Main Lab
Each workstation in the main lab is configured with specialty hardware and software for text processing, analysis and visualization, including data mining, QDA and scripting tools, e-book applications, robust XML editors and multimedia development tools. The lab also houses a high-performance liquid-cooled gaming tower, affectionately known as “Big Daddy”. Video and audio output from this lab can be streamed into the game lab for large-scale visualization.
Game Lab
The game lab is our primary visualization and collaboration facility, as well as a comfortable space for game playing and testing within a group environment. The room is equipped with dual 94″ Smart Boards and 3D projectors, VR gloves and goggles, a variety of legacy gaming consoles and titles, and experimental haptic controllers. Infrared cameras placed around the room and linked to a multi-channel DVR record gameplay for detailed activity analysis. An audio-video matrix allows input to be streamed to observers elsewhere in the lab for remote study and analysis.
Reading Room
Designed as a library for the study of text in various forms (manuscript, print, and digital), the reading room houses various writing and reading technologies, including slates, tablets, a microfilm scanner and document camera, numerous handheld and pen computing devices, and various ebook readers. It also holds a large library of original hypertext fiction and poetry, legacy reading machines, and books about digital textuality, game studies, and new media theory.
Digital Rhetorics + Ethics Lab
We added this new space in 2014. The DR+E Lab was designed to study the embodied rhetoric of user interfaces, and houses a full-body motion capture system for XR content creation, a large capacitative table with infinite points of touch, and a wall-mounted touchscreen.