Students in the Digital Culture program share their projects every semester with faculty and other students at the Digital Culture showcase. Shown here is Matthew Briggs and John Carpenter’s project "Coral Works" from the Spring 2012 showcase. Photo courtesy of Erin JeffriesDigital culture students will reveal their semester’s work Friday afternoon at an exhibit on the Tempe campus.
The event, from noon to 5 p.m. in Stauffer Hall’s B-wing, is in an open house format in which the public is able to browse student creations.
Digital culture education coordinator Erin Jeffries works with students within the Digital Culture program. The staff selects showcase participants based on the quality of the student’s project.
Students in the program combine a variety of creative focuses, such as design, music, art, theater and media processing to invent their projects.
“Digital culture combines creativity with technology to improve human interaction and other facets of our world,” she said.
Students in the program blend technologies with creative components, Jeffries said.
“Our students push that boundary of how to merge tech with other disciplines,” she said. “For example, we have dancers working with engineers to create something really unique.”
She said the program encourages students to learn a wide set of skills.
“We want to prepare students for jobs that don’t exist yet,” Jeffries said.
Few universities offer undergraduate programs like the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts’ digital culture program, she added.
“The best part of my job is seeing our students’ projects,” she said. “At the showcase, I feel like I get to play. The projects are just cool.”
Jeffries said one of her favorite projects last year was a helicopter controlled by moving a person’s arms instead of a remote.
“When people come to our showcase and interact with our students, they realize how much potential there is in using technology in unfamiliar ways,” she said.
Digital culture junior Sarah Yoshisato, who has a concentration in arts studies, said she hopes to work in film as a music director one day.
She planned to major in art when she first came to ASU, but her adviser suggested taking a digital culture major to give her an edge in her field.
Yoshisato said she definitely made the right decision.
“I love it because it is so unique,” she said.
She is participating in the showcase on Friday with her partner, who has a concentration in design studies.
Together, they will present a music piece that combines five ideologies surrounding owls.
Yoshisato and her partner want to portray owl’s foolishness, art, wisdom, supernatural danger and death.
Owl masks will be set up on stage as the two preform.
The owls’ eyes will be set up to move along with how the two move during the choreographed performance.
Tain Barzso, instructional technology analyst for the digital culture department, helps students set up video cameras and connect modules, laptops, 3-D software and other technological equipment for the showcases.
Barzso said the event is a very high-energy production.
“It’s really cool to see a number of bright people come together,” he said.
He said it is fun to see the students bring together arts, media and programming.
“They, in a way, hack technologies and use them in new interactive ways,” Barzso said.
Around 30 to 35 students will be showing off work, and a few hundred people are expected to filter through the exhibition.
Reach the reporter at hblawren@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @hannah_lawr
