AI for Media & Storytelling (AIMS)
AI for Media & Storytelling (AIMS) is a collaboration between the School of Cinematic Arts and the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism under the auspices of the Center for Generative AI and Society at USC. Co-directed by Mike Ananny in Annenberg and Holly Willis in SCA, AIMSexplores the intersections between storytelling and machine learning through reflective practice, hands-on experimentation, workshops, course development, and working groups.
Change Making Media Lab
Directors: Jeremy Kagan
The Change Making Media Lab (CMML) mission is to foster positive social and environmental change by promoting research on effective
media techniques and creating strategic high-impact cinema, television and multi-media visual imagery to inspire individuals,
organizations, and communities into action. CMML's vision is to engage community members to leverage the power of the cinematic arts
to achieve health, sustainability, and social justice.
Emergent Cities Research Group
Directors: Scott Fisher (SCA)
USC's Emergent Cities Research Group is an interdisciplinary collective that is exploring research on evolving cities and urbanism through the perspective and expertise of faculty from the Roski School of Art & Design, the School of Cinematic Arts, the School of Architecture, the Price School of Public Policy, the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, Dornsife College, and other USC areas. The group's focus is primarily on participatory and comparative urbanism as the research methodology and approach to cities and public engagement. Current research is focused on the changing nature of Los Angeles and is examining the ways L.A. is evolving and considering how its transformation can be evaluated and recorded. Other projects by this group have assessed the emergent nature of international cities, including Chandigarh, Brasilia, Gaborone, Almere, Shenzhen, and Las Vegas.
Game Innovation Lab
Director: Tracy Fullerton
The Game Innovation Lab is the premier center for experimental game design research at USC. Founded in 2004, the lab is directed by Professor Tracy Fullerton. The mission of the lab is to pursue experimental design of games in cultural realms including art, science, politics and learning. The international success of games that have emerged from the lab, including Cloud, flOw, Darfur is Dying, The Cat and the Coup, The Night Journey and Walden, a game, have made it a hub for indie and experimental games culture in Los Angeles. Our Playthink Salons attract speakers and participants from across the city and across disciplinary boundaries. Associated faculty include award winning game designers Richard Lemarchand (Uncharted series) and Peter Brinson (Waco, The Cat and the Coup). Student researchers in the lab have gone on to stellar careers at Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Zynga and to form innovative game companies such as thatgamecompany, The Odd Gentlemen, and Giant Sparrow.
Ganek Immersive Studio
Director: Jordan Halsey
Ganek Immersive Studio is an incubator for experimentation in virtual reality, augmented reality, XR, and immersive technology. We focus on producing cinematic experiences with an emphasis on strong storytelling and compelling interactive experiences. We aim to explore technological innovation and how it can enhance the user experience. We employ state-of-the-art software and the latest in cinematic technology with the goal of training the next generation of interactive filmmakers.
IMAX Immersive Media Lab
Contacts: Brad Kean
The objective of this lab is to carry out research in the area of immersive media, a new and emerging field of studies that considers
the profound effects of the expansion and intensification of media formats and presentation. By increasing the scale, resolution and
dimensionality of image and sound, a threshold can be reached that radically changes our relationship to media, which is then no longer
a separate object to be experienced from a distance; rather it becomes an experiential environment that surrounds and engulfs us.
Immersive media can facilitate new kinds of cinema, in which narrative can be experienced from the inside; new forms of games, in which
interaction is through direct manipulation of media objects (rather than through keyboard and mouse); and new forms of experience, where
our perceptual apparatus can be directly engaged and challenged. In all cases, immersive media holds the promise of creating large-scale
social experiences that are ideal for multiple users, facilitating direct communication and dialogue. While the techniques for
conceptual immersion are in many cases well understood (although by no means exhausted), the technologies of physical immersion are
still being developed, and the techniques to exploit them are relatively new or nascent.
The Immersive Media Lab is a testbed in which to conduct research into new forms of media. By exploring, extending, combining and
experimenting with various immersive and interactive technologies, we hope to gain insight into where these technologies might be
headed. While there has been research into certain aspects of immersive technologies -- most prominently in the field of virtual reality
-- we focus our efforts on three specific areas:
- Immersive cinema (narrative)
- Immersive games (interactivity)
- Immersive environments (experience and perception)
Each of these areas is critical in the development of new forms of media; together they hold the potential to develop media that extend
cinema and television in ways we can only imagine at present. A key component of the Immersive Media Lab will be to make advanced and
experimental media technologies available to CNTV faculty and students so that they can try out these new forms. This would augment our
research by providing valuable insights into what new kinds of stories and narratives these media could accommodate.
Mobile & Environmental Media Lab
Directors: Scott Fisher
The Mobile and Environmental Media Lab is currently exploring location-specific mobile storytelling. This research investigates the idea of ambient storytelling and how the built environment can act as a storytelling entity that engages and interacts with people in specific spaces. Development of personalized responsive environments arise as people spend time in these spaces and build a relationship with the spaces they spend time in every day. By integrating context-aware interactions and access to backstory about an environment, ambient stories emerge and can be accessed through mobile and pervasive computing technologies and applications. Our current research concepts came out of early research about new models for mobile advertising in which the goal was to create compelling experiences in contrast to the current state of mobile advertising, which relies on banner ads or text messages. The idea of backstory, location and context-specific information about products and objects became a recurrent theme when thinking about new forms of advertising. This became the groundwork for our current research into ambient and mobile storytelling. In addition, the practice of lifelogging, or documenting and broadcasting one's daily activities with wearable computing devices, has been another topic of our research. However, instead of people documenting their activities, we are focusing on designing lifelogs for the built environment. These lifelogs for physical spaces combine various building, environmental and human sensor data, as well as collaboratively-authored character development. These elements, when combined, create the groundwork for ambient, mobile storytelling.
Radical Play Lab
Director: Dr. TreaAndrea Russworm
The Radical Play Lab is a community-engaged research and game design lab at USC that focuses on centering creativity and diverse perspectives of current and future gamemakers. Through dynamic programming, training, and supported events, the lab connects USC students, industry professionals, community leaders, and high school and middle school students who are committed to radically changing and imagining new futures for the games and play industries. Directed by Dr. TreaAndrea Russworm, the lab also specializes in arts and humanities based research on games and culture and supports large-scale digital and public humanities projects that archive, contextualize, and amplify histories of games and gaming communities.
Situation Lab
Co-Director: Kiki Benzon
The Situation Lab designs immersive and generative situations for the public good, for clients, and for kicks. A joint initiative between the USC School of Cinematic Arts and Carnegie Mellon University School of Design, the Situation Lab was founded in 2013 by Stuart Candy (CMU) and Jeff Watson (IMGD); its current co-directors are Candy and Kiki Benzon of Media Arts and Practice. Our research explores how playful systems, narrative, and environmental design can come together to shape the real world. Like any kind of practice born of the post-internet age, our work is always deeply and implicitly imbricated in the digital; however, we to swear allegiance to no particular technology or practice. Our true medium is "the social."
World Building Media Lab
Director: Alex McDowell
Established in September 2012, the World Building Media Lab is founded in the belief that the Victorian-industrial divisions and silos in media and related industries are detrimental to innovation. The World Building Media Lab (WbML) emphasizes the integration of mixed reality and media technologies as a vehicle to enhance the power of collaborative storytelling to create change. The lab continues to exploit the capabilities of multiple disciplines in tandem with technology-based media, narrative design, and design systems in a succession of funded research projects. The WbML Lab has partnered with funders Intel, Steelcase, Technicolor, Unity, Havas, the Pancreatic ß-Cell Consortium, and the Bridge Institute. The lab has prioritized projects like Leviathan (in an Intel/Unity industry and public-facing project) to the cross-disciplinary artscience project called Inner Space (formerly World in a Cell) that asks why we do not pay the same attention to the complexity inside our bodies as we do to outer space. For the past four years, Co-PIs Professor Alex McDowell RDI, narrative designer and director of the World Building Media Lab, and Dr. Helen Berman, co-founder of the Protein Data Bank and fellow at the National Academy of Sciences, have led USC programmers, engineers, animators, modelers, architects, game-makers, and cinematic storytellers in collaboration with molecular, structural and cell biologists. The World Building Media Lab is currently developing a platform for high-school students, undergraduate and graduate students in biology, currently focused on the Pancreatic ß-Cell, the cell responsible for the production of insulin.