Digital Performance Initiative (dpi) >> website

Jay Bolter (faculty) / Jason Freeman (faculty)/ Blair MacIntyre (faculty) / Michael Nitsche (faculty)

We work on different research question in the field of digital performances. How new technologies such as Augmented Reality and recent discussions in Performance Studies such as the liveness debate can be used to improve virtual performance practice.

Next Generation Play >> website

Michael Nitsche (faculty)/ Janet Murray (faculty)/ Matthew Drake/ Sam Mendenhall

The goal of this project is to create scenarios that challenge the maximum capability of current wireless systems so that we can develop services and technologies that go beyond today’s capabilities, toward a next-generation high-bandwidth user experience. A collaboration with the eTV group.

Supported by: alcatel-lucent

Urban Remix >> website

Carl DiSalvo (faculty)/ Jason Freeman (faculty)/ Michael Nitsche (faculty)/ David Jimison/ Harikrishna Narayanan

The project combines spatialized music, urban structure, and the concept of the city as a living space. Participants are equipped with an smart phone as they search the city for relevant sounds. They record it and upload it to a central database. A web application allows participants to virtually traverse through the city. The sound seekers turn into musicians that “play” the urban landscape as their virtual tours are mixing the soundtrack via movement through the city. A collaboration with the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology.

Supported by: Turner Broadcasting

emBodied Digital Creativity >> website

Paul Clifton/ Andrew Quitmeyer/ Sanjay Chandrasekharan/ Ali Mazalek (faculty) / Michael Nitsche (faculty)

BDC examines the relation-ship between novel body movements and creativity. We are creating a system based on recent experimental evidence from cognitive science and neuroscience, showing that a common coding in the brain connects execution, perception and imagination of movements. A collaboration with Synlab.

Supported by: NSF Creative IT grant

Betterhood >> website

John Douglass/ Jacob Milam/ Chris Morell/ Michael Nitsche (faculty)

Betterhood is designed to help turn neighborhoods into living comunities as it supports sharing of resources and services along with instant communication. It provides a form of instant neighborhood newsletter running on Android smart phones and aims to reconnect neighbors through a simple sharing application.

Supported by: Intel

Happymap >> website

Daniel Miller/ Daniel Stensland/ Yoko Ishioko/ Michael Nitsche (faculty)

Keeping track of your friends and your neighborhood's emotional state, Happymap allows you to map emotional development over time and space, creating maps of changing moods. The application runs on Android smart phones and an online database.

Supported by: Intel

Machinima at Tech >> website

Michael Nitsche (director)

We conduct research in developing, understanding and advancing a new computer-based 3D animation production technique known as machinima. Under the umbrella of the Machinima Project at Georgia Tech we assemble many of the projects below in this interdisciplinary initiative that is hosted in the GVU center.

Kitsune >> website

Andrew Roberts/ Michael Nitsche (faculty)

I have faith in digital media’s potential for meaningful expression; and despite its complicity in the erosion of a sense of place, I also have faith in its potential to foster a meaningful relationship with place by virtue of its spatial and encyclopedic properties.
This project seeks to embrace not only these two general properties of digital media, but also the very specific possibilities offered by the current generation of mobile handsets, such as GPS and directional bearing, to explore new ways to restore our sense of place.

SocialBay >> website

Ning Song/ Michael Nitsche (faculty)

The purpose of this MS project is to to combine social media functionality with electronic commerce. My central research task is to create an application that effectively merges the existing shopping functionalities of an online marketplace (eBay) with the social networking capability of a social network community (Facebook).

Here I am >> website

Thomas Lodato/ Michael Nitsche (faculty)

A person can drive down the highway, and watch that action on a GPS monitor that action simultaneously. Similarly, an avatar can provide motivation and self-awareness of a person performing yoga, yet is bound by the flexibility and tiredness of the person. How do we reconcile this experience of experience? Are we, in fact, where and what the screen says we are? In order to explore these questions and situations rigorously, the research for this MS thesis will focus on the data log, a digital recording format.

MobMixer >> website

Nicholas Poirier/ Michael Nitsche (faculty)

Using mobile phones as loudspeakers, this project turns phones into soundboxes and users into spatial sound mixing artists. Directed from one G1 phone, multiple other phones are synched up and play back individual tracks of the same song. The ultimate mix depends on the mixing on the conductor phone as well as the movements of participating players in real space.

SpaceCam >> website

Thomas Lodato/ Michael Nitsche (faculty)

Continuing the work of ShotBox and Director 3D, the current machinima project focuses on creating camera controls, as well as post-play avatar adjustment, for creating machinima. The scheme will be space-centered camera and editing controls to optimize editing freedom. The post-play adjustments (done in a mock demo) will aid the director in capturing the desired scene without replay.

Supported by: Turner Broadcasting

SLAR Breakdance >> website

Jenifer Vandagriff/ Kathryn Farley (faculty) / Jay Bolter (faculty) / Blair McIntyre (faculty) / Michael Nitsche (faculty)

Play often carries elements of a live performance. Can we, then, apply concepts of Performance Studies - such as live-ness - to better understand human computer interaction? The project addresses this question in a live show where audiences are encouraged to find the borderline between the two media. A collaboration with the Augmented Environments Laboratory and the Wesley Center.

Director3D >> website

Cameron Aubuchon/ Michael Nitsche (faculty)

Director3D is a complete camera control system for Unreal Tournament that allows the user to create and control stationary cameras in a real time multiplayer envirornment. The system consists of an Unreal Script backend that interfaces with a tablet pc interface for easy control of the in game cameras. From the tablet pc the user is able to cut to different cameras and move them around within the level.

PuppetMan >> website

Martin Rojas / Michael Nitsche (faculty)

PuppetMan is a program used in conjecture with the Movie Sandbox and Unreal Tournament 2004 to create more realistic movement in the characters. The program creates a quick and dirty interface to control the movement and rotation of all the bones in a skeleton.

MoMed >> website

Brandom Motgomery/ Michael Nitsche (faculty)

MoMed is a mobile Interface designed to immerse internet enabled mobile device users within a traditional documentary by using location based footage

ShotBox >> website

Evan Mandel/ Michael Nitsche (faculty)

Continuing our work on camera control, this projects aims to provide a simple live editing interface for camera control in the 3D real-time world of the UT2K4 game engine. Editors can select their “target” and from a range of pre-defined cameras to access a wide range of virtual cameras active in the scene.
Supported by: Turner Broadcasting

Playvis >> website

Courtland Goodson (based on Mike Lee's work)/ Michael Nitsche (faculty)

Playvis is a program used in conjunction with Unreal Tournament 2004 to create simple pre-visualization sequences. Playvis uses both a Java program and the Unreal Tournament 2004 plug-in to create a quick and dirty editing "suite" that handles camera movement in a 3-d virtual environment.

In Game Cameras >> website

John White/ Michael Nitsche (faculty)

In-game-cameras present the game as it is being played. These cameras have to cater for the interactions at work during gameplay. This poses new questions to the presentation form: how cinematic can the game become before it turns uplayable?

Make the Cut >> website

Joaquin Estrada/ Derek Kinney / Michael Nitsche (faculty)

We are striving to make a film editing system that allows nearly anyone to create a video elucidating their views on current world issues. To increase simplicity and to allow the user more freedom than is normally afforded during video editing, the aim is to remove the tethers of a traditional mouse and keyboard.

Multi-Track Input Recorder (MTIR) >> website

Will Hankinson (MA project) / Michael Nitsche (faculty)

Platform and game-independent system for input recording and editing which avoids the demo as the primary unit for machinima. The system allows for all of the various pieces of a given machinima scene to be recorded separately and pieced together in an offline input-mixer.

Puppetshow >> website

Devin Hunt / Alex West/ Michael Nitsche (faculty)

Puppet Show uses an external Java program to feed visual input from a webcam onto the character animation of customized Unreal game avatars. It adds computer vision as another input device for physical puppeteering of the virtual game characters. We argue that this exemplifies an interface trend towards more expressive input options that support a higher level of expression in video game.

Novice User's Camera Control Interface >> website

Matthias Shapiro (MA project) / Michael Nitsche (faculty)

A camera control system for non-programmers to create cinematic sequences in a 3D real-time environment with a focus on pre-visualization. You need the Virtools Player to use the site.

Wheel of Time. Using Virtual Ritual Representation as a Pedagogical Tool >> website

Melissa Paige Taylor (MA project) / Michael Nitsche (faculty)

The goal of this project is to create a screen-based, three-dimensional real time virtual environment (3DRTVE) that can be used as a pedagogical tool. Within this 3DRTVE, a user is able to gain knowledge about and participate in a simulation of the Buddhist Kalachakra mandala ritual within the context of virtual historic and sacred Buddhist sites. As s/he does so, the user gets a sense of the ceremonial process, as well as engages in an event that is simultaneously informative and meditative.You need the Virtools Player to use the site.

Geographies of the Underworld >> website

Katie Fletcher (MA thesis) / Michael Nitsche (faculty)

An examination of the imaginary places of the underworld to identify the poetics of underworld and understand how they function in digital environments, placing special focus on spatial construction of meaning, narrative, liminality, and embodiment.