New Media

Shaker Entangled Ecologies ar Reticle 2

NEH augmented reality app reveals forest secrets

Entangled Ecologies, a NEH-funded augmented reality project by New Media’s Joline Blais and Dartmouth’s John Bell, enriches any visit to New Hampshire’s Shaker Forest with a rich blend of historical and ecological research.

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IEEE webinar graphic

Can we trust AI in the classroom?

New Media’s Learning With AI partnership with Computer Science and other campus units continues to explore new creative and ethical questions posed by the rapid rise of AI. Its recommendations include a framework for deciding when it’s OK to use ChatGPT and a novel approach to assigning a term paper.

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A student of John Bell's in the DEV Studio

AI Enables New Lens on Acting History

New Media alumnus John Bell has won a Mellon grant to reveal how acting styles have progressed through AI analysis of classic films and TV, while some of his fellow alumni have gained attention for their novel approaches to creating imagery.

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Wild Blueberry Heritage Center

Innovative museum celebrates the wild blueberry

Cherished for its myriad health benefits and cultivated by both Native and Maine farmers, the wild blueberry is an unequaled superfood. A team led by Joline Blais, New Media professor and president of the Wild Blueberry Heritage Center, has launched a first-of-its-kind museum to celebrate this distinct fruit and its growers.

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AI in the Classroom webinar

New Media launches AI-powered education initiative

How will education adapt to a landscape transformed by generative AI, where ChatGPT can write a term paper or coding assignment in a matter of seconds and Midjourney can create digital images from a phrase like “vintage photo of Amazon rainforest” or “self-portrait in the style of van Gogh”?

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Tiktok NFT Icons

NFT, TikTok vulnerabilities at heart of New Media research

In 2022 New Media faculty probed the strengths and weaknesses of NFTs and TikTok, two of the biggest digital trends in recent years. Their research was cited in Wired, Forbes, and The New York Observer and presented in conferences in New York, London, Instanbul, and Shanghai.

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Decentering the Web: Glen Weyl 2022 Digital Curation teleconference

Building a trustworthy web

The Internet has recently been blamed for undermining democracy, eroding trust in facts, and stoking partition divides. A conference organized by New Media and Digital Curation examines a proposal to rekindle faith in a safe and trustworthy web.

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Aubree Nygaard with SCIS Director Penny Rheingans and Philosophy professor Kirsten Jacobson

SCIS students win several top college honors

The 2021-22 academic year saw another record of extraordinary undergraduate achievement in the School of Computing and Information Science. Our students won six university-wide research awards as well as Outstanding Senior in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

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New Media Webinar: Careers 2022

New Media alumni share the secrets of a successful career in 2022

New media careers in 2022 Thursday 20 January 12:30-1:30pm EST View interactive recording Join us for a free webinar with alumni of UMaine’s New Media program, who will share practical advice for choosing and sustaining a creative life in the 21st-century job market. The career landscape of 2022 offers a rich array of options for […]

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Digital Tools for Resilient Communities and Ecosystems. Profs Joline Blais & Stephanie Burnett

Stillwater Ripple Links Students with Community Partners

StillWater Ripple Organizations working to make a better world may soon get help from students with design and technical skills, thanks to a new initiative from Still Water, a lab at the University of Maine dedicated to studying and building creative networks, Crises like climate change and the pandemic require smart and creative people, yet […]

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Sothebys event on NFTs

New Media faculty decode the meteoric rise of NFT art

Recent headlines about digital art selling for millions of dollars are evidence the rise of NFTs has shaken the art world. In a series of public talks and workshops, New Media faculty show how NFTs work and how to separate their promise from the hype.

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New Media major Jake Hotaling wins prestigious film awards

Dragonfly Boy, a film by Jake Hotaling, has won three Awards of Merit from IndieFEST, a San Francisco-based organization whose judges are highly qualified professionals in the film and television industry. In winning an IndieFEST award, this New Media Major joins the ranks of other high-profile winners of this internationally respected award, including Liam Neeson, […]

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P5js Aquarium Simulation

Faculty, grad student share techniques for making coding easier for everyone

A New Media teaching assistant and professor team up to make programming more appealing to women, minorities, and other underrepresented groups in Inclusive Techniques for Teaching Code. This presentation for teachers in the US northeast is part of Project Login’s first-ever CS Summer of Fun in conjunction with the Code.org CS Summer Institute.

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2021 New Media Night in Mozilla Hubs

Seniors mount New Media exhibitions in virtual space

From a web-based gallery of videos, to a virtual opening surrounded by 3d mountains, to an afterparty conversation around a digital campfire, this year’s New Media seniors found unusual ways to celebrate their innovative capstones with their families and classmates.

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Cute Circuit, SoundShirt

Alumnus Ryan Genz wins Time magazine Invention of the Year

Alumnus Ryan Genz and his partner Francesca Rosella of  CuteCircuit have won one of Time magazine’s Best Inventions of 2020. Their “SoundShirt” is outfitted with 30 tiny haptic motors that vibrate according to sound, enabling the wearer to feel music “in a visceral way.”

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Knowledge Bites webinar on New Media careers

“Knowledge Bites” webinars offer digital skill-building, career advice

Following the success of New Media’s December “Knowledge Bites” webinar on coding a mobile app, this webinar tackles a topic requested by three-quarters of respondents to our recent poll: how to find and get jobs that make creative use of digital media and computing. The presenters will be recent graduates of the University of Maine’s […]

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New Media seniors win seven university research awards

New Media seniors have been honored with a record-setting seven university awards for 2020-2021. The creative approaches recognized by these prestigious fellowships include apps, games, and an installation designed to help students cope with the anxieties of contemporary life, especially under a global pandemic.

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TikTok news story on ABC news, 2020

New Media faculty weigh in on TikTok ban

Is the US government right to outlaw TikTok because it might share data with a foreign power, or is the security threat overstated? News outlets interviewed New Media faculty to get a different take on a proposed ban on the popular social media app.

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Just-in-Time Learning mobile app badges

Learn to make mobile apps with these free tutorials

 Knowing how to make mobile apps in 2020 is like knowing how to make a website in 2000: a skill much in demand but known by few. Now anyone hoping to learn to create apps for iOS or Android can take advantage of a free suite of interactive tutorials from the University of Maine’s New […]

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At the Edge of Art by Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito

Can artists help us design ethical technology?

How has the boundary between art and non-art shifted in the Internet age, and what does that mean for design, activism, science, and other creative activities? This question is the subject of a Dario Moalli’s fall 2019 interview with New Media faculty and Still Water co-directors Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito in the venerable periodical […]

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Digital Tools for Resilient Communities and Ecosystems. Profs Joline Blais & Stephanie Burnett

Student-built app helps Maine farmers grow food year-round

Consumers are increasingly eager to eat local produce, but farm-to-table options in the cold season aren’t always easy to find in a northern state like Maine. That could change thanks to a new mobile app designed to help farmers optimize greenhouse conditions in the winter months, from a team led by New Media faculty and […]

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QuaranZine, 2020

New Media students craft Covid19 stories

COVID-19 came suddenly and with a wallop, forcing classes to operate remotely, canceling sports events, and leaving campuses empty last spring. Fortunately, New Media faculty and students have already been experimenting with digital tools for collaboration, like e-portfolios, web-based F2F classes, videoconferencing and discussion platforms like Slack.

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