Grad Studies 40th Anniversary prize winner: Joshua Tanenbaum
Joshua Tanenbaum is working on his PhD at SFU’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology in the next year, and is enthusiastic about his experience at Simon Fraser University:
I came to graduate school after being inspired by the work of SIAT researchers at the SIGGRAPH conference. I’ve always had too many interests and hobbies and not enough time to focus on them; graduate school has allowed me to sharpen my skills as a designer, an artist, and a scholar.
In my five years here I have learned how to shape my interests into projects and ideas that are contributions to global research communities. Since coming to SFU I have made films, written music, designed games, created props and costumes, and developed new storytelling technologies. I have traveled around the world and interacted with some of the great minds in games, narrative, design, and technology.
This photo shows me as Captain Chronomek, my winning entry into the student design competition at this year’s Tangible and Embedded/Embodied Interactions conference. These days, when I’m not being a superhero, I am working on a project with the City of Vancouver to engage families in emergent dialogues about sustainability issues using a tabletop game that I helped design; editing a book on nonverbal communication in virtual worlds; co-chairing a conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling; and, lastly but most importantly, writing my dissertation.
He’s also the winner of the Office of Graduate Studies’ 40th Anniversary contest, and will be taking home an iPad 2 for this creative and fun winning contest entry.
- Joshua and Karen Tanenbaum’s website and blog: The Geek Movement
- EMIIE (Engage Me In Interactive Experiences) Lab profile
- MA Thesis: Believability, adaptivity, and performativity : Three lenses for the analysis of interactive storytelling
- CAT Games
- Current research: GRAND Greenest City Conversations Project
- YouTube: The Reading Glove
- Vancouver Observer: Technology and art captivate at Mini Maker Faire (with bonus interview on YouTube)
- The Express profile of Josh and Karen Tanenbaum on Youtube.
And last, but not least, on YouTube, the design process of Captain Chronomek!
—
Update: This post is moving to a new home: [See our new website.]