IA7002 - Creating Virtual and Immersive Experiences

You will learn through research-led lectures and practice-based workshops. The lectures will provide you with an in-depth overview of the emerging field of Immersive Arts, the core technologies and how these are being employed within the Immersive Digital Arts. The lectures will be followed by a series of practical workshops and demonstrations in which you learn the principles of core immersive and interactive technologies. You are encouraged to collaborate in teams in order to solve complex technological challenges and create original interactive and immersive work. Seminars will be interspersed with these sessions, which will allow you to develop and present initial ideas that will serve as prototypes for the final submission.

While it is expected that you will have a basic familiarity with key technologies and techniques, it is assumed that you will naturally gravitate to their main areas of interest. Working in teams will allow you to produce rich digital and immersive work that crosses a number of disciplines (interdisciplinarity). You are encouraged to collaborate in teams in order to solve complex technological challenges and create original interactive and immersive work. Working independently across disciplines (transdisciplinarity) will be possible for those who enter the course with or have developed strong digital media skills. In either case you will be expected to develop high-level skills, research strategies and conceptual ideas on your own or in a team. Students working in groups will be responsible for managing team dynamics and will be assessed for their ability to plan and manage a group project. Similarly, students working individually will be assessed for their ability to plan and develop their ideas in a realistic and viable way.

The programme leader, the module tutors and your project supervisors will all play a role in guiding you throughout the module. You will be guided by tutors with relevant expertise in the intersecting disciplines within the fields of Immersive Arts and are either experienced practitioners, researchers or practitioner-researchers. The seminars will provide key moments for tutor and peer feedback on your ideas and will form the basis on which you will be develop your submitted project. You will also be given the opportunity to have feedback on your research and development in short group or individual sessions with the tutors.

Further academic support is provided via e-Learning tools, such as discussion groups, blogs and wikis. Additional contact with tutors will also be available during office hours by arrangement. Additional support is provided through the English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) module where English is not your first language.

All modules at Northumbria include a range of reading materials that students are expected to engage with. The reading list for this module can be found at: http://readinglists.northumbria.ac.uk
(Reading List service online guide for academic staff this containing contact details for the Reading List team – http://library.northumbria.ac.uk/readinglists)

Knowledge & Understanding:

• To demonstrate the ability to use your analytical knowledge to use relevant technologies in self-directed or collaborative work (KU2)
• To gain the knowledge and understanding in order to apply technical and creative knowledge from a range of fields to produce an immersive or interactive experience. (KU2, KU3)

Intellectual / Professional skills & abilities:

• To evidence the skill and ability to plan, manage and produce an original, experimental project (individually or in a team) which is immersive or has been created using immersive methods. (IPSA1)
• To demonstrate the ability to evidence innovation, collaboration and consensus with peers, a project team or collaborative partners to deliver a project to a professional standard (IPSA1, IPSA2)
• To use critical resources and creative judgement in order to to situate your work in contemporary digital and immersive arts practice. (IPSA2, IPSA3)

Personal Values Attributes (Global / Cultural awareness, Ethics, Curiosity) (PVA):

• To demonstrate the ability and awareness to work independently and in groups to critically evaluation your work and the work of your peers. (PVA2)
• To demonstrate an ethical approach to the use of immersive technologies in relation to issues such as the climate crisis or the ethics of using advanced media technologies in an era of shrinking resources. (PVA3)

Formative:
Formative assessment will be carried out during the seminars, in which you will present your individual or team-based research, concepts, ideas and experiments. You will also be expected to present your basic development in a mid-term presentation which will be assigned a formative mark.

Summative:
The summative assessment will consist of three parts:

• A demonstration of your knowledge and understanding of digital immersive technologies through the production of an immersive project either independently or in a team. Submission types include but are not limited to: an interactive and/or immersive game, a motion-based environment, a VR experience, an immersive or interactive video, an immersive installation.

• The practical project will be supported by a short 2000 word reflective document in which you critically reflect upon the work produced, OR a Visually Rich Research Report which should evidence an equivalence in effort, time and the level of research achieved to that of the 2000-word report. You will produce a research report that combines a professional use of image, moving image, audio and text and establishes the personal development your immersive project. This submission may take various forms including, but not limited to the following: a portfolio, a rich-media presentation, or an annotated video.
• A project proposal for the project in semester 3 in module IA7003. 2000 words.

You will receive feedback in one to one and/or group tutorial and seminar sessions, and at interim and final presentations. Formative assessment will be provided through tutorials or formal presentations. Summative assessment will be written, giving a marks breakdown of how the submission met the five individual learning outcomes.

IA7001

IA7000

This module builds on the knowledge acquired in Introduction to Immersive Media (IA7001) to further embed the essential skills necessary to produce compelling digital immersive experiences. You will be introduced to a range of cutting-edge technologies including motion-capture and photogrammetry, which are used extensively in the Cultural industries, to capture very detailed information in terms of image, texture and movement. You will be simultaneously introduced to motion-tracking, which is used extensively in audio-visual performance and immersive installations to measure user movement and affect immersive audio-visuals. These technologies and skills will be introduced through either a live project with a collaborative partner drawn from the creative industries, or a self-generated project. This project will give you the opportunity to work as teams as you apply these technologies to the brief set by the partner, or a self-generated brief.