Yesterday, I teamed up NC State College of Design professors, Derek Ham and Scott Townsend to uninstall the “I AM A MAN” Exhibition at the African American Cultural Center. The exhibition which was installed on January 10th would soon after gain national recognization, in part to the success of the “I AM A MAN” VR Experience. Created by Dr. Ham, the “I AM A MAN” VR Experience was one of 14 winners of the 2017 Oculus Launch Pad Scholarship.
On the first day of Black History Month, an image of the “I AM A MAN” exhibition beautifully graced the cover of the Technician, the student newspaper of North Carolina State University. With much joy and excitement, I promptly emailed the exhibition designers, sophomore Graphic Design students at NC State College of Design, and informed them of the recent release of the publication which feature an article written about the exhibition entitled “Design professor and students’ VR exhibit gains national attention.” With much excitement, the subject of the email I sent to the students enthusiastically read “YOU’RE FAMOUS!”
The students are well deserving of the national recognization of their design proposals and exhibition. Their creative geniuses came alive as they worked collaboratively, in teams of five on each of the seven “I AM A MAN” design proposals, during the latter half of the fall semester. It was an honor to have served as their TA, providing them with guidance along the way. As I stated in the Technician article, “I actually learned a lot from them, quite a bit. I was also impressed because I went to see the students’ presentations for other classes, and they were doing just as much work for these other classes as they were for their studio. For them to be able to balance that time and be able to focus on this project and see it to this success as it did is quite impressive.”
