New degree, diploma options offered through U of R’s creative tech program

Students at the University of Regina have a chance to explore new degree and diploma options through the creative technologies and design program.

On Friday, the U of R’s Faculty of Media, Art and Performance announced it was expanding the program to include a new bachelor of fine arts degree, a new two-year diploma, and the first bachelor of design degree in Saskatchewan.

“It’s very exciting because it’s offering students so many more ways to get what they want and what is needed to go into industry (and) to go into a number of different careers,” said Dr. Charity Marsh, program co-ordinator and a MAP professor.

Marsh said it was important for the program to expand, especially as they received a lot of feedback from many students.

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Students will develop specialized skills in interactive media, visual communication and graphic design, physical computing, virtual reality, augmented reality, 3D animation, sound art computer gaming and more.

Marsh said she was very proud of the faculty’s students and the work they have done.

“Having our students’ work showcased in festivals is another really lovely way that lets students know that the work that they’re making is meaningful and people want to engage with it,” she said.

Student showcase

At Friday’s media event, students like Kadence Meredith got to show off some of the projects they’ve been working on.

Meredith is a fourth-year computer science student with a concentration in creative technologies.

She’s also the president of the recently founded Creative Technologies and Design Student Society.

For her fourth-year capstone project, she’s designing an interactive sensory program and has been working on it for about a month.

It has two different features: One where the user’s motion is tracked and is projected onto one screen, and one where users interact with the environment.

Meredith said she was inspired by trying to capture the fleetingness of memories, both about how to hold onto them and also let them go.

“As a fourth-year university student, it feels like time is just flying by,” she laughed.

“I started with that concept and was trying to figure out ways to visualize that while also using my coding skills and building interactive installations. So I learned about this software called TouchDesigner and that’s what kind of led me to where I can manipulate real-time media.”

Meredith also showed off her Panoramic Turntable project from last year. It’s an interactive project where people put on headphones and touch the painted turntables to generate a recorded sound.

One of the projects designed by Kadence Meredith. (Daniel Reech/980 CJME)

Meredith described it as a fun little puzzle. The three turntables are all the same painting, but  each one gets progressively more abstract – and in turn the recorded sound also gets more abstract.

“It’s all about interactivity and trying to find creative ways to get people to interact with your work and just play around with it,” she said.

Meredith said she hopes to enter a graduate program after completing her degree.