In the 2016 elections, a vast majority of traditional polls had predicted Hillary Clinton would be the winner. When Donald Trump won, many in the nation were stunned. While standard polling missed the mark, social media data had accurately predicted Trump’s victory.

A team of UConn faculty and students are using a social media analytics command center to better capture public opinion around the 2020 presidential elections and be a key resource for journalists and the public.

“Our department’s Social Media Analytics Command Center could pave the way for UConn to become a national leader in social media analysis expertise, on par with the reputation other universities have for their traditional polling data,” says Heather Elliott-Famularo, Donna Krenicki Professor and head of the Department of Digital Media and Design.

As social media becomes an increasingly important platform for people to express and inform their political beliefs, monitoring online conversations can provide invaluable insights into public attitudes.

Since its founding in 2018, the command center has tracked issues surrounding the Connecticut gubernatorial election and conducted real-time analyses of the Democratic debates. For the 2020 elections, the group has set up dashboards to monitor activity in swing states and observe conversations about important political topics like hate speech. By monitoring social media activity, the team at UConn will form a detailed picture of popular opinions in the American electorate.

John Murphy, assistant professor-in-residence in the Department of Digital Media and Design, has been developing social listening strategies for businesses for the better part of a decade. Social listening is a growing marketing technique that leverages social media activity to gain insight into customer sentiment. Since coming to UConn in 2017, Murphy has launched social listening initiatives focused on topics as varied as sports, mental health issues, and the casino industry.

Using social media to analyze political sentiment is a logical step, says Murphy.

“When it comes to politics, social media analysis helps capture sentiments in a way that traditional phone polling may not be able to,” says Murphy. “When people are being polled, they may respond differently knowing that their answers are being monitored. Gathering data through social listening eliminates hesitancy to respond honestly from the process.”

Throughout the election cycle, Murphy and several undergraduate students will measure and analyze all publicly available social and digital media including websites, blogs, and news sources using a leading platform for social media analytics. The platform specializes in social listening, and can analyze and generate reports on information in hundreds of languages using almost endless keywords. Access to this robust software allows UConn’s team to import polling data and candidates’ financial information and overlay it with the social media data they collect to get a fuller picture.

They will also create sophisticated data visualizations through graphics and animations using historic and live analytics to convey complex issues quickly and clearly. Political scientists and communications experts from UConn’s faculty ranks add additional context to help interpret the massive amounts of raw data collected.

They hope to show that social media analysis can be even more valuable than traditional polling when it’s combined with the scientific rigor that an academic institution like UConn can provide.

“The first televised presidential debate between Nixon and JFK turned politics upside down. TV has been a major part of the equation ever since. Social media is that new platform that we have to factor into politic analyses and predictions,” says Murphy.

The public is invited to see the Social Media Analytics Command Center in action tomorrow at a Super Tuesday Watch Party from 6 – 11PM in the Merlin D. Bishop Center on the Storrs campus. For more information, visit the Social Media Analytics Command Center website.

 

Read the full article on UConn Today.

DMD student work won CT Art Directors Club awards and the international Telly Awards

STAMFORD, Connecticut, October 22 – The UConn Digital Media & Design Department is proud to announce that several of our students and professors were recognized over the summer for their talent in the creative sphere. The 44th annual Connecticut Art Directors Club Awards took place on June 27th. All three DMD teams that submitted work were honored with awards.

DMD Stamford’s student-led design firm, Beachball, won two awards for their client work in the Student Online Interactive Category. The team’s Fresh Nation New Vendor Campaign, aimed at educating potential new vendors about the services the Fresh Nation client provides, received a Gold Award. This campaign combines messaging and motion design.

The Fresh Nation New Vendor Campaign was created exclusively by DMD students. Daria Yaseva was the lead designer and project manager. Other team members include Kaila Baker, Doreen Maclellan, and Bryan Santiago. These students worked together to build a collection of marketing materials for their client. Fresh Nation uses the animated GIFs created for the campaign on social media and in email marketing messages. These clean, colorful, and fun animations will serve as valuable assets the client can utilize to convey their message.

The Beachball firm was also awarded a Silver Award in the Student Online Interactive Category for Kelp the Planet, an integrated campaign created for the client, Sea Greens Farms. This campaign promotes kelp as a viable food product and positions the plant as a “center-plate” item for restaurants.

The multifaceted team that created the Kelp the Planet campaign includes motion designers, Lucas Lazarre and Kristina Frattaroli, and programmers, Nina Drozdenko and Jasneet Chawla. Drozdenko also worked as a video editor alongside Juwan Dumas. Daniella Mossa and Juliana Velez held additional creative roles. Together, this team created a landing page, recipe videos, social media posts, and an explanatory animation.

UConn Digital Media & Design – Stamford’s Beachball agency was also awarded CADC’s Gold Award in the Public Service Video Category. The team’s Connect to What’s Next animation was created for Digital Media CT by student, Daria Yaseva, and DMD Professor Steve Harper. The two worked as designers and animators on the project, and Harper held the additional role of copywriter.

Connect to What’s Next seeks to raise awareness of the myriad educational and career opportunities relating to digital media in the state of Connecticut. The project paired abstract animations with a concise and engaging message. The project was also honored with two international Telly Awards in May, a Silver Award in the Branded Content Category and a Bronze Award in the Non-Broadcast Category, and two Silver W3 Awards in Non-Profit Video and Video Art Direction.

DMD students racked up several impressive awards over in summer 2019, but that wasn’t the first time. The Stamford Beachball team also won two Telly Awards last year. In 2018, the Telly Awards received over 12,000 entries from all 50 states and five continents. DMD’s #myStamford animation won the Gold Award in the Fully Animated Piece for Social Video Category. Out of all 12,000 entries, only two received Gold Awards. The Beachball agency’s Spirit of the Sound video was awarded a Bronze Award in the Non-Broadcast, one of the largest categories of the Telly’s.

The UConn Digital Media & Design Department is thrilled to be able to share this news about its students’ accomplishments. Each team worked tirelessly to create a product that succeeded in impressing their clients, the Department, and most importantly themselves.

If you would like more information about this topic, please call Stacy Webb at 860-486-6765, or email digitalmedia@uconn.edu.

STORRS, Connecticut, October 13 – UConn Digital Media & Design’s 3D Animation and newly renamed Motion Design & Animation concentrations have always been brimming with talented and passionate student artists, but recently students have been making waves with their work all over the northeast. Several of our talented animators recently had their work juried into competitive festivals. Standing alongside filmmakers from across the globe, Katie Sawosik, Lucas Lazarre, Ali Loftus, Cassidy Keller, and Liam McNeece, proudly showcased their work and are helping to build UConn DMD’s national reputation as a top program to study digital animation.

Katherine Sawosik, a May 2019 BFA in 3D Animation graduate, has had incredible success with her BFA Senior Thesis project, Stand. The film has won two awards so far, “Best of Individual Category” at the MetroCAF 2019 Festival in New York, NY, and 2nd Place at the 8th Annual Trinity Film Festival in Hartford, CT. MetroCAF is the annual NYC Metropolitan Area College Computer Animation Festival organized by the New York City chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH (Association of Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques). Started in 2003, MetroCAF has grown into the most important local festival of its kind. Trinity Film Festival also features short films made by college students from around the world. Stand was the first animated film to win an award in the festival’s history.  Joining Katie at MetroCAF were Ali Loftus with her 3D animation, Butterscotch & Beetle, and Lucas Lazarre with his 2D animation, Mayhem, which also was a finalist in NASA’s ProjectMars International Film and Art Competition.  All three animations screened at the New York Institute of Technology’s Auditorium on Broadway on September 27.

Cassidy Keller and Liam McNeece, juniors in DMD’s Motion Design & Animation concentration, created a short film titled A Life of Dreaming that was featured in Art All Night: the 7th Annual Trenton Film Festival. This festival took place the weekend of June 15, 2019 and featured more than 200 short films from over 40 countries.

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If you would like more information about this topic, please call Stacy Webb at 860-486-6765, or email digitalmedia@uconn.edu.

Wondering what those ants on Bishop are all about? In DMD, we’ve been busy over the past three years making ant-inspired art! We’re now excited to invite you to the world premiere of the ant-inspired, art-science performance The Colony the weekend of September 6-8 at the Studio Theatre at UConn Storrs. The performance was conceived by DMD Professor Anna Lindemann and includes animations and video developed by DMD students and alums Sarah Shattuck, Allie Marsh, Jasmine Rajavadee, Ryan Glista, and Alex Rouleau.

The Colony is about sisterhood and the evolution of communication in two of the most social creatures on earth: humans and ants. Produced as part of AntU, The Colony ventures into speculative fiction and includes projected animations and imagery alongside live spoken and musical performance, all informed by scientific research on ant colonies.

For more about the performance, visit www.thecolony.show.

Seating is limited and reservations are encouraged.

Watch the  Performance Preview:

2019 marked the inaugural gallery exhibition for the 2019 senior class of Bachelor of Fine Arts Digital Media & Design students! This year we had a cohort of 21 talented students, 17 who have created a diverse body of senior projects – ranging from 2D and 3D animations, live-action films, interactive sites, and physical works. Also featured were our four DMD interns who, in lieu of a senior project, shared their incredible experiences working as professional interns at a variety of corporations.

More on the exhibiting artists here

April 8 to April 29, 2019

Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts
2132 Hillside Road
Storrs, CT  06269

Mon – Fri   10am to 4pm

Prior to performances and during intermissions

Friday, April 12, 5-8pm

Light refreshments provided!

On March 26th, UConn honored its Babbidge and New England Scholars at the annual award ceremony. A Babbidge Scholar must keep a 4.0 GPA for the year, and a New England Scholar must keep a 3.7 GPA. We are incredibly proud that we DMD had 13 of the 15 (87%) School of Fine Arts Babbidge Scholars, and an additional 43 New England Scholars. We are so incredibly proud of our DMD scholars.

Babbidge Scholars: 
Nicholas Bartos, Madison Busick, Nina Drozdenko, Corlis Fraga, Anna Jannott, Ronald Jones, Allison Marsh, Nicole Mason, Devin Quinn, Rebecca Rosen, Sharah Shattuck, Sheryl Wang, and Daria Yeseva

New England Scholars:
Simone Alston, Isaac Bilmes, Sean Bollman, Owen Boyle, James Brockett, Aidan Brueckner, Harrison Burr, Tianxian (Dave) Cai, Abiegael Canova, Thomas Carter, Kailee Collins, Alexander Crosset, Shane Deptula, Mackenzie Fox, Brett Glynn, Jeremy Gonzalez, Alisia Gruendel, Malik Harris, Cassidy Keller, Julian Kinney, Chelsea Kuarasz, Eve Lenson, Allison Loftus, Mia Marasco, Christina McDonnell, Timothy Morris, Victoria Nazworth, Max Nonken, Julia Padget, Gillian Partyka, Lily Pashapour, Cynthia Reinert, Michael Russel, Alvaro Sanz-Perez, Katherine Sawosik, Erik Schweitzer, Courtney (Bean) Senior, Bridget Smith, Shanna Surena-Mattson, Hillary Therriault, Dana Wachsmuth, Rachel Wolther, and Rachel Wright

Original Article: Here

UConn Pre-College Summer Courses – Storrs, Connecticut

While not technically a summer camp, the University of Connecticut holds a unique opportunity for high school students, offering Pre-College Summer courses. Strictly for rising juniors and seniors, the programs all consist of four week-long sessions for each class. In addition to the courses you select, there are exploratory workshops throughout each session on resume building, writing college essays, selecting a major and developing professional communication skills.

The diversity of class options through this program are remarkable for any student pursuing a major in a STEM field. For the technology-minded considering developing their own app to impress a future college, there are courses in Game Design, Programming, and Web Design. The Engineering courses include Global Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and a unique Makerspace design class among others. Pre-med majors will appreciate a wide variety of medical classes, from Pharmacy, Neuroscience, Medical Anthropology, and Sports Medicine. For all majors, the course in Creative Writing allows students to hone their writing skills before tackling college applications.

The courses are all taught by the universities’ top professors, allowing for early connections to be formed in the field.  The program requires an online application, which includes the submission of short-answer questions, transcripts, attendance records, and a reference. The cost of one session is listed as $2050. There is an Early Bird discount of $150 off for students applying before April 1, 2019, with a hard deadline of June 23, 2019.

(Original Article can be found on the Christie Digital Systems USA website)

PHOENIX, Ariz.​ – (February 20, 2019)

Students at the University of Connecticut’s (UConn’s) Digital Media & Design program had a big canvas to fill for their final projection mapping project. ATD Audio Visual, a full-service event production and rental company in the Bronx, New York, served as technical partner, selected the Christie Spyder X80 multi-window processor to facilitate mapping the students’ digital content onto the façade of The Bushnell Performing Arts Center in Hartford.

The beautiful neoclassical walls, columns and pediment in the courtyard at The Bushnell lent themselves to the dynamic and colorful graphics and animations created by the UConn students. The Bushnell has been a gathering place for arts, education and community activities in Greater Hartford for almost 90 years.

“The Bushnell’s façade was ideal for projection mapping,” says Or Israel, president, ATD. “It has many 3D elements – columns, brick walls, and lions’ heads supporting the portico – which made an interesting surface to display the 1920 x 1920-resolution content. The façade had been scanned and content specs supplied to the students who built their projects on templates of the projection surface.” Favorite Color, a New York City-based design studio and production company, also created content for the show.

“It was exciting to work with ATD on this pilot for a program we hope to continue,” says Ryan Glista, Project Manager at The Bushnell’s Digital Institute and a recent UConn graduate. “This was the first partnership between The Bushnell and UConn. Seven students were completing an introduction to projection mapping course; they are all juniors and seniors with a strong background in animation. They had done projection mapping on small objects in class, but their final project was on a much bigger scale.”

ATD provided two 20,000 lumen projectors with short-throw lenses, mounted under the glass portico of the courtyard façade; a media server; and a Christie Spyder X80 multi-screen windowing processor. The project was the first projection mapping assignment for the new Spyder X80, which ATD acquired last November. In addition, Israel shared his expertise with students by teaching a two-hour class on basic projection mapping and 3D mapping at UConn.

“Or told me about the Spyder X80, and I was as excited as he was to see it in action at The Bushnell,” says Glista.

“We knew if we used the X80 it would be a stress-free show,” says Israel, who acted as project manager. “With the Spyder X80 we connect the system and everything works. I feel free to mingle with the client; without it I have to be behind the technicians making sure nothing goes wrong. Even though the X80’s success rate is extremely high, we also had the security of Spyder’s built-in redundancy; we knew the still store would step in if there were any failures.”

Glista notes that, “the show was initially supposed to be a two-day test, but when the CEO of The Bushnell saw it he was so impressed by it and what it could mean for the theater that we installed it for the three-week, sold-out run of ‘Hamilton.’ That meant thousands of people saw the projection mapping every night – how amazing for the students!”

Israel notes that ATD used the X80 on five shows in just two months. “Since we took delivery of the Spyder it’s done a number of live shows for high-end clients, including a corporate event in Manhattan with six 4K outputs and a total of 60 million pixels.”

At ATD, Riley Irving was the Spyder X80 operator for The Bushnell project and Kevin Gomez the AV Technician. At UConn, the department head was Heather Elliott-Famularo and the professor was Kevin Richetelli. The students whose work was shown were Ian D’Arcangelo, Nick Donati, Eric Fritz, Orly Mobilio, Jasmine Rajavadee, Morgan Rossi and Renoj Varghese.

About ATD Audio Visual
ATD provides AV Services for a variety of events, including presentations, conferences, meetings and trade shows. With decades of technology and programming experience, ATD offers a variety of services backed by industry-leading expertise. By guiding clients through the entire process, ATD acts as a full-service consultant providing insights, advice and unique solutions to meet specific requirements.

About Christie®
Christie Digital Systems USA, Inc. is a global visual and audio technologies company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ushio Inc., Japan (JP:6925). Consistently setting the standards by being the first to market some of the world’s most advanced projectors, complete system displays, and cinema audio solutions; Christie is recognized as one of the most innovative visual technology companies in the world. From retail displays to Hollywood, mission critical command centers to classrooms and training simulators, Christie display solutions and projectors capture the attention of audiences around the world with dynamic and stunning images, accompanied by awe-inspiring sound. Visit www.christiedigital.com.

Christie® is a trademark of Christie Digital Systems USA registered in the United States of America and certain other countries
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