Collaboratory

Collaboratories are interdisciplinary, team-based research labs designed to engage students in critical making—activities that bridge critical thinking and digital fabrication. They are polymathic in nature, bringing faculty, experts, artists, designers, and students together at the Ahmanson Lab over an academic year. They are organized around topics, problems or set of questions that are best explored via the hands-on design and production of digital artifacts.

Collaboratories are designed and coordinated by one or more USC faculty in cooperation with Ahmanson Lab staff.

Interested in proposing a collaboratory? Calls for proposals are announced each summer. See our CFP for more details. Let us know if you'd like to receive our next call or email Curtis Fletcher at cfletche@usc.edu to learn more.

Interested in participating in a collaboratory? See our Ahmanson Lab Innovation Scholars program for more details.

Ahmanson Lab: Collaboratory - 2022-2023

Canyon Country Cultural Landscapes Virtual Reality Collaboratory

Students in this collaboratory will work alongside the Canyon Country Cultural Landscapes Virtual Reality (CCCLVR) team to identify and solve critical problems in user experience (UX) design for cultural heritage applications. CCCLVR is currently partnering with indigenous communities, land management agencies, archaeologists, ethnographers, and conservationists, to develop Moon House VR(MHVR), an interactive virtual reality experience featuring the cultural heritage and landscapes of the American Southwest. The final product will be deployed in visitor’s centers throughout the Four Corners region to communicate relationships between native peoples and their sacred landscapes, highlight archaeological narratives, and promote community-informed stewardship of cultural heritage resources. As a public-facing project featuring ancient peoples and their descendant communities, MHVR must deliver non-linear educational content through compelling, accessible, immersive, and above all, culturally informed means. In collaboration with our indigenous community partners, cultural heritage experts, and interactive media designers, students will help develop innovative user-interface and virtual space solutions to meet the unique user-experience challenges posed by this endeavor.

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Firescapes: Powerlines & Trees Collaboratory

The Firescape Collaboratory will focus resources to research and visualize the complex interplay of Los Angeles wildfires, powerlines (literal and political) and trees as a series of lenses to view our increasingly vulnerable landscape. Climate change demands that we train ourselves to acknowledge the complex interplay of our surroundings: the demand and delivery of electricity and water; over-and-undergrowth of trees and brush; disparities between neighborhoods.

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