who or what it could be. The story flashes back to the previous night. Throughout the story the interactor is signaled by filmic conventions to choose what Claire wears, what drinks she serves and what music she plays.
Bufordhighway
Michael Mosley
bufordhighway is a multiform interactive narrative. There are two primary characters (and, correspondingly, two primary story-lines) who are travelling, over a four hour period, on or near Buford Highway. These characters are located, at every moment, at one of thirty-six spatial locations. Corresponding to both locations and character actions, are seventy-six brief sub-stories which are tied to the central narrative. Two spatial mapping systems allow the user to interact with these characters, locations, and sub-stories.
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