Student Work

These photos represent the projects students created in my courses.

Exploring and Designing Virtual Worlds

For the final project, students were tasked with creating an immersive virtual environment using Mozilla Spoke using 3D models created in Maya and hosted on Mozilla Hubs. They were encouraged to use theories of immersion, embodiment, and game design to craft their virtual worlds. Each group exceeded my expectations.

This group created a sculpture museum that morphed into a horror experience. 

This group created an immersive environment that was meant to evoke feelings of spookiness and coziness at the same time.

This group created an environment that told a story about the deadly murder that happened in it through the objects that players look at.

This group created a virtual environment that taught users about ocean pollution and conservation.

Communication Media in a Changing World

Students had the option of either writing an essay about a historical or modern communication technology or creating a hands-on project that helped us understand (or intervene in) a sociotechnical infrastructure or societal issue). These photos represent the latter. Following Ratto & Hertz (2019), being critical in the context of critical making “starts by denaturalizing standard assumptions, values, and norms in order to reflect on the position and role of specific technologies within society” (22). I challenged students to “tactically intervene and disrupt traditional models of technological development” (22) and sociotechnical systems. Their primary method of this critical work is via a “materially-based mode of tactile practice” (22).

Projects included an AI fake news generator to comment on how AI proliferates misinformation, upcycled scrunchies that comment on fast fashion and its impact on the environment, a 3D printed sculpture contrasting new and old technology, and screenshots of a video game meant to represent the negative effects of social media use.