Envision

Collaborate

Iteration

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Physical Fabrication

Persephone VR aims to offer open-source virtual reality hardware and software equal in performance to leading brands, with the added benefits of user replication and freedom of modification. The functional goal being used in development is the Oculus Quest Two, capabilities of note include inside out spatial and controller tracking, lens and screen quality, and ease of use. The current prototype includes a base headset with full lens focusing, accelerometer data, and two cameras for optical tracking. Future goals include optical tracking software, improved ergonomics, and higher quality displays.

I felt very successful in this studio and feel I grew both my physical fabrication and design skills as well as exploring a wide variety of concepts and approaches to solving problems. During the course of this studio I grew a much better understanding of the field of VR and the possible future scope of our development. I was able to work hand in hand with Hunter to effectively integrate my hardware development and his software development to create an interconnected system. We are both already considering how we will be moving forward with development and have a robust vision for the future.

Envision

Engage & Persist

Physical Fabrication

Project Paragraph

Growth Paragraph

Image 1

Image 3

Image 4

Iteration

 Ever bored of your furniture and want to change things up, or are you looking for small lightweight furniture that can seat 20 people? Now introducing Modchair. Modchair is a kit that comes with twenty cubes, each with pegs and holes. The cubes can be arranged in any way you like! Have guests coming over? No problem, just assemble the cubes into a configuration that works for you. The cubes have an interlocking mechanism the uses pegs and holes designed to balance weight and provide a strong sturdy base. The cubes come in many materials ranging from leather to velvet and cotton, as well as a large variety of colors that bring your space to life!

 During this Open Innovation, I overcame many challenges and bumps in the road. I learned how to work by myself, how to keep myself on track, and how to manage my time well. Working by myself was something that I hadn't done before for a project like this. I wasn't sure if I was going to get the project done or if I had the skillset to even do it. But I focused on what I knew, and before long I found myself in a good position for final presentation. Another challenge I overcame was building the 1/3 scale cubes. It took more time then I planned for, and by the time I finished, I had one day left to do my renders for the design expo. I found that setting daily goals really came in handy this project and I now feel confident in working by myself.

Collaborate

Engage and persist

Writing

Project Paragraph

Growth Paragraph

Reading & Media Literacy

A Suit of Storm and Steel story about a person who was from a more 'modern' future who was frozen for over 10 000 years and ended up in the 'past' which is a mix of the middle ages, roman/renaissance and fantasy civilizations where he has to survive this new world. I created this story with my partner, who I had to discuss and debate many details and other parts about that would help build this world. This project was meant to basically play on some tropes of man out of time and genres like sci-fi, fantasy and apocalypses, otherwise, this story was written to essentially introduce readers to a world that was similar yet different from but otherwise was a story written for the sake of writing a story.

During the project I improved upon my collaboration and Engaging and persisting. This was especially important as this project was writing based and I had a partner to work with on this story and we had to share our ideas and workflow. As it turns out our strengths and weaknesses augmented each others as what I struggled with my partner was able to do really well and what Z couldn't do I could. Examples of this include the various edits to the writing suggested by Chris, an example of something which he helped with was pointing out how I had quite frequently written with a passive voice rather than an active voice, which I changed to and made a difference in the story flow.

Engage & Persist

Express

Concept Development

Project Paragraph

Growth Paragraph

Physical Fabrication

This project aims to help make the corner studio feel less empty. When the corner studio was previously the coaches area, there was a large amount of plants and greenery that made the space feel more alive. Our idea for a mural was to bring NuVu's values as well as organic shapes and flowers back into the space through a physical art installation made up of detachable plywood tiles.

The artwork depicts a student focused on their work, and we as the viewer watch them learn and iterate.

Throughout the course of this project we spent a lot of time iterating and discussing our ideas. However, due to our larger group size it was sometimes a challenge to settle on something everyone liked. So I had to learn how to lead in a way that incorporates and respects the other voices in the room as well as to know when I need to make a decision for the group. Additional I had to work with a style of art and process I'm not that familiar with, so I spent a large amount of time trying to find the best way to approach certain obstacles. I encouraged my group members to use their particular strengths to work on aspects of the mural, which helped us work well together and successfully create a final installation.

Collaborate

Engage and persist

Material exploration

Project Paragraph

Growth Paragraph

Iteration

Our project was to create a modular terrain board to play games such as Warhammer and DnD on. The purpose of the board was to be easy to build on your own with inexpensive but high quality materials like Styrofoam for bases, painted sawdust for grass, dirt for dirt, and more so it is cheap to make for small clubs like we are. The original plan was to make one big board that wasn't modular and was seven feet long. We had to later change to a much smaller board around 3 feet. We also had to make it modular to have a board that can be used in different ways.

I've always wanted to be able to make terrain boards, but I've never had the time or resources to do it, so after this OI, I now have the skills to push myself and collaborate with others to achieve my goals. One example is we had a lot of tedious work making grass and gluing it to cut and painted blocks. We had to make the board as cheap as possible so it is easy to recreate, so we had to make sure to use cheap materials and easy ways of using them.

Engage & Persist

Colaborate

Writing

Project Paragraph

Growth Paragraph

Image 1

Image 2

Image 4

Iteration

Pass-through is a 3550 word illustrated short story about a dysfunctional family who is poorly dealing with the loss of the erratic father. The concept started very vague and narrowed down and shifted throughout the OI, largely due to feedback given by our coach and peers. Originally it was going to be a ghost story, but we got a lot of very strong feedback that ghosts were overused and unoriginal, so we completely removed ghosts and instead used a character reminiscing in a similar part of the story. We made diagrams of character relationships and feelings, an outline, and building layouts to help streamline the writing process, which was that one of us (me, for most but not all of the story) would write a passage or scene and the others would go through and change wording, remove details that were extraneous or untrue in-world, and all in all make it cleaner and flow better.

The main thing I had to learn about and grow on over the course of this studio is working with someone when you don't particularly like each other and your working styles are very different. This is a thing I've had trouble with in the past, but usually I've been able to just not interact with someone who bothers me. Being placed in a group with someone really forced me to mature in this way. My other main point of growth was in my writing. My writing partner gave me a lot of feedback on my writing, and while I didn't like, it was mostly really good feedback that made our project - and more importantly my writing in general - a lot better. I'm grateful for this experience, and I think I will look back on it as important.

Express

Collaborate

Iteration

Project Paragraph

Growth Paragraph

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Material Exploration

For open innovation, I worked on a combat robot project. We decided to make this project to try to learn more and be creative in our designs, as well as show other people that they can make cool, complicated projects. We also made a video to show our progress. It works using a LiPo battery, an RC receiver, a brushed motor controller, and two brushed motors for the drive system. Our robot also has a flipper mechanism, which works using an Arduino and brushed motor attached to a snail cam to wind up a spring to flip. It is all organized using compartments for each component. The top and bottom plates are currently made of wood, but our next step for this project would be to order them in steel. The side plates were made out of 3d-printed TPU for shock absorption, and the parts that had to be stiffer were PLA. I think that over the course of this project, we improved at our goal of learning more about different materials, and CAD, and I think that our video shows our process well.

During open innovation, I grew at collaboration, expression, iteration, and material exploration. I grew at collaboration because this was my first project at NuVu where I worked with other people on the same idea. I grew at expressing our ideas because we had to explain our project to lots of different people and develop a concept statement to tell people about our project. I grew at iterating because during open innovation we went through lots of iterations very quickly, both for individual parts and the overall idea. I grew at material exploration because we used 3D printing a lot during this project. We cast our own urethane wheels, we used different thicknesses of plywood on the laser cutter, and we considered how some pieces could be made out of metal.

Express

Collaborate

Media Literacy

Project Paragraph

Growth Paragraph

Physical Fabrication

The Unerasable Project is a series of monuments celebrating the solidarity, defiance, and resilience inherent to the queer experience. An Unerasable Project monument comprises two parts: the silhouette and the plaque. The silhouette is an all-black, spray chalk art piece depicting a person or event that is significant to queer action within a community. The plaque is a black wooden slate that tells the story the monument is celebrating. Along the frame of the plaque there are engravings of protesters going all the way around the frame and partly breaking out of the implied borders of the plaque. Inside the frame is a writing piece outlining the events that took place at the installation location. The story is written after a series of interviews with all involved parties and aims to relate very personal and intimate stories to a greater narrative of queer experience. When viewed as a whole an Unerarabsle Project monument uses art to reclaim space for parts of the queer experience that don’t get the monuments they deserve. Making queer people and they’re impact unerasable.

Entering into O.I was mainly focusing on how I could refine my existing design. I had an event to prepare for, I was still very excited to work in the framework I had set up, and I was proud of myself for having successfully navigated my way to a generative concept. However, when I came into O.I so many of the constraints that I had been working within disappeared. I had the opportunity to go back to the drawing board with a new group of teammates and rethink what stories I wanted to tell. When we did go back into the brainstorming phase it was difficult for me to separate myself from my previous design. I was still operating within the constraints that the previous studio had imposed. I had to push myself out of that space, and really reach for some new and exciting ideas. Through the help of my teammates and my own personal experience in concept development, I was able to not only find new and interesting ways to approach a concept, but I was able to refine an idea to its immutable attributes. This distillation of a concept leads to a very firm grasp of what story I am telling. Building from that story and informing each one of my design decisions from that story is how I was able to achieve such a cohesive and successful project.

express

collaborate

physical fabrication

Project Paragraph

Growth Paragraph

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

2d modeling

Unerasable is a series of monuments celebrating the solidarity, defiance, and resilience inherent to the queer experience. Using street art aesthetically inspired by the radical queer movements of the 1970s, Unerasable reclaims space for the parts of queer experience that have been buried for public view. Thus making the impact of queer people Unerasable. the final is a silhouette made from spray chalk as well as a laser cut plaque painted black with the story of sam a former NuVu student who helped de gender the NuVu bathrooms

I helped create the plaque by using rhino creating the small people around the edges and placing them into positions creating a well balanced plaque. I helped with the silhouette placing the lines of tape which make the silhouette look more detailed when pulled off this. this silhouette was the final iteration and was placed outside of nuvu. I was absent for a couple days and felt confused about my role in the project but through persistence I was able to get my groove back

Express

Collaborate

iteration/concept dev

Project Paragraph

Growth Paragraph

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

fabrication

Mass Perspective is an exhibition that comments on how overwhelming the current media and information system can be and aims to help the viewer understand the biases in the media they consume and how their biases draw them to certain mediums.

A table is installed in the corner of the room where the exhibit is with a map of the mass and cass area. The left wall has projections of news report videos, the right has magazines, newspapers, and images, all from different sources reporting on Mass and Cass. Two phones have feeds from Twitter and Facebook which present alternate opinions, as well as a podcast about the issue.

During OI, I practiced my skills in collaboration with my team which consisted of two students in person and one student across the states who was with us via Zoom. We learned how to communicate better with our partner on Zoom after the first week by enforcing a schedule and being very clear with descriptions of ideas and articulating our thoughts. The concept we started the project with was to make a book which presented different communication mediums through history. Now, after many different iterations for our concept, we have landed on following a specific news story - Mass and Cass - and presenting it through many outlets of information such as social media, newspaper, magazines, news sites and radio. by the least week, we had to fabricate the entire exhibit in order for it to convey our idea clearly, and will and I stayed late working on making the physical prototype and installing it.