[UCI-Calit2] Wed. April 12: MULTIDISCIPLINARY DESIGN PROGRAM (MPD) SEMINAR SERIES/LUNCH

Sharon Henry sharon.henry at uci.edu
Fri Apr 8 16:20:57 PDT 2016


Envisioning Playful Fabrication

Wednesday, April 13, 11:45 a.m.
Calit2 (Building 325), Room 3008

Lunch available at 11:4 5a.m.; the seminar will begin at noon.
The seminar is open to the public. RSVP at http://goo.gl/forms/lGqfrCZ3qe

Dr. Joshua Tanenbaum
Assistant Professor
Dr. Karen Tanenbaum
Project Scientist
Department of Informatics
University of California, Irvine

ABSTRACT: In this talk, we discuss the idea of "Playful Fabrication", which aims to envision a future of personal fabrication technology where expressiveness, playfulness, and communication take precedence over practicality, functionality, and utility. The recent proliferation of affordable hobbyist grade 3D printers, laser cutters, and other fabrication technologies has led to an explosion of utopian claims about the future of personal fabrication and the reconfiguration of manufacturing and industrial infrastructures through DIY "making" practice. However, much of the conversation around small-scale personal fabrication has been mired in functionalist and utilitarian notions of these machines. In this sense, the current state of personal fabrication parallels the early days of the personal computer. It wasn't until computers could make music, create documents, play games and connect people together that there was a truly compelling narrative for a putting computer in the home. We hope to spark conversations around such questions as: How might we play a game by sending physical objects between networked printers? How do we engagingly teach the 3D literacy necessary for working with modeling software?  What kind of expressive user interface could such a system have?  How could personal fabrication act as a communication platform instead of simply a production system?

SPEAKER BIOS: Joshua Tanenbaum is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Informatics at UC Irvine. He is a member of the UCI Institute for Virtual Environments and Computer Games, the Laboratory for Ubiquitous Computing and Interaction, the EVOKE Lab, and a founding member of the Transformative Play Lab. His research includes studies of agency and identity transformation in games and digital narratives, maker and DIY subcultures, design fictions and future oriented human computer interaction, and tangible, wearable, and ubiquitous computing. In his (theoretical) spare time he creates steampunk artwork and costumes, makes games and occasionally writes music. Karen Tanenbaum is a Project Scientist at UC Irvine in the Department of Informatics and is co-founder of the Transformative Play Lab  and director of the Evoke Lab.  Her research explores tangible and ubiquitous computing paradigms and the application of artificial intelligence techniques to interactive storytelling and game design. She also studies Maker/DIY and Steampunk cultures, with a particular emphasis on their role in STEM education and the way they function as design fictions for possible alternative relationships to technology.

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