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workshop: MidwestCon

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workshop: Artistic Intelligence Mixer: Embedding and Embodying AI in Everyday Life 
Midwest Conference. 2025. Cincinnati, OH. 9.10.2025

Sponsored by: UC DAAP and FotoFocus

This dynamic, hands-on workshop invited participants to step beyond theory and into living with AI. Through interactive exercises and scenario-based challenges, attendees explored how artificial intelligence could be seamlessly woven into the fabric of daily life—not just as a tool, but as an embedded and embodied presence.

Guided by design thinking methods, we collaboratively imagined responsible, human-centered, and artistically inspired AI-driven products, systems, and experiences. Together, we examined the opportunities and tensions that arise when AI moves off the screen and into the spaces, objects, and interactions that shape our everyday world.

Participants left with new perspectives on what it means to design AI that is creative, ethical, and deeply connected to the human experience.

Speakers
Claudia B. Rebola, PhD, DAAP (College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning), Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs
Caroline Anderson, DAAP, Assistant Professor of Fine Arts
Isabel Potworowski, DAAP, Assistant Professor of Architecture
Ming Tang, University of Cincinnati, Professor, Director of Extended Reality Lab
Sangyong Cho, Assistant Professor
Heekyoung Jung, Assoicate Professor

AI and Emerging Technology Symposium

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Ming Tang and Mikhail Nikolaenko presented “AI-Powered Digital Humans for Enhanced Interaction in Extended Reality” at the AI and Emerging Technology Symposium, University of Cincinnati.

The day-long event explored topics around AI and robotic process automation; smart campus innovation; and extended reality, virtual reality, and augmented reality. More on UC News.

AI-Powered Talking Avatars for Enhanced Interaction in Extended Reality

Presenter. Ming Tang, Mikhail Nikolaenko. Feb. 20, 2025 in Tangeman University Center. 

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workshop at IASDR conference

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Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality for design research

IASDR_DAAP

IASDR Conference

Nov 2nd at 1:10 PM until 3:00 PM

Room 6221, DAAP, University of Cincinnati

With the recent development of head-mounted display (HMD), both Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are being reintroduced as Mixed Reality (MR) instruments into the design industry. It is never so easy for us to design, visualize, and interact with the immersive virtual world. This session will investigate the workflow to visualize a design concept trough AR and VR. We will use virtual DAAP project as a vehicle to explore 3D simulation with mixed reality. Using the DAAP building at the University of Cincinnati as a wayfinding case study, the multi-phase approach starts with defining the immersive system, which is used for capturing participants’ movement within a digital environment to form raw data in the cloud, and then visualize it with heat-map and path network. Combined with graphs, survey data is also used to compare various agents’ wayfinding behavioral related to gender, spatial recognition level, and spatial features such as light, sound, and architectural elements. The project also compares mixed reality technique with the space syntax and multi-agent system as wayfinding modeling methods.

This session includes both a seminar and project demonstration format and develops techniques for VR and AR technology as they influence the process of visualizing and forming human and computer interactions. The session will discuss the connections among different immersive techniques for real-time visualization as a critical methodology in the design process. The session will also examine the current technical, physiological and cognitive constraints relate to the immersion and interaction in virtual reality and augmented reality.

Check online schedule