Prof. Ricardo Miranda joins this year’s New Inc member cohort in the Art & Code track. He has developed a strong awareness of inequality and discrimination at an early age. In his creative and pedagogical work, themes such as immigration, discrimination, gentrification and the effects of commodification/monetization extend from highly subjective experiences and observations into works that tactically engage others through popular metaphors.
He also received a CUNY Research in the Classroom Idea Grant. The award provides Research Foundation funds for a future course tentatively titled “XR: Speculative Media”.
This studio-based production course is an introduction to extended reality (XR) development employing a popular game engine. Students will work collaboratively to design and prototype virtual reality and augmented reality applications that foster social change, education, civic engagement and creativity. The course will present an emphasis on virtual reality production for documentary material (image, video and audio) and storytelling. As well as hands-on production, students will explore concepts in extended reality design and a history of socially engaged media through reading, discussion and presentation. Students will follow in-class demonstrations to gain an introductory understanding of virtual reality and augmented reality application building. They will collaboratively realize a series of small exercises in VR and AR production through the first half of the semester. The second half of the semester will be dedicated to the production of a more extensive project that may be individual or collaborative. Students will also elect whether it is a VR or AR project based on the project content.