Vancouver’s Strong Universities Play a Key Role in Growing Tech Scene
Vancouver’s tech scene is changing. What was once an industry dominated by small start-up companies is now morphing into an industry with the big tech players. Amazon is opening up an office in the old Canada Post building and will be hiring 3,000 workers in the next few years. Apple...
Read MoreBack to Basics: Building for a Human Experience
If I sat you down in front of a bunch of colourful, wooden blocks, what would you do? Chances are, you’d play. You’d build up and build out, you’d try to balance and brace. Some of you might even start playing with counterweights or foundations. And, most likely, you’d do most of it without thinking.
Read MoreVisiting Professors: Maria Bakardjieva On New Media Regulation & Ethics
This is a guest post from MDM student Emma Konrad. On May 30th, the CDM had the pleasure of welcoming Professor Maria Bakardjieva to our campus. A professor in the department of Communication and Culture at the University of Calgary, Bakardjieva spoke to our Teaching Digital Media...
Read MoreChallenge To Graduate Students: Create a Better Future
When I first took the job as Director of the MDM program, one of my colleagues at SFU pulled me aside to give me some advice. He had been director of a professional school for some years and he cautioned me about the way in which industry demands can sometimes divert a program from its mission. What I would find, he said, was that the industry (and even the students) would be keen for me to provide an education that would reproduce the people and skills that the industry already had, to fill the jobs that they had right now.
Read MoreMDM Students Create Ancient VR City with UBC Archeology
A team of MDM students are working to create an ancient VR city this semester. Working with UBC’s department of Archeology and KAMBE, the team has been tasked with creating a completely new type of archeological experience. By combining existing remote sensing technologies and geophysics with immersive technologies, the team wants to give users a sense of what it was like to live in Late Bronze Age Cyprus.
Read MoreWhat is (Augmented and Immersive) Digital Media?
A while back I wrote a blog post titled What is Digital Media? Judging by the traffic to the article, a lot of people have the same question. I recently re-read that post and decided I wouldn’t change a thing. I do think that it could do with some addition, however.
Read MoreThree MDM Student Cohorts Work Together To Develop VR Theater at SIGGRAPH
This past summer, Vancouver hosted SIGGRAPH, an annual computer graphics conference. The conference attracts tens of thousands of global visitors and was the first time SIGGRAPH was back in Vancouver since 2014. MDM faculty Larry Bafia was this year’s producer for the Computer...
Read MoreHow We Managed an xR Prototyping Lab This Summer
This semester, a team of MDM students have formed an xR prototyping lab. Rather than being paired up with an industry client for the semester, they are being matched with 5 different clients on a series of 2-3 week rapid xR prototyping sprints. The idea is to adapt existing rapid...
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