Research Project on Mixed Reality Humanities Events
This academic year, I will be working with Emerson College professors Eric Gordon and John Craig Freeman on an exciting new media project titled “Digital Lyceum” funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Here’s a bit from Eric’s recent blog post:
This project explores the virtual architecture of the live humanities event. In other words, we’re interested in identifying how back-channels (from virtual worlds to information streams) can enhance the learning and experiential capacity of a live lecture or performance . . .
In the short term, we have promised the NEH that we will research how this work is currently taking place and produce a website that includes best practices and ideas. We hope to communicate with those who are building tools and those who are implementing those tools in innovative ways. We hope to provide a resource for anyone interested in staging mixed reality events.
I’m setting up a number of online research tools for collaboration and hopefully to encourage public participation in this project. I’ve installed a WordPress blog at AugmentedPlace.org where we’ll be documenting our work and and sharing our findings online. After these project tools have been set-up, I’ll move towards compiling a list of resources for our database and best practices report.
It’s an exciting project that connects my digital media production background and research interests in this area. I’m looking forward to being part of the team.
