News/Research

Announcing Our 2020 Summer Research Fellows

21 Apr, 2020

Announcing Our 2020 Summer Research Fellows

We are thrilled to announce our amazing 2020 Summer Research Fellows! Read more about them below:

Haripriya Sathyanarayanan

Priya is a third year PhD student in Architecture (Building Science & Sustainability) whose research focus is on Patient-Centric Design and Spatial Perception. Healthcare experiences of a patient are largely driven by clinical outcomes, their interactions with healthcare providers, and their perceptions of care. An emerging trend in healthcare design and delivery is the new way of listening to all stakeholders in a healthcare system including clinicians and patients, also known as ‘human centered design’. The research adopts a mixed methods approach using immersive technology for collaborative design of patient spaces in a paediatric setting for enhanced patient experience. The research builds on the significant role of the built environment on patient/staff experience, stress and healing process, and the need for user engagement in the process of co-creating solutions through an evidence-based design approach. This summer Priya will continue qualitative studies with key stakeholders in healthcare settings such as patients and family, professionals from healthcare design and research, while also preparing for a pilot study in a non-healthcare setting to test VR prototypes she has been developing for field studies in the future.

Chris Chan

Positioned as both a former urban designer and a participant observer, Chris' project aims to explore from within the design process a series of artistic urban interventions to the transformations of a contemporary urban space. This summer fieldwork research will examine technology and the city through a series of transnational artistic interventions between designers and publics in China and around the world. The research will utilize key methodologies including participant observation and ethnographic interviews, as well as experimental videography and transnational curatorial collaboration and will take place through a period of approximately two months within a multi-sited collaboration between partnering testbeds in China (Chongqing and Chengdu), as well as other collaborating cities including Hong Kong and Taipei. The study will lay the ground work for a curation in progress for urban artistic expression in collaboration with local artists and the creation of new publics between two coronavirus-battered and spatially precarious locales across the globe in a union of digital art and expression.

Nicholaus Gutierrez

This summer, Nick Gutierrez will be studying the papers held in the Morton Heilig collection of the Hugh Hefner Moving Image Archive. Heilig was an inventor best known for creating an analog simulator machine called Sensorama, a coin-operated arcade cabinet that used stereoscopic film, vibration, stereo sound, chemical scents and a wind generator to create an immersive “multisensory” experience for its users. His work has taken on a second life as several prominent Virtual Reality (VR) researchers, beginning in 1980s and carrying through to the early ‘90s, became aware of his work and considered it a precursor to their own. Consequently, for the last thirty years, Heilig’s work has been consistently valorized by many in the VR research community as the direct precursor to VR, with Heilig himself treated as VR’s untimely prophet both by VR researchers and in popular accounts of VR history.

Nick’s aim in viewing Heilig’s papers is to trace any possible connections between his personal philosophy and prevalent postwar social theories that were influenced by Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics and Claude Shannon’s information theory. Nick’s argument is that the narrative of Heilig as VR’s prophetic figure is more myth than truth; a close examination of the technologies he invented shows that they were neither as novel, nor as relatable to VR, as it would seem. But his true significance to VR lies precisely in how that myth was constructed, because it serves as an illuminating example of how the VR community constructed its own mythology.

Tina Piracci

As a Master of Science in Architecture student focusing on technology and sustainability, Tina Piracci’s research is centralized around natural paste deposition 3D printing and how programming creative tool paths can yield specific desired results. In Summer 2020, she plans to 3D print a series of terracotta water filter vessels which are based off analytical research gathered at the Berkeley National Laboratory, of which she is a research affiliate. The data collected during Spring 2020 will inform the infill geometry of the proposed water filter study. This project is now a research collaboration with Potters for Peace, an organization which has provided millions of terracotta water filters to those in need and has over 50 factories run by locals all over the globe. The hopes of this collaboration is to create a more efficient design as their current design is ram-pressed and leads to design complications and inefficiencies.

At the end of the summer, Tina will have a series of terracotta vessels that function as prototypes for these water filters as well as art objects. For NCECA 2021, Tina plans to build on her proposal from this year and exhibit a totem of these water filters stacked up (tall and switching direction) at the Potters for Peace gallery in Cincinnati along with an array of infill samples, results of various patterns and verbiage on the creation process. If this study continues to go well, the director of Potters for Peace has shown interest in collaborating by placing 3D printers in current Potters for Peace facilities around the globe. The printers cost less than the ram press, and would be able to produce more efficient and plentiful filters. Each location to receive a printer would also receive training on how to produce the object, however it will be drastically less complicated for one with little experience to 3D print these objects because the files will be pre-designed and print-ready.

Kevin CK Lo

Kevin CK Lo will be reapplying LiDAR technology for artistic use. Building on Richard Mosse’s use of military grade technology in his exhibit at SFMOMA, Kevin will be repurposing this high-grade technology for an upcoming performance/exhibition. An upcoming multimedia solo show for DROUGHT SPA (with alex cruse) will use LiDAR to activate a sound-based work, able to be modulated by audience movement through the gallery space.

For Kevin’s live multimedia performances, combining spatialized audio, projections, movement, and text, sensor technologies have always been an integral component. In detourning LiDAR technologies and bringing them from industrial contexts to the highly embodied realm of performance, Kevin hopes to demonstrate new artistic possibilities and facilitate critical conversations around the contexts that these technologies typically inhabit. LiDAR’s ubiquity in automation, surveillance, industry and global supply chains have particular resonance as they are all frequent subjects of his practice.

Emily Gui

Emily Gui will collaborate with new media artist Jess Medenbach. Jess is an acclaimed video and media designer, filmmaker, editor and producer. She has worked on projects ranging from documentary, music video and video installation to media for live events, theater, and opera. An expert in Virtual and Augmented Reality technology, Jess has created many VR experiences and installations, focusing on the tension between isolation, togetherness, aura and documentation. As a sculptor and printmaker invested in materiality, process, objects and space, Emily
is fascinated with Jess’ usage of new media technology to explore the depths of human emotions embedded in space.

Emily plans to collaborate with Jess on a project exploring architecture and objects in relation to global warming and memory. This project will draw from their shared interests in infrastructure bringing us to unusual sites. As a part of this work, they will research the history of these spaces and then plan to experiment with projection and phone based technologies to create interactive and embodied installations. They will also use photogrammetry and VR to expand and enrich Emily’s existing sculptures and found, discarded objects. Emily is currently working on a series of sculptures that utilize digital printmaking in conjunction with projection and sculptural screens.

Through intensive exploration, Emily looks forward to returning to UC Berkeley in the fall with a new body of work, research and skills.