All the world's a stage, And all the men and women [and artifacts of technology] merely players.
In 1959 Erving Goffman published The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life drawing a comparison between social interactions and the imagery of theatre. I use Goffman’s analogy to encompass not only interactions between people, but also interactions between people, technology, and their mediated environments. Performances are actions. From actions, behavior becomes the object of study. As a researcher and interaction designer, I infuse my designs with the knowledge I’ve collected in observing and analyzing human behavior as performances using or with technology.
My name is Jenifer Vandagriff and I am a second year Digital Media masters student at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA. I am an artist, researcher, and designer focused on the impact of digital media technology on the human experience. I consider my life task to examine the social and cultural impacts of science and technology, and address the problems emerging from this analysis through innovative research and design. It is my end goal to design meaningful and satisfying digital artifacts as solutions to meet the complex challenges of communication and expression in the 21st century.
My particular interest is in the intersection of performance and digital media technology. Using research in digital performance as a lens on the human experience and human-computer interaction, I am eager to explore social and media interactions across the spectrum of digital media ranging from games, to social networks, to performance art.
As a digital media artist, I am influenced by 20th century Avant-garde, particularly by the Futurist movement whose focus was on power, speed, technology and man’s relationship to machine. My artistic work is driven by research, experimentation, and innovation with new technology. Currently I am working with both mobile and augmented reality technology.
-- Jenifer Vandagriff