UNVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Researchers in the Stuckeman School’s Immersive Environments Lab (IEL) within the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing are holding a hybrid public pop-up exhibition on embodied cognition April 9-10 in the IEL (208 Stuckeman Family Building). Titled “XRe-Cognition,” the exhibit will feature work by artists and designers, faculty and students in the College of Arts and Architecture who are using extended reality (XR) technology to design and experience creating things, space and place.
An exhibition opening will be held in the IEL at 1:30 p.m. on April 9 in the form of a discussion with IEL curators on issues such as the roles of vision and reality, and the use of other senses in XR platforms in terms of accessibility. The exhibit will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days.
“XRe-Cognition features the work of IEL faculty and students who have used technologies to question our relationship with hybrid physical-digital realities: how we sense, behave and operate/design within them,” said Yasmine Abbas, director of the IEL and assistant teaching professor of architecture in the Stuckeman School. “We are hoping that the public will realize that we comprehend hybrid, physical and digital environments in a multi-sensory manner and that technologies have affordances that can influence the trajectory of a design project.”
The exhibition is curated by members of the IEL research collective including: Tomás Dorta, professor of design at the University of Montreal and affiliate professor of architecture, Stuckeman School; Orsolya Gáspár, assistant professor of architecture, Stuckeman School; Keerthana Govindarazan, doctoral candidate in architecture, Stuckeman School; Andrew Hieronymi, associate professor of art and digital arts & media design, School of Visual Arts; Rodney Allen Trice, professor of practice in graphic design, Stuckeman School; and Abbas.
Along with Abbas, Dorta, Gáspár, Govindarazan, Hieronymi and Trice, the exhibition features work by: Noah Bennett, fifth-year bachelor of architecture student; Dillon Brown, third-year master of architecture student; Samuel Deorio, fourth-year bachelor of architecture student; Emily Freid, 2023 bachelor of architecture graduate; Gaurav Ganguli, 2023 bachelor of architecture graduate; John Gentile fifth-year bachelor of architecture student; Kushalee Inamdar, fifth-year bachelor of architecture student; Lea Jabbour, fifth-year bachelor of architecture student; Hamza Jamjoom, 2023 bachelor of architecture graduate; Jason Neuman, fourth-year bachelor of architecture student; Alireza Samani, second-year master of science in architecture student; and Abigail Wallar, third-year master of architecture student.
According to Abbas, the pop-up exhibition is the occasion to prototype a larger exhibition where “we imagine inviting other artists, designers, practitioners and thinkers that creatively question the way we experience, think and design in mixed realities environments.”
“The larger aim is to prompt creative practice and research avenues that are cognizant of the limitations and opportunities of the tools in use, and that question through art and design production the way we make sense of place,” she said.
Faculty members and students interested in the creative use of XR technologies for their project and on learning about embodied cognition are encouraged to attend.