Digital Media Program holds doctoral symposium in Austin

5 Dec 2011

On December 3, UT Austin|Portugal doctoral program students and faculty members gathered to present their research.

The five-hour symposium showcased the diverse, highly innovative work being developed in Digital Media, and allowed members of the program, who are spread across different colleges and schools at UT Austin, to share their progress with one another and get feedback from faculty members and their peers. The doctoral symposium is the second one of the year; in October, doctoral students studying in Porto and Lisbon presented their research projects during the futureplaces festival in Porto.

Download the symposium document [2.5 MB PDF]

The meeting featured 15 presentations as well as a very successful networking lunch, and was attended by approximately 40 people, including exploratory visitors Pedro Bastos, Filipe Lopes, Rui Dias, and George Siorios of U. Porto. Directors Sharon Strover and Carlos Guedes led the symposium, which featured research from doctoral students Marta Ferraz, Luís Frias, Isabel Paiva, Tiago Videira, Rossana Santos, and Afonso O’Neill of UNL and Carlos Figueiredo and João Filipe Beira of U. Porto. Figueiredo and Paiva are currently enrolled non degree-seeking students at UT Austin, and Beira is a member of the UT Austin doctoral program. The students gave brief but thorough overviews of their work, which examines a broad range of topics including interactive film, social network interactions, generative music systems, and perception of urban spaces, among many others. Additionally, visiting scholar Dr. Alcimar Queiroz of the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa discussed his research on the conceptualizing of the information society within developing countries, and interns Rui Silva and Diana Castilho talked about their respective work experiences in audio production and digital marketing.

Radio-Television-Film professor Craig Watkins, who has taught in the UT Austin|Portugal Digital Media Summer Institute program, presented a mid-day talk on the future of digital media use, drawing upon his extensive expertise on youth and digital media. At the conclusion of student presentations, investigators from three sponsored projects talked about their work. Carlos Guedes and Bruce Pennycook presented on “Kinetic Controller Driven Music Systems,” Luis Francisco-Revilla and Sharon Strover spoke on “ImTV: On-demand Immersive-TV for Communities of Media Producers and Consumers,” and Joseph Straubhaar explained “Digital Inclusion and Participation,” a study which looks at aspects of the digital divide in the US and Portugal.

Program

10am
Welcome from Director Sharon Strover, PhD

10:15am
Tiago Videira
Instrumental Fado: A Generative Interactive System

10:30am
Carlos Figueiredo
Title TBA

10:45am
Marta Ferraz
A Cyborg Approach to Development: Bio Post-human Interactive Sustainable Technologies for Children’s Development

11:00am
Isabel Paiva
Extended Skin: Designing Interactive Content for Ubiquitous Computing Materials

11:15am
Short break

11:25am
Rossana Santos
vuSpot: An Infrastructure for Augmented Information Sharing Using Video Cameras

11:40am
Alcimar Quieroz, PhD
Measuring the Information Society Among Developing Countries: Mercosur Case

12:00pm
S. Craig Watkins, PhD
Remarks on Studying Digital Culture

12:15pm
Lunch break

1:00pm
Afonso O’Neill
Mapping [Geo]Cognition: Tracing the [Public] Mental Image of the City

1:15pm
João Filipe Beira
Mediated Digital Liveness

1:30pm
Luís Frias
Emotional Biofeedback Storytelling

1:45pm
Intern presentations: Rui Silva and Diana Castilho

2:00pm
Carlos Guedes, PhD and Bruce Pennycook, DMA
Kinetic Controller Driven Music Systems (UT Austin-Portugal sponsored project)

2:10pm
Luis Francisco-Revilla, PhD and Sharon Strover, PhD
ImTV: On-Demand Immersive-TV for Communities of Media Producers and Consumers (UT Austin-Portugal sponsored project)