How design and theater can help mitigate issues related to global cultural, health, and environmental impending our world?
This is an ongoing project based at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC)
in collaboration with a global, IBM-led Design+Theater team:
• Jeff Nyhoff (IBM Global)
• Karla Rangel (IBM Global)
• Ron Majumdar (IBM Chicago)
The projects are being designed for exhibition in the CAVE2 VR
Environment in the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), which also invented
the first CAVE virtual reality environment in 1992.
Exhibited in the CAVE2, the projects explore how theater
methodologies, design and VR technology can enhance creative coding.
This exhibition showcases student team explorations of the Virtual Reality CAVE2 as a medium for the design of experimental solutions: responding to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals identified by the United Nations:
- -No Poverty
- -Zero Hunger
- -Good Health and Well-being
- -Quality Education
- -Gender Equality
- -Clean Water and Sanitation
- -Affordable and Clean Energy
- -Decent Work and Economic Growth
- -Reduced Inequality
- -Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
- -Sustainable Cities and Communities
- -Responsible Consumption and Production
- -Climate Action
- -Life Below Water
- -Life on Land<
- -Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
- -Partnerships for the Goals
Throughout the design process, students were asked to consider and explore
how the concepts, methodologies, and technologies of coding, theatre,
and typography could inform and invigorate their design solution in creating the
VR user experience for their chosen topic focusing on typography as an actor.
- Can the VR experience be designed in such a way that it contributes to both technological
and global environmental challenges and urges us toward a critique and interrogation of them?
- Can Creative Coding adapt theater and design methodologies to create
user experiences that are not only engaging but also edifying?
- How can theater Improvisation inform VR interaction?
- How can design solutions contribute to resolve relevant “burning” global problems?
