Moving outside the traditional cave, Kent State University’s Design Innovation (DI) department created the Blank_Lab, a makerspace which functions as a ‘black box’ environment for investigating collaborative experiences that bridge the scope of immersive technologies, including augmented, virtual and extended reality tools.
“It’s a makerspace with a range of AR, VR and XR technologies,” said J.R. Campbell, executive director, Design Innovation Initiative for Kent State University. “Rather than creating a dedicated cave or a static projection environment, we created a larger one with a hung grid ceiling to allow for a hung curtain wall and support reconfiguring of supporting cameras, projectors and other components. We integrated screen mounts that support 360-degree projection and a 15-channel audio system to support the ability to experiment with 3D spatial…
