The TechnoPoetics project is a workshop series over two weeks in Fall 2019 for students in art, design, humanities, computer science, communications, and digital media between UOIT and OCAD University to develop creative and critical approaches to storytelling, through essayistic filmmaking driven by motion-capture data. This partnership between Dr. Patricio Davila and Immony Men at Public Visualization Lab (PVL) at OCADU and Dr. Isabel Pedersen, Decimal Lab at UOIT will also engage dance and performance groups such as Theatre Centre and Theatre Gargantua along with Ubisoft and Derivative (Canadian-based developer of TouchDesigner) as technical guest instructors.

Potential departments to engage students from at OCADU include Graphic Design, Industrial Design, Digital Futures, Integrated Media, Digital Painting and Drawing, Interdisciplinary Master’s in Art, Media and Design. At UOIT potentials include Game Development, Data Science, Computer Science, Liberal Studies, Communication and Digital Media studies.

The workshops will act as a curriculum pilot for credit opportunities at both institutions in the future. The student outputs will produce a collection of films for UOIT’s Fabric of Digital Life, a web-based archive developed by Dr. Pedersen and the Decimal Lab on human-computer interaction (HCI) platforms around embodiment and their accompanying rhetoric. A third outcome is the critical learning space that will emerge for students in STEM and creative fields to engage in social and humanistic inquiry, storytelling, technology, and creative production, while connecting with industry leaders. Fourth, the collaboration structure of TechnoPoetics will provide a model for future cross-institutional partnerships in curriculum delivery.  

Outcomes will be measured by the variety and richness of student projects, the effectiveness of connecting the STEM and arts knowledges of students towards creative practices that are employed in industry, and the successful scoping of curriculum to be adapted to a for-credit learning opportunity in the future.