Graduate Seminar I Fall 2020

Virtual Reality as a Designer’s Tool: Challenges and Opportunities

This graduate seminar is a forum for exploring advanced topics in interactive media and virtual reality (VR) design. Participants will investigate novel forms of design practice using advanced technologies focusing on creative coding, 3D visualization, audio design, AI, typography and seminal works. This seminar will take a deep dive into the techniques and challenges of the designs for virtual reality.

With exponential growth in the application of Machine Learning (ML) and AI in all creative arts, the questions about authorship, ethics, autonomy, machine intelligence and aesthetics outline the evolution and future of creative AI. What is the future of design in the context of rapid advancement of technology? What happens when quantified technologies instead of being a choice for designer became a required tool? We will cover a breadth of topics not only limited to the “how-to” of VR, but also explore the history of the VR art and design, creative coding, real-time typography, ethics and visualization critique.

We are experiencing an outburst of the VR technologies across fields and industries, influencing our everyday life and work. The increasing accessibility of headsets is attracting designers into VR to examine its potential beyond gaming. However, despite this proliferation, there are conceptual, theoretical and practical challenges that require effective collaboration. Participant will share reflections of the impact of advanced technologies on contemporary design theory and practice and discuss how contemporary technologies can inspire novel forms of creative practice.

The seminar will study the cognitive factors regarding users’ perception and usage of VR and advanced technologies necessary to realize their creative potential. We will read about, discuss and examine the importance of considering cognitive problems in design, development or use of VR solutions. Can we define theoretical, practical and empirical methods that can provide a better understanding of design communication possibilities in modern virtual-, augmented-, or mixed reality environments?

Participants will develop new skills and produce interactive projects using 3D, visualization, VR, AR, multimedia and audiovisual media. This course will introduce the basics of coding and scripting and it designed for students with no prior programming experience but an enthusiasm to study VR. We will use Maya, Adobe CS, Unity3D game engine, C#, and other software tools and languages to develop interactive applications. The coursework will be organized around the development of these projects, to be completed individually or in small teams.

To contextualize these projects participants will read from seminal and contemporary writings on virtual reality, media design, interactive narrative, creative AI, immersive experiences, and information visualization from journals such as Leonardo, SIGGRAPH and the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA).