New Media seniors host year-end exhibition in virtual space

Seniors from the University of Maine New Media program hosted a virtual exhibition of their capstones with the support of Intermedia student Thomas Griffith. These seniors won eight university research awards and used cutting-edge technologies, such as augmented reality.

Many of the projects help users navigate the stress and challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, from an app that tracks a user’s mental health, to a pop-up immersive screen that projects calming animations, and apps that guide users in touring UMaine’s campus or planting a garden.

The New Media program offered several ways to learn about these award-winning projects in this year’s exhibition, including a web exhibition that lets visitors peruse a short video about each capstone, a virtual opening via Mozilla Hubs, a virtual-reality-like environment that requires nothing more than an internet browser; and a followup celebration in the VR platform Second Life. About a dozen New Media seniors and faculty from the School of Computing and Information Science attended. 

All forms of the virtual exhibition can be accessed from the capstone website

Griffith, an Intermedia MFA student who also is this year’s capstone teaching assistant, custom-built the structures and environments for each of these virtual exhibitions. During the live events he explained the advantages of each platform, culminating in an afterparty conversation around a virtual campfire.