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#(text-colour:#959DAA)[''Gaming'']
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#(text-colour:#D81B60)[''Media Production'']
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(align:"<==")+(box:"===XXXXX==")[(text-colour:#FCAB62)[#About]]
(align:"<==")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXX=======")[My name is Matthew Rasmussen (he/him), I am a Computer Science major from Oberlin, Ohio (and Walla Walla, Washington). I happened upon the digital humanities through trying to find a way to continue to feed my love of the humanities while also continuing to refine my reletively-new found interest in computer science. I also found the digial humanities as a way to explore what my personal love of storytelling (specifically table-top role playing games suchs as Dungeons & Dragons) would look like with the addition/use of technology. My understanding of the digital humanities has grown substantially during my time at Carleton, ranging from a way to leverage technology to make humanities work easier to creating new knowledge at the unique instersection of the two fields.]
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(align:"<==")+(box:"===XXXXX==")[(text-colour:#959DAA)[#Gaming]]
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(text-colour:#959DAA)[''SayKid Games'']]
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(text-colour:#959DAA)[''Locker Room Simulator'']
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(text-colour:#959DAA)[''Snake AI'']
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(align:"<==")+(box:"===XXXXX==")[(text-colour:#D81B60)[#Media Production]]
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(text-colour:#D81B60)[''Interventions 2 & 3'']]
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(text-colour:#D81B60)[''Annoyed'']
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(text-colour:#D81B60)[''Voronoi Diagrams'']
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(align:"<==")+(box:"===XXXXX==")[(text-colour:#004D40)[#Public Scholarship]]
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(text-colour:#004D40)[''Viking Age Annotated Timeline'']]
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(text-colour:#004D40)[''3D History'']
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(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXX=")[If you'd like to send me a message you can contact me at:]
#matthewras11@gmail.com[[HOME]]
[[Gaming]]
(text-colour:#959DAA)[#'Locker Room Simulator']
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“Locker Room Simulator” is a serious game made with the hope of addressing some of the harmful traditions and toxic masculinity pervasive in high school athletics. It was made by a team of three people, Miller Davison, John Garay, and myself, all of whom played sports in high school and drew on first hand experience to make this game. The game is made using Twine (the same platform as this website) which excels in 'Choose your own adventure' type games. We felt using that platform would give the player the most agency and therefore the greatest impact when playing.
This project helped me realize the power games have as a tool for talking about serious topics normally only covered in heavy theoretical scholarship and intense class discussion. I learned that video games provide the creators and the players a new language to talk about topics, this being called 'procedural rhetoric'.
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Pictured above is the Twine footprint of the game.
#(link: "Click here to play it for yourself!")[(goto-url: 'https://matthewrasmussen.dgah.sites.carleton.edu/locker-room-simulator.html')][[HOME]]
[[Gaming]]
(text-colour:#959DAA)[#SayKid Games]
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During an externship with a Minnesota base company named SayKid, alongside a cohort of other Carleton students, I helped design and create a few games to be played with their specialized toy. I helped make two games during my time with SayKid, these include an “Act of Kindness Calendar” and a “Guess Who” game, both audio based version of their common forms.
I learned from this experience the power of different forms of learning and teaching. The toy used only has a limited visual component(the toy itself and a handout for "Guess Who") so it relies almost entirely on listening to and playing audio. During this process we had to consider what it meant to teach in this way and how we can get the most out of this different style of learning and play. [[HOME]]
[[Gaming]]
(text-colour:#959DAA)[#'Snake' AI]
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A partner (Adam Nik) and I created an AI that's purpose was to learn and become proficient at the classic video game, “Snake”. We did this with a form of Q-Learning while also having to produce our own version of the game itself.
I learned more from the process of creating this game than the finished product. Of course the game is pretty cool and the data visualization at the end does show some cool things, it was the process of picking apart "Snake" to better understand how AI can be introduced. This helped me conceptualize how important the process is to big projects. It is often times in the middle of the process that we make our biggest breakthroughs and end up learning more. [[HOME]]
[[Media Production]]
(text-colour:#D81B60)[#'Annoyed']
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This is a sculpture created during a class called “Art, Interactivity, & Robotics”, which was a purely 50/50 Computer Science/Studio Art class that focused on the intersection of the two fields. In this piece the prompt was to bring to life an emotion, in the case “Annoyed”. In this piece mostly cardboard, wood, small motors and a button (servos), as well as an arduino, were used to help express annoyance with the person who chooses to interact with the piece.
The class that I created this piece in was the first truly tacticle example of the digital humanities I was able to experience. This project being the first real project I was able to start to see how technology and the humanities (studio art in this case) can come together to creating something more. Not only did I learn specific skills such as a new programming language and a little bit of electronics, I also realized how much room for possibility there was to create new and amazing things.
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[[Media Production]]
(text-colour:#D81B60)[#Interventions 2 & 3]
These are two pieces made using the music making programming language called ChucK. The first piece, Intervention 2, was a piece in which you would take the perspective of someone walking through a hallway and opening doors to new worlds of sound. The second piece, Intervention 3, whas an interactive soundscape where the user could use their arrow keys to travel through the 'space' (a visualization of this is pictured below). Sadly, due to changes in software and computer set ups I lost both the audio clips and code for thiese pieces, but I still have the notes and drafts that went into creating them.
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These projects exemplified the idea of working with others that have different areas of expertise than you, my partner was an incredibly talented musical artist and was able to help guide the music part and then I was able to help add my understanding of coding. It helped that we both had a working understanding of both coding and music, but by leaning into each-others' strengths we were able to create something bigger than the sum of its parts.
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[[Media Production]]
(text-colour:#D81B60)[#Voronoi Diagrams]
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This project is the culmination of the work of three people, Jade Kandel, Katy Munger, and myself. We implemented an algorithm that drew Voronoi Diagrams using Delaunay Triangulations. This started as a project to explore and try out certain algorithms turned into an art project that is now on display through Jade’s continued work. The pictures here are from iterations of our program being run with various color combinations that are hung in one of the classrooms in the newly renovated Olin Hall.
From this experience I was able to start to explore what technology could offer art, what could technology do for art besides adding more accesible ways to paint/draw (tablets, photoshop). It was an interesting dive into how technology (specifically code) could become, or may already be, a new medium for art and what that means for both fields.
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(text-colour:#004D40)[#3D History]
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This was a group project in which we focused on 3D modeling to help tell the (locally) famous tale of the Defeat of Jesse James (or the 1876 Northfield Bank Raid). We used ArcGIS, photogrammetry (Metashape), as well as some newer hand held technology (Matterport).
This was a largely skill based learning experience. I was able to try out a bunch of new and interesting tools as well as learn the basics of some of, what seem to be essential, digital humanities software. This was also a great experience of working in a team with a wide range of skill levels and areas of expertise.
#(link: "Check out the site for yourself here!")[(goto-url: 'https://hhfinals.dgah.sites.carleton.edu/3D-History/')][[HOME]]
[[Public Scholarship]]
(text-colour:#004D40)[#Viking Age Annotated Timeline]
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In this project we created an interactive timeline of the Viking Age. This took the form of research on a few specific points of interest and then combining the work of our entire class into one timeline. This was done with TimelineJS.
In this process was improving our understanding of classically humanities based information (history) using newer technology. The focus was by presenting this information in a new way we may be able to garner a better or maybe new understanding.
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