STARTUP A NEW REALITY

Want to start up a product, project, service, app, or idea?

ICE P-425: Startup Lab





DR. LORI LANDAY, PROFESSOR OF VISUAL CULTURE + NEW MEDIA

Email : llanday@berklee.edu Website: www.lorilanday.com

Office : Room 202, 7 Haviland, Berklee College of Music, Boston, MA 02215

 

COURSE DESCRIPTION



Startup Lab is designed as a course where students can Start Up a product, project, service, app, idea, etc--all of which we will explore under the umbrella of "experience". The course centers on design thinking, an approach that emphasizes making iterations of your idea as prototypes in increasing degrees of fidelity. Because of my area of expertise, the focus is on incorporating emerging tech, (such as Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, XR, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Worlds, and Spatial Audio) in how students think about what innovative and entrepreneurial steps they want to take in order to prepare for the future. The examples and guests will focus primarily on the businesses, industries, and possibilities of emerging technology. That said, if students do not want to design an experience that uses emerging technology, they do not have to, and I will support their project fully.

I firmly believe that Berklee students can and should be shaping the future of the entertainment industry, not only as highly sought after immersive and interactive audio and music professionals, but as the people in charge: as producers, directors, and designers of interdisciplinary entertainment and performing arts experiences that begin with our deep understanding of how what we hear creates experience.

We will use the excellent book, Storytelling Is Design, and also have VR/AR content as examples that everyone in the class will experience as homework (in the Berklee lab) and use as common touchstone texts in class. We will also examine the business/industry contexts for those examples. I’m aligning the course with various stellar guests who are coming to Berklee as visiting artists or for other reasons, as well as having virtual guests from big and small organizations and Berklee alumni. The course emphasizes transferable skills that you will be able to apply to what you want to Startup for your future.

Students will combine experimenting, designing, prototyping, practical planning, and creating to understand the workflow of producing immersive media experiences such as

    immersive music video

    performance in and with the new realities, and

    immersive soundscapes.

COURSE MATERIAL INCLUDES



    Design Thinking + Prototypes

    VR and AR experiences

    Motion capture

    Individual projects

    Spatialized sound workshop

    Voices of VR Podcast

    Required Book: Design Is Storytelling by Ellen Lupton, purchase at bookstore or online at amazon or elsewhere

COMMUNITY



Members of the class will help each other use design thinking to iterate projects, and critique to communicate their responses to their own and other people’s work. We'll network with the Boston/Cambridge area XR community through groups like Boston VR, the Public VR Lab, and Women in the Next Realities. To foster the XR student community in Boston, we'll also explore conversations and collaborations with students from other area programs engaged in XR, including The MIT Open Documentary Lab, MIT Media Lab, Boston University, Emerson College, Northeastern University, and Mass College of Art and Design.

INTERESTED IN STARTUP LAB?



ICE P-425: Startup Lab XR is a 3 credit course for Spring 2019 that meets Thursday 4-6:50. If you would like to enroll, and you need the prerequisites waived, contact email: ndavis2@berklee.edu.