Spring 2021 Presentations
This semester we’re featuring two of our classes’ final presentations: Arts Innovations and Augmented/Virtual Reality.
Arts Innovations
For the second consecutive semester, the College of Visual and Performing Arts’ Sophomore Studio class navigated how to collaborate, design, and build performance pieces through online formats. Students used various technologies, such as Bluescape to develop personalized expressive performances, which were enacted during their final presentations.
It is fascinating watching students of this generation, who are virtual natives, learn about and respond to new technology. This cohort, similar to our last, has responded so well to the technological challenges that have arisen around the idea of designing, building, and performing live-virtual artistic collaborative pieces. It has been so wonderful to watch them engage the technology that will help them redefine the artistic landscape. We have worked hard to have this devising class focus not only on process and product but also on the platform. This third “p” has allowed us to continue to work with the students on standard devising practices, but in a way that engages relevant and up-coming practices
Students have gone from little to no knowledge of VR, AR, 360 photography, Unity development, and spatial computing to having gained understanding and skills proficiency in each of these technical areas and more, enabling them to design and develop proof of concepts for three exciting projects.
Augmented/Virtual Reality
This semester, the AR/VR class built solutions to three different areas of need:
- A training program for locating neurophysiological landmarks using NeuroAlert’s electrode technology
- An accessible VR tour that fully captures the physical beauty of JMU’s campus as well as the special community within
- A career discovery experience that showcases career pathways to students in grades K-12 to give them exposure to jobs that can otherwise be difficult to understand.
