Online social networks and video games are prevalent in today’s society, and using both video game characters and social networking profiles cam potentially be used to help people better understand others’ experiences, delivering meaningful experiences which enable critical reflection upon one’s identity, and on others’ experiences related to identity. However, merely customizing graphical representations and text fields are insufficient to convey the richness of our real world identities.
"Strategies for Arts + Science + Technology Research"
CMS professor Fox Harrell, along with colleagues from the National Science Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts, have released a key report examining how the arts, sciences, and technology can overcome decades of diverging interests and practices. [Read More]
Interview with Fox Harrell: "How An Artist-Scientist Conjurer Thinks, Works and Lives"
Our thanks to Anne Khaminwa for conducting this great interview with Fox Harrell for the International Review of African American Art: [Read More]
Podcast: Fox Harrell and the Imagination, Computation, and Expression Lab [Listen]
NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant talk on the GeNIE project (Sept 2010)
The Advanced Identity Representation (AIR) Project ($535,060/5 years, NSF CAREER Award #0952896) is a new transdisciplinary approach to the problem of designing identity technologies to enable imaginative self-representations and to counter social stigmas by implementing dynamic social identity models grounded in computing and cognitive science.
The Gestural Narrative Interactive Expression (GeNIE) Project (NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant) aims to develop and better understanding the use of gestural interfaces for expressive works of interactive narrative. Gestural interfaces have become more popular with the increasing prevalence of systems such as the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Kinect for Xbox 360, mobile phones with multi-touch screens and built-in gyroscopes and accelerometers, and laptop computers equipped with touchpads.
The Living Liberia Fabric, initiated in affiliation with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Liberia, is an interactive, web-based narrative supporting the goal of lasting peace after years of civil war (1979-2003). It links concerns for liberation, dignity, and the future with needs for cultural foundations, human rights, truth, and reconciliation. Our system is based in Liberia's culture and the specifics of the conflicts, hence representing our cultural computing perspective.
Loss, Undersea is an interactive narrative/multimedia semantics project by Fox Harrell in which a character moving through a standard workday encounters a world submerging into the depths -- a double-scope story of banal life blended with a fantastic Atlantean metaphor. As a user selects emotion-driven actions for the character to perform, the character transforms -- sea creature extensions protrude and calcify around him -- and poetic text narrating his loss of humanity and the human world undersea ensues.
The Imagination, Computation, and Expression Laboratory (ICE Lab) researches and develops computing systems for creative expression, cultural analysis, and social change. Our research and development work includes new forms of gaming, interactive narrative, social media, digital media art, and, most importantly, creative computing forms unanticipated by any of those.
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D. Fox Harrell, Ph.D.; ICE Lab Director;
Professor of Digital Media & AI, MIT
