Exploring Feng Shui: A Real-Time Learning Experience

Exploring feng shui: The 3D Real-time Experience is an interactive 3D design project that introduces daily feng shui tips to college students, office workers, and anyone who wants to learn how feng shui can enhance their lives. This project uses Web GL technology that runs on any computer with an up-to-date, modern browser. The user flow is a simple four-step process: listen, observe, find, and solve. This is how feng shui masters help people figure out their problems. It is an engaging practice because users become actively involved in the whole problem-solving experience. My goal for this project is to present the principles and rules of feng shui philosophy, as well as its applications in modern interior design and to interpret feng shui through creative interactive experience. I wish that by introducing feng shui to a new western audience, they can benefit from learning feng shui theories and improve their living environment. Thesis URL: http://fengshuirealtime.co

Beautiful dirt : exploring the American taboo of death through the things we leave behind

‘Beautiful Dirt’ is a project meant to help people think about death as a way to learn and grow, rather than a ‘never happening’ taboo. Contemporary research into western dialogues around death show a consistent anxiety towards being forgotten, as well as a fear of being a burden when passing away. The abject nature of the topic leaves people diminishing the weight of the things they leave behind, and the things they forget to. This perpetuates a cycle of denial in order to avoid stress, emburdening loved ones with an unplanned mass of personal items and piecemeal stories to assemble, culminating in an anxious end-of-life care experience, all due to the lack of any platform to process these inaccessible emotions. In order to help break down the fears around death planning in aging populations, this project proposes the introduction of a new ‘tombstone’ archetype, alongside a prompted ‘on-boarding’ journaling method meant to be filled with life stories. The tombstone functions as a family memorial archive which houses all of a deceased person’s journal stories, alongside any physical mementos people choose to place when visiting. The purpose of creating these two active objects is to: a) Help localize a person’s stories in a ritualized space, so they maintain meaning and allow family / close peoples to access intimate moments that would otherwise be lost. b) Facilitate intergenerational understanding through publicly accessible personal histories. c) Familiarize western people to a communal and reciprocal death dialogue, relieving stress in the death-planning process through habit-formed self-reflection.. d) Mitigate the common sense of purposelessness and anxiety found in elderly retirement communities. e) Break away from the classist and traditionally hierarchical tropes of ‘lot-style’ cemeteries, shifting to a more space conscious and ecologically circular alternative

FUNdamentalist DOLLS

Department Head: Gary Wayne Voss.2010 Spring.Includes bibliographical references (pages 55-60).To view the abstract, please see the full text of the document

Innovator - Spring 2020

05 - Message from the President 08 - The Past is a Prologue 15 - Shrinking World/Expanding Horizons 16 - The Nexus: News at Jefferson 20 - Jefferson Hits the Runway at NYFW 22 - A Game Changer 26 - Binge Swatching 30 - Breaking Down the Walls 38 - Coming Full Circle 44 - Question and Innovate 46 - Designer Health 50 - The Site is the Star 54 - Transcend and Include 60 - Reimagine 64 - Ram Roundup 68 - Class Notes 74 - In Memory 78 - Triv

Apocalypse in Anime: Shifting Boundaries of Human Technology Interface

Anime is the definitive postmodern genre through which to portray apocalyptic narratives as it provides an imaginative liminal site that transcends any specific culture and ethnicity, and through which global concerns can be investigated. The study of apocalypse in selected anime - Japanese animated film and television - is beneficial at the outset o f the 21st century when we are beset with catastrophes both ecological and technological that are recognizably manufactured by some degree of human involvement. This examination is pertinent to disciplines as diverse as communications, cultural theory, anthropology, film, cyborg studies, Asian studies, and English literature. The dystopian settings and destructive elements in apocalyptic anime can be used in diverse and complex ways to comment on characterresponsetoupheavalanddisaster. Bystimulatingdiscussionthrough exploration of anime narratives, this popular culture product offers a pervasive and rich vocabulary with which to consider our reactions to adversity. This thesis demonstrates how the study of apocalypse through anime narratives is relevant to a greater understanding of our own behavior in reaction to apocalyptic circumstances

Actor & Avatar: A Scientific and Artistic Catalog

What kind of relationship do we have with artificial beings (avatars, puppets, robots, etc.)? What does it mean to mirror ourselves in them, to perform them or to play trial identity games with them? Actor & Avatar addresses these questions from artistic and scholarly angles. Contributions on the making of "technical others" and philosophical reflections on artificial alterity are flanked by neuroscientific studies on different ways of perceiving living persons and artificial counterparts. The contributors have achieved a successful artistic-scientific collaboration with extensive visual material

The impact of streaming services and video-on-demand on the cinematic exhibition industry: taking an experiential approach

Streaming services and video-on-demand completely reshaped the cinematic industry, as people now have more convenient alternatives to the traditional movie-going experience. One can say that audiences have fallen out of love and are now disengaged with movie theatres. As such, movie exhibitors are losing business all over the world, including in Portugal, and they need to reimagine themselves. With this in mind, this dissertation will start off by reviewing topics such as brand love and engagement. Both of these are recognized to foster customer satisfaction and loyalty. One of the most interesting conclusions is that both appear to be deeply embedded in brand experiences and co-created value. Thusly, the following topic will revolve around brand experiences and how experiential marketing enhances the interactions and the relationship between consumers and brands. Lastly, this dissertation will attempt to understand if experiential practices are a good fit to the cinematic exhibition industry, and if they have the potential to take Portuguese viewers back to movie theatres. To do this, primary research was conducted where respondents were presented with an experiential scenario to complement their typical movie-going experience. This study provides some interesting ones, along with important insights for the cinematic industry in Portugal. The participants responded overwhelmingly positive to the experiential scenarios, which enhance the brand experience overall. Regarding behavioural intentions and commitment, the results were also encouraging, with respondents feeling like these scenarios would increase their connection to the brand and they would encourage them to be more frequent moviegoers.Os serviços de streaming e de video-on-demand reformularam por completo a indústria cinemática, uma vez que oferecem uma alternativa mais conveniente à tradicional ida ao cinema. Como tal, os exibidores de cinema em todo mundo têm perdido cada vez mais terreno, e Portugal não é exceção, necessitando de se reinventar rapidamente. Com isto em mente, esta dissertação irá começar por analisar tópicos como brand love e brand engagement. Ambos são academicamente reconhecidos por gerar elevados níveis de satisfação e lealdade nos consumidores. Umas das mais importantes ilações é que ambos aparecem frequentemente associados a experiências de marca e valor co-criado. Portanto, o seguinte tópico irá incidir sobre o tema de experiências de marca e a maneira como estas abordagens promovem melhor relação entre consumidores e marca. Por fim, esta dissertação irá procurar perceber se práticas experienciais poderão ser aplicadas na indústria, se têm o potencial para devolver os Portugueses às salas de cinema. Para tal, foi levada a cabo um estudo onde foi apresentado um cenário experiencial aos respondentes, cenário esse que complementa a sua experiência de ida ao cinema. Consequentemente, este estudo é capaz de retirar algumas conclusões relevantes para a indústria. Os participantes demonstraram reações muito positivas quando confrontados com cenários experienciais que, por sua vez, contribuem para a experiência da marca no geral. Em termos comportamentais, os resultados revelam que os participantes sentem que estes cenários iriam melhorar a sua relação com a marca e encorajá-los a serem parte de uma audiência mais assídua nos cinemas

Hamburger Helper Recipes

Hamburger Helper Recipes is a collection of essays and public addresses that aim to recuperate castoff and misfit material surrounding industries and tools which produce science-fiction fantasies, specifically videogames and television shows. The following essays confront the normative violence of capitalism, whiteness, and hetero-patriarchy that socially and technologically haunt these imaginary worlds and build hegemonic idealogy into their audiences. This collection takes industrial materials and software from their intended commercial purposes of production and “success” into places of abjection and quiet breakdown. The author’s own proximity to masculine and often toxic work cultures\u27\u27 within industrial spaces of coding and manufacturing has informed a practice of humor and play based in a conflicted love for industrial material. As it looks critically inward and outward from its own positionality, Hamburger Helper Recipes oscillates in relation to the inside or outside of that which is “standard”. The notion of a queer operative within these spaces is proposed as an undercover catalyst for the reimagination of these tools into tender co-conspirators or facilitators charged to break down taboo barriers imposed by normative, capitalist culture and model new relationships between individuals and collectives

Investigating User Experience Using Gesture-based and Immersive-based Interfaces on Animation Learners

Creating animation is a very exciting activity. However, the long and laborious process can be extremely challenging. Keyframe animation is a complex technique that takes a long time to complete, as the procedure involves changing the poses of characters through modifying the time and space of an action, called frame-by-frame animation. This involves the laborious, repetitive process of constantly reviewing results of the animation in order to make sure the movement-timing is accurate. A new approach to animation is required in order to provide a more intuitive animating experience. With the evolution of interaction design and the Natural User Interface (NUI) becoming widespread in recent years, a NUI-based animation system is expected to allow better usability and efficiency that would benefit animation. This thesis investigates the effectiveness of gesture-based and immersive-based interfaces as part of animation systems. A practice-based element of this research is a prototype of the hand gesture interface, which was created based on experiences from reflective practices. An experimental design is employed to investigate the usability and efficiency of gesture-based and immersive-based interfaces in comparison to the conventional GUI/WIMP interface application. The findings showed that gesture-based and immersive-based interfaces are able to attract animators in terms of the efficiency of the system. However, there was no difference in their preference for usability with the two interfaces. Most of our participants are pleasant with NUI interfaces and new technologies used in the animation process, but for detailed work and taking control of the application, the conventional GUI/WIMP is preferable. Despite the awkwardness of devising gesture-based and immersive-based interfaces for animation, the concept of the system showed potential for a faster animation process, an enjoyable learning system, and stimulating interest in a kinaesthetic learning experience