Design Media Electives explore advanced topics in representation, computation, visual culture, and fabrication. The content of the elective options varies from semester to semester.Section Description:Phenomenology of Digital Perception (PDP) tackles a new emerging topic in the realm of Virtual Reality and/or Augmented Reality each year. During the semester students will be introduced to Virtual Reality headsets, Mixed Reality headsets, Projected Augmented Reality hardware, 360 degree cameras, 3d scanning applications, and Augmented Reality smartphone/tablet apps. This understanding will supplement the building blocks of the PDP curriculum of learning how video game engines, specifically Unreal and Unity, can influence the perception of physical and digital environments through the examination of interactive spatial software. This work will be conducted alongside a critical reading of the history of gamespaces and the potential of design and artistic workflows to use these elements to engage contemporary workflows. The class engages the act of "level design" in game design terms to create spatial environments for interaction, while opening up questions of how we perceive both the digital and the physical worlds.For Spring 2025, the course will introduce all topics, but will focus primarily upon opportunities within Augmented Reality. The class will determine the parameters for this work, but we will seek to supplement the physical with the digital, or perhaps supplement the digital with the physical, through a series of student projects and presentations throughout the semester.The course requires a computer capable of running the free UNITY game engine (www.unity3d.com) and/or the free Unreal Engine 5 (www.unrealengine.com).

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