Ryan Bartley

The barrier of entry to programming low-level game design is too high. Cinder-Game seeks to destroy this barrier by allowing people to program high-level, low-level and extensible C++, while also learning proper game design techniques.

Description

Recently, video games have developed as a strong artistic and independent storytelling tool. However, the game engines available today are either too high-level to be realistically used, or too low-level for the creative coder. With my thesis, I bridged the gap by building out the high-level and low-level components of game engines on top of the creative framework, Cinder. The library includes a scene graph, physics, graphics, and multiple managers for cameras, 3d audio, saving state, rendering, scripting and effects that will make the process of creating a fast/stable game less tedious. The library will be open-sourced to support learning, to allow extending and to facilitate others looking for the same creative outlet.

Sam Brenner

Come face-to-face with the online identities of thousands of former teen bloggers. Choose a character from the annals of LiveJournal, an all-but-defunct blogging site, and lead them on the most epic of journeys: a walk down a high school hallway.

http://www.teenbloggers.net

Description

The Adventures of Teen Bloggers combines the aesthetic of old-school graphic adventure games with the vapid, self-obsessed musings of teenagers circa 2005. Players pick one of millions of LiveJournal users to re-animate and lead on a walk through a high school hallway. When asked to interact with another character, players discover the strengths (or weaknesses) of their character: they can only say things that the LiveJournal user actually said on their blog all those years ago. By dredging up a LiveJournal user's blog posts, once written under the semblance of privacy but now free of context and wholly public, I will draw attention to the permanence of our lives on the internet and question how we choose to share what we share online.

Sarah Rothberg

Virtual Memory/ Memory Memory is a series of artistic research projects examining the relationship between memory, media, attention, loops, attention, media, and memory.

Description

Media reflects the moment it was created. What is the effect on memory of shifting from analog, fixed in physical time and space, to digital? Does the relative mutability of digital archives leave us stuck in loops?

"Attn:Lifelog" passively indexes gopro footage with eeg attention data.

"URLoop" is a browser extension which alerts users when they navigate from website to website in a looped pattern mirroring deterministic thought processes of people with memory loss.

"Memory Place" is composed of personal memory artifacts, digital and digitized, arranged in a navigable virtual environment. The space created from my own memory-artifacts functions as a prototype: I will offer memory-virtualization services for a modest fee via the web.

Jay Zehngebot

Quickly Create Comics using Artwork From Everyone.

http://www.comicdrop.com

Description

ComicDrop fuses a simple set of drawing tools with carefully considered workflows to facilitate fast, playful, collaborative comic-making.

At ComicDrop's core is a shared library of user-contributed drawings, called stickers. These artworks are free for everyone to collage with, build on, and incorporate into their sequential stories.

Designed and developed by a printmaker with years of teaching experience, ComicDrop's streamlined processes present an opportunity to engage visitors of all ages. Whether through writing, drawing, or composing compelling narratives, ComicDrop offers creative avenues for makers of every type, and allows participants to share the components of their comics with other artists the world over.

Mary Fê

My goal was to create an alternative way of PLAYING (as in actor play and as in game play) in an immersive live editable performance, where audience and performer could interact and interfere on the outcomes in real time at a collective space.

Description

I combined new media and improv elements to find the interactive mechanics of live scene story telling. If we can navigate through different content online and discover new approaches on information, would an audience be able to modify live plots as well by using search engines?
Google Made Me Do It was performed at The Silent Barn on April of 2014.
Voice Search Hot Word engine listened to shouts from the audience (a tradition on improv) to jump start scenes. Professional actors on stage could signal for audience help at any moment by wheeling an umbrella as in a frozen computer monitor. Shouts of Ok Google triggered word search during the scenes to flip plots. Who should we point for the results? Google made us do it!

Aaron Sherwood

Archetype is an immersive audio/visual installation that explores basic patterns I see in the world.

Description

I find myself (and the world) in a constant, continuous state of change, comprised of ricocheting, interdependent phenomena, that are ultimately beyond my control. My thesis is an expression of this, realized in a generative audio/visual installation. Images are projected onto three vertical 6' x 3.5' pieces of translucent paper hanging from the ceiling, arranged in a circle. Depending on where people stand, the alignment of the screens will be different and different combinations of images between the three screens will emerge. Four audio speakers are placed in a larger circle surrounding the screens.

Alexandra Coym

A smart remote scheduling device for setting daily reminders to make life more comfortable for people living at home with early-stage Alzheimer's.

Description

There is no cure for Alzheimer's, and most available devices that aim at making daily tasks easier are intrusive for the daily routine and a constant reminder of the disease the person lives with. 'The Art of Living' seamlessly integrates this technology into people's everyday lives. Family caregivers can set up reminders through the web and upload images and sounds that, in line with recent medical research, can subconsciously trigger memories and thus enable the person to remember things on there own (e.g. make a phone call), leaving them feeling empowered and independent. Environmental sensors in the home tell the system if the reminders have been completed and otherwise trigger a more proactive prompting should this not be the case.

Allison Burtch

How do humans remain spiritually and emotionally authentic in the face of impending societal and environmental collapse? My thesis is an invitation to be alive and present. It is liberation technology.

Description

A browser plugin that deprecates your internet experience.
A cell phone jammer that blocks signals.
A browser plugin that clarifies power structures on the internet.
A receptacle for all signals.

I find that many solutions using technology are accomplished through destruction rather than creation.
As such, one Firefox add-on slowly deprecates the internet, removing images, links and text until there is nothing left. The cellphone jammer used in the woods provides a gap in space, a place where people might eventually find something to say. The other Firefox add-on clarifies; it appends corporate sponsors to brands and politicians, providing complex information about power.
You can view my work at www.allisonburtch.net.

Carl Jamilkowski

How would you build a better dating site/app? OkCarl is a research study that tests out how different demographics interact with certain dating site features.

http://www.okcarl.com/

Description

OkCarl is research into how people interact with online dating websites. The success of Tinder demonstrates that smaller, niche dating sites/apps use methods and features that can successfully be applied to the general population.
OkCarl started with researching what these unique features are, then ran experiments to see how participants react and use the features. The experiments collect many data points, serve up surveys to get participant feedback, and allow for participants to run them on their own. It is no frills design-wise, as to not introduce a bias.

Christina Carter

Restart Motion explores the possibilities for creatively repurposing images abandoned in the digital world. Using images with common objects found on the web, Restart Motion is a tool for creating dynamic animations.

Description

We take pictures to capture a moment but when we upload them to the web, the moment is lost as the picture becomes one of many in a massive catalog of similar images. How can meaning and motion be restored to these abandoned assets? Restart Motion, currently based in openFrameworks, is a software tool for creating animations using common objects in found imagery. Inspired by the process of stop-motion and aperiodic pattern formation, Restart Motion applies the process of repetition to generate a visual form that is far more complex and interesting than its constituent parts.