IDeATe's "Meet Me @" Exhibition

IDeATe Innovation Shines in Fall Exhibition

On Wednesday, December 11, join the Integrative Design, Arts, and Technology (IDeATe) network’s undergraduate artists and innovators from across CMU as they showcase their imaginative projects and research devised and developed at IDeATe. The fall semester’s exhibition “Meet Me @” will be held from 12–5 p.m. in the Cohon University Center’s Studio Theatre and will celebrate the creative intersection of art and technology.

IDeATe classes provide an opportunity for undergraduates from any discipline at CMU to explore interdisciplinary collaboration in 10 different areas, all of which can also be taken as minors: Game Design, Animation & Special Effects, Media Design, Sonic Arts, Design for Learning, Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Intelligent Environments, Physical Computing, Soft Technologies, and Immersive Technologies in Arts & Culture. The program brings in instructors from a variety of departments to share their expert knowledge and forge deeper connections with the diverse community of minds on campus.

“Meet Me @” is a recurring exhibition each semester that offers students from any of IDeATe’s classes the opportunity to share their work with the wider campus community. For Fall 2024, the event will feature a selection of projects from this fall, including a workshop, animations, game play, textile projects, and more.

“Chinese Ghost Stories and Shadow Play,” a new course offered for the first time this semester, will share a compilation of student work. The class, which is cross-listed in both the School of Art and the Department of Languages, Cultures, and Applied Linguistics, is team-taught by School of Art professor Johannes DeYoung and Languages, Cultures, and Applied Linguistics professor Gang Liu. Students spent the fall semester exploring traditional humanities studies in literature, history, and religion and contemporary art and visual storytelling techniques, before finally creating their own ghost stories through creative writing, hand-on shadow play performances, and multimedia storytelling projects incorporating digital media.

Students enrolled in “Planetary Hospitality,” a Center for Arts in Society course hosted by IDeATe, will also share some of their projects. The class, team-taught by Associate Professors of English Kathy M. Newman and James Wynn, let students explore the changing hospitality of life on Earth in a time of climate change and of life off Earth in an era of expanding interest in space travel and habitation. They also investigate how these changes in physical hospitality influence social and cultural practices of hospitality in human communities.

"Our students have been working on a variety of projects exploring the themes of the course (physical and social hospitality) including a graphic novel, a tent, a role playing game, and TikTok videos. It’s been exciting for us to help them realize their creative visions from brainstorming to the development of their final physical and digital prototypes,” Wynn said. “We’re pleased that they have the opportunity to share their work at IDeATe’s ‘Meet Me @’ exhibition, so that the wider CMU community gets a chance to see their creations."

From 2–4 p.m., fifth-year College of Engineering senior Katrina D’Arms will lead a workshop called “Mend With Me.” D’Arms has led sessions of this recurring mending workshop many times throughout the year, and appreciates the opportunity to share her skills across campus.

“Through the generosity and mentorship of IDeATe staff and professors, I have discovered a love for teaching sewing, expressing creativity through visible mending, and sharing repair skills with dozens of students, staff, and community members,” D’Arms said. “The workshops rely on IDeATe labs to teach hand and machine sewing for garment repair, helping the CMU community extend the lives of clothing and accessories, a necessary life skill that reduces reliance on the polluting and consumptive fashion industry.”

At the workshop session, attendees will learn creative ways to repair worn clothing and other items. Students interested in mending can also register for D’Arms’ StuCo course “Sew Sustainable,” which will be offered again in Spring 2025.

The exhibition will also feature games from a number of courses, including a puzzle game called “Codename” from the class “Computer Game Programming". Fifth-year College of Fine Arts senior Blaine Black, who studies music and is pursuing a game design minor through IDeATe, will offer attendees a chance to experinence a linear sound design of a short clip from "Dead Space" (2023) as well as a playable audio demo using Unreal Engine and Wwise.

"IDeATe has allowed me to combine my interests in sound design and music with game design," Black said. "I deeply enjoy project-based learning, so many of IDeATe's game design courses were a perfect fit for me!"

“Meet Me @” is open to the entire CMU community. Stop by the Cohon University Center’s Studio Theatre from 12–5 p.m. on December 11 to attend.