UCLA REMAP researcher/GSE&IS PhD student Randy Illum led 36 elementary school students in body-based art-making exercises enabled by OpenPTrack. The project was conducted over three Fridays in March 2017 at UCLA Lab School. It investigated collaboration between students using a digital body-based drawing program compared to sharpie markers.
Working in groups of six, the students developed ideas for digital drawings on backgrounds chosen by their teachers, and then planned how to execute these ideas through movement. Illum developed software that uses OpenPTrack; the program creates a digital canvas, on which the UCLA Lab students “drew” and “painted” by moving themselves throughout the gymnasium. In different corners of the gym, they could choose different colors and “tip” sizes by standing in corresponding squares.
The students, working in the same groups, then executed the same ideas with markers on standard canvases, to which they were more accustomed. Analysis of the differences in their collaboration between mediums is part of Illum’s ongoing research of ubiquitous computing and computational sensing in physical spaces, as these affect information-seeking behaviors.
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