Anthropocene XR Lab – Visualizing Cities in XR: Activating the Presence of the Past

You are cordially invited to Anthropocene XR Lab’s Talk Series: Activating the Presence of the Past with Professor Victoria Szabo, Research Professor of Art, Art History & Visual Studies at Duke University.

Date and Time: Dec 2, 10-11 am, BJT
Zoom ID: 959 8351 3551; Passcode: XRLAB
Speaker: Prof. Victoria Szabo

Talk Introduction:

The international Visualizing Cities consortium has taken a multimodal and interactive approach to invoking the presence of the past in exhibitions and lived experience of space and time, on site and on location.  XR, when intersecting with digital humanities approaches to history and culture, offers us promising new ways to tell complex stories, share information, and generate critique. This talk will explore the goals and methods of diverse visualizing cities projects utilizing XR in Venice, Italy; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Providence, Rhode Island, highlighting themes of comprehension, apprehension, agency, and authority, and considering opportunities (and risks) for future development of the field.

Continue reading “Anthropocene XR Lab – Visualizing Cities in XR: Activating the Presence of the Past”

Student Report on Improving Accessibility and Inclusion of Social VR for People with Disabilities 

This lecture by Professor Yuhang Zhao was a part of HRC’s Anthropocene XR Lab‘s Talk Series. Click here for upcoming events from the Lab.

Reported by Vicky Yongkun Wu, Class of 2026.

Social VR refers to VR platforms where people communicate and socialize in the form of avatars. With the advancement of technology, social VR is increasingly influencing the next generation. However, current VR technology mainly relies on realistic visual feedback to provide an immersive experience to sighted people. Most VR applications are not accessible to visually impaired people, preventing them from benefiting from this important class of emerging technology. Prof Yuhang Zhao’s talk focused on her research on social VR accessibility and inclusion.

Continue reading “Student Report on Improving Accessibility and Inclusion of Social VR for People with Disabilities “

Anthropocene XR Lab Presents: Accessibility and Inclusion of Social VR for People with Disabilities 

This event has passed. The recording is now available:

Guest Speaker: Prof. Yuhang Zhao
Date and Time: Nov 9, 9:15-10:15 am, Beijing Time.
Zoom ID: 989 5768 1032; Passcode: XRLAB

Talk Introduction

Social VR has the potential to become the next generation of the Internet. However, current VR technology mainly relies on realistic visual feedback to provide an immersive experience to sighted people. Most VR applications are not accessible to visually impaired people, preventing them from benefiting from this important class of emerging technology. In this talk, I’ll describe my research on social VR accessibility and inclusion, where we explore avatar accessibility and inclusion for disabled people and design audio-based VR techniques to make avatar dynamics in social VR accessible to visually impaired people. I will also reflect on general accessibility guidelines for VR.

Continue reading “Anthropocene XR Lab Presents: Accessibility and Inclusion of Social VR for People with Disabilities “

Anthropocene XR Lab Calls for Projects: Student Hackathon

Open to all DKU students interested in XR (VR/AR) and environmental designs!

In teams of 2-3, submit your project proposals to get:

  • Funding: up to ¥ 5,000 per project
  • Equipment support: VR headset, AR glasses, etc.
  • Mentorship; indicate a DKU faculty mentor/seek mentorship from XR lab co-directors

Key Dates:

10 Oct 2022: Deadline for proposal submission
17 Oct 2022: Notification of acceptance
Nov-Dec 2022: Hackathon period Continue reading “Anthropocene XR Lab Calls for Projects: Student Hackathon”

XR Workshop #4: Basic VR Interactions

Join HRC Anthropocene XR Lab in our online workshop [Basic VR Interactions], #4 of the XR workshop, seminar, and hackathon series! The keynote speaker Tony Ren, Data Science major from the class of 2023, will introduce the basics of setting up VR devices and designing some of the fundamental VR interactions such as teleporting and grabbing.

Date/Time: Aug 11, 8-9pm BJT
Zoom:  982 6430 7629
Passcode: 889357 Continue reading “XR Workshop #4: Basic VR Interactions”

Anthropocene XR Lab AR Campus Co-Design Workshop Participant Recruitment

Hi, everyone! We are designing an Augmented Reality (AR) mobile app – DKU AR Campus to augment information and fun activities into our physical campus. And we’re currently conducting research to investigate how augmented reality technology can support spatial digital interaction between people and the environment. In this research, we would like to invite you to answer the survey questions, talk about your thoughts and ideas, and also look at our user interface at a workshop to improve the design and features of this application. We would like to hear “what does your dream AR campus look like?”

If you are interested in taking part in our study, please fill out this survey and we will invite a total of 20 people to the workshop later based on your willingness, interests, and availability. The workshops will be held from July 30 to Aug 2. Continue reading “Anthropocene XR Lab AR Campus Co-Design Workshop Participant Recruitment”

Humanities Research Center Current Research Projects

The Humanities Research Center proudly announces the current research projects being conducted by the HRC labs. We invite you stay in touch with updates on each of these projects by checking the news sections of our website and following our weekly newsletter.

ANTHROPOCENE XR LAB

PROJECT 1
Title: The Neganthropocene and Arts (Case studies in China)
Who: Prof. Jung Choi, Meixuan Wang, Yujia Zhai
Project summary: Inspired by the notion of Neganthropocene by a French Philosopher, Bernard Stiegler, the study explores innovative tactics by Chinese emerging artists that challenge the human-centered logic of understanding the world.

PROJECT 2
Title: DKU Augmented Reality (AR) Campus
Who: Prof. Xin Tong, Prof. Jung Choi, student researchers Qingyang He, Tony Ren, Weiran Li, and Ruiqi Chen
Project summary: In the research, we are creating an AR mobile app, DKU AR Campus, and investigating how augmented reality technology can support spatial digital co-creation and social interaction. We aim to understand multi-users’ social dynamics and examine their co-creation behaviors in an embodied AR context and derive design implications to shed light on future research. Continue reading “Humanities Research Center Current Research Projects”

XR Workshop #3: UI Design with Figma

Join HRC Anthropocene XR Lab in our online workshop [UI Design with Figma], #3 of the XR workshop, seminar, and hackathon series! The keynote speaker Qingyang He, Media and Arts major from the class of 2024, will introduce the Figma interface and two popular features of Figma for UI design, vector networks and gradient mask. She will also present a UI case study of lightweight drawing softwares and explain the creative applications of UI design principles.

Time: July 14, 8-9pm China time
Zoom: 918 3678 2672
Passcode: 172288

About the Anthropocene XR Lab: we focus on projects that explore both living and hypothetical scenarios of human interactions with the environment using XR technologies. We are interested in how, in combination of physical and virtual environment, we can expand our understanding of human beings and nature. For more information, please visit https://sites.duke.edu/dkuhumanities/projects/anthropocene-xr-lab/.

 

人文研究中心旗下的人类世XR实验室将举办XRVR/AR)研讨会及黑客马拉松活动系列的第三场线上工作坊:【使用Figma设计UI界面】。来自 DKU 2024 媒体艺术专业的主讲人何清扬将介绍Figma界面的使用,以及UI设计中最常用到的Figma两大功能突破:矢量图标绘制和渐变效果遮罩。她还会为大家带来轻量化绘图软件UI设计的案例分析,并阐释案例中的设计法则能怎样被运用于创意实践。

Student Report: Anthropocene XR Lab: A Beginner’s Guide to Unity Game Engine

Reported by Josh Manto, DKU Undergraduate Class of 2024

On the second of June 2022, the HRC Anthropocene Lab hosted a workshop on Unity Game Engine, a development platform often used for application, website, and game development. The workshop was facilitated by Leiyuan Tian and was taught by Tony Ren, both of whom are from the class of 23’. From covering basic interface navigation, understanding hierarchies, to more in-depth concepts like game physics and scripting, Tony and Leiyuan were successful in providing a beginner-friendly tutorial to Unity game engine.

Tony showing us the the preliminaries, which include downloading Unity Game Engine, and an IDE (integrated development environment) such as Visual Studio Code to write scripts. After downloading all preliminary software, Tony explains the basics: Continue reading “Student Report: Anthropocene XR Lab: A Beginner’s Guide to Unity Game Engine”