Dr Eve Klein has received funding as part of a Research Infrastructure Investment Scheme to build an immersive media arts laboratory titled What-If Lab: XR Space.
The space will be a laboratory for developing innovative, immersive artworks; incorporating digital media that will be created across UQ disciplines and in collaboration with community and industry. It will foster transdisciplinary projects for creating film, literature, art, games/software and performance works.
The What-If Lab is a new HASS research initiative which uses arts driven research and public engagement projects to solve global problems and imagine new futures.
The XR Space will provide capacity for the What-If Lab to produce creative research focused on core UQ values: creativity and independent thinking; mutual respect and diversity; and the pursuit of excellence.
Creative research generated through the XR Space will target engagement and impact outcomes which create positive change, a key goal of the UQ strategic plan.
Using extended reality technologies, the project will foster relationships between the sciences and arts to solve problems in the community and envisage a better society.
The laboratory is focused on transdisciplinary digital media creation, and is intended to foster large-scale creative projects across disciplines including Media and Communications, Journalism, Music, Drama, Visual Arts, Education, Architecture, Interaction Design, Computer Science and other areas.
Dr Klein seeks to foster larger-scale, cross-disciplinary collaborations that will grow a distinct future-focused arts culture at UQ.
“It [What-If Lab: XR Space] provides space for 4-8 researchers to safely prototype work using virtual reality headsets, while a surround projection system can be used to develop and test media, art and performances incorporating immersive visual projection and projection mapping,” said Dr Klein.
“A surround audio system and head-tracking headphones allows for testing music for film, galleries, performance spaces, games and apps. The focus on immersion and extended realities is important because arts practice in these areas is poorly defined and unsettled. There aren’t established techniques for making work with these technologies.”
The XR Space project is spearheaded by Dr Klein, but involves twenty specialists from The University of Queensland; drawing together researchers from Music, Information, Technology and Electrical Engineering, Architecture, Communication and Arts, and the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Connect with Eve (Textile Audio)
