LuminAI: A Performance Collaboration of Dance and AI
Kennesaw State University Department of Dance, in collaboration with Georgia Institute of Technology, presented “LuminAI: A Performance Collaboration of Dance and AI,” one of the world's first instances of a performance that featured both human dancers, and AI based avatars as improvisational dance partners.
The research team's multi-year project included over 50 undergraduate students and reached its full potential in Knowlton's Dance Improvisation course where it became an interactive part of the curriculum. During this time, student dancers trained the avatar through dance interactions, preparing it for a public performance at KSU's Marietta Dance Theater. Through this process, valuable dance insights have been gained regarding both human to human interactions, and human to avatar interactions to inform the future evolution of this embodied artform.
Al Consciousness Theoretical Framework: Charting a Path toward General Machine Intelligence
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have achieved human-scale speed and
accuracy for many tasks, including human speech. Current systems do not need to be
conscious to recognize patterns and classify them or to mimic human linguistic skills
(e.g., ChatGPT).
However, for AI to advance to the next level, it needs to develop capabilities such
as metathinking, creativity, empathy, and free will. This research contends that such
a paradigm shift is possible through a fundamental change in the state of artificial
intelligence toward consciousness, similar to what took place for humans through evolution.
To that end, it proposes that consciousness in AI is an emergent phenomenon that primordially
appears when two machines co-create their own language (creativity) through which
they can recall and communicate their internal state of time-varying symbol manipulation
(metathinking). They must be able to repeatedly and verifiably use this newly developed
language to form agreements and accomplish tasks outside of their training and purpose
(free will). Also, because, in the proposed view, consciousness arises from the communication
of inner states, it leads to empathic capabilities in machines, as empathy is the
ability of one conscious entity to recreate the internal states of another entity
within itself.
The most important application of our theory is in deterministically detecting consciousness in machines. Next, it charts a possible path toward creating general machine intelligence through conscious AI.
Laura Boman
Shaping Healthier, Smarter Consumer Choices
My research explores how the spaces around us—such as restaurants, grocery stores, and retail environments—affect the way we think, feel, and make decisions. I focus on elements like lighting, music, and smells to understand how they influence what and how much people eat, as well as their overall shopping experience. In a world where unhealthy eating habits, food waste, and overconsumption are growing concerns, my work helps businesses create environments that encourage healthier choices without sacrificing customer enjoyment.
By identifying how these environmental factors shape consumer behavior, my research offers practical solutions to some of today’s biggest public health and business challenges. Restaurants and retailers can use these insights to design spaces that promote healthier eating, while policymakers can develop strategies to encourage better food choices. Over time, this research has the potential to create healthier communities and improve consumer well-being, all while helping businesses enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. By bridging psychology and marketing, my work contributes to a future where companies can be both profitable and socially responsible.
By understanding how environmental cues shape behavior, businesses can now create
spaces that support responsible consumption while driving success. My research is
helping build a future where businesses thrive while promoting consumer well-being.
Carlos Kelly
Ready Player Juan
Ready Player Juan is a video game that challenges narrow ways of seeing Latines to
position Latines and our embodied/lived experiences as a tool to educate and challenge
white majorities (who have the biggest say in how marginalized communities exist in
media) and other groups of people to value and see the realities we experience as
Latines. I utilize auto-ethnography to tell my stories that combat narrow discourse
of who Latines are and I combine them with in-depth and interdisciplinary research
to create new theory, new ways of seeing.
Video games are already the world's number one entertainment choice and US Latines are the biggest ethnic consumer of video games in the US. We deserve to have stories told about our communities that do not reflect the biases of uninformed, majority white developers. Instead, we should build writing teams that invite Latines and other POC to be involved in the creative processes of building a storyworld and narrative.
Sergio Figueiredo
Rhetoric in the Metaverse
Alongside Jeffrey Greene, I am working on a book project that focuses on an ethic of care approach to developing the metaverse, addressing the historical development of “the metaverse” as a concept, including how the concept has been discussed in other terms.
The book addresses the role of entertainment industries in the development of metaverse
technologies in the context of their predecessors as a research and development area
supporting economic growth, and social and cultural development, while also speculating
on the possibilities for integrating these technologies and virtual environments into
educational institutions; this section deals in particular with possibilities in higher
education and how those possibilities might filter into primary and secondary educational
institutions.
Finally, the book will also address how iterations of “metaverse” might support healthy community development and how we might be used to develop and build more productive and generative social connections and interactions in ways that avoid the pitfalls of existing social media platforms (e.g., X, Facebook, etc.).
Emily Kitchens
Embodiment Teaching Principles
As a professor and practitioner of acting, Emily Kitchens is interested in the craft of the actor as a creative art form, versus solely as an interpretive art form. The actor is often considered as would be a paintbrush in a painter’s painting: a tool in a director's vision. Acting can carry emotional baggage for being at its best a fame and fortune rise to stardom public validation, and at its worst a psychological and physiological trauma inducer. Emily Kitchens is pursuing harm reduction through her writing, research as a performer, and teaching of acting.
Research trends show this responsibility of self-surveillance is correlated to poor
health outcomes, anxiety, obsessive thinking, depression, suicidal ideation, and struggles
to feel at home in the body. I have encountered embodiment research as an apparent
associative of performance training and scientific fields of study. Embodiment studies
as a growing field illumines explorations of supportive, if not liberatory, practices
for psycho-somatic well-being of a human in and out of performance-related paradigms.
Dominique McDaniel
Examining Online Advocacy Practices of Today's Youth
Dominique McDaniel has two converging lines of research that prepare teachers to work with students who have grown up immersed in digital environments. Her primary research examines the digital literacy practices of teens of color. Using social media applications like TikTok and Instagram as her research field, she analyzes how Black and Latino/a adolescents tap into social movements.
McDaniel’s second line of research is a case study involving KSU students studying to become teachers. She created a professional learning community for these students, also called pre-service teachers, and named it Project CULTURE, an acronym for Culture Understanding and Learning of Teachers Uniting to Reimagine Education.
McDaniel's work sheds new light on how youth are engaging and communicating in civic discourse around issues that are relevant to them, especially in the context of the social challenges surfaced by the pandemic and the resulting social movements. Often, today’s youth who are active in online advocacy and activism ultimately become engaged in their communities in a face-to-face, offline environment.
Autumn Eckman
(a)shore
The dance film project, (a)shore, highlights the impact of human encroachment on natural
environments. Through movement and visual storytelling, the film evokes an emotional
response, prompting audiences to reflect on their relationship with nature and their
role in environmental preservation.
(a)shore was supported by the competitive Artists, Writers, and Scholars Award from
the University of Georgia Marine Extension Sea Grant and premiered as part of Waves
of Wonder, a curated exhibition at the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum in Savannah,
Ga., during the summer of 2024. Produced through a collaborative, mentorship-based
effort, the project featured two undergraduate KSU Dance students as performer and
filmmaker/editor. The musical score, composed by Dan Myers, blends digital and acoustic
elements to underscore the themes of conservation and the intersection of modern technology
with the natural world.
In addition to its premiere, (a)shore was the subject of a poster presentation at
the 2024 SoTL Summit. In January 2025, with generous support from the Geer College
of the Arts, I traveled to Wellington, New Zealand, to present my research on the
making of (a)shore and to attend its festival premiere at the 48th Annual International
Council for Traditions of Music and Dance Conference. This event, attended by over
500 international music and dance researchers, provided a global platform for dialogue
on the intersection of art and environmental advocacy.
The Paper Ecosystem is part of a larger exhibit at the Atlanta Science Gallery called Resilient Earth, which takes on themes of environmental degradation and preservation. The exhibit shows through April and features artists from throughout North and South America. Speed-Schwartz’s piece uses nearly 90 different sequences of stop-motion animation, with his own software sensing multiple presences in the space to create thousands of possibilities for one-of-a-kind illustrations.
Incorporating Applied Cartooning with Peer-Reviewed Scholarship
Erin Bahl is cultivating a peer-recognized expertise at the intersections of digital
writing, comics, folklore/fairytales, social media, web accessibility, research methods,
and graphic RHM (rhetoric of health and medicine), with a particular emphasis on applied
cartooning and other multimodal approaches to peer-reviewed scholarship as primary
modes of production and delivery. Four of her peer-reviewed articles and chapters
this year (both published and in-progress) feature short comics accompanied by scholarly
reflection, as well as a forthcoming comics-form academic monograph.
Jacqueline Springfield
Preserving Dialect of African-American Southerners
Jacqueline Springfield is an associate editor for The International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA), the internet’s first and oldest existing online collection of dialects and accents from around the world. Her research is primarily focused on recording the dialects of African-American Southerners, in an attempt to create a broader range of accent and dialect samples available through the archive. Once the subject is recorded, she transcribes their speech and makes scholarly commentary about the dialect. The recording, transcription and all notes are published to the IDEA website.
IDEA is used by linguists, speech therapists and professional voice practitioners of all kinds. This archive helps to retain accents and dialects that are quickly diminishing, so that they avoid dying out altogether. The archive has the long-term impact of serving as a historical record for posterity as well as a useful tool for historians, cultural anthropologists, and voice/speech practitioners.
Jessica Stephenson
Art History and Incarcerated Citizens Through a collaboration with Common Good Atlanta, Jessica Stephenson is working to
provide free college-level education to incarcerated citizens within several Atlanta
area facilities. The work addresses the dearth of access to education facing citizens
within carceral environments. The work focuses on the impact that attainment of visual
literacy skills and creative writing has on intellectual growth and personal wellbeing.
Art and Heritage Digital Platforms in the Democratic Republic of Congo This project centers on the use of various digital platforms (NFTs, podcasts, livestream, photography) by an artist collective in Lusanga, DRC, to raise global awareness regarding post-plantation economies in the DRC, generate income for said communities, bridge the global north and south divide, and make claim to analog forms of African heritage house in northern museums.
Crafting Representations in the Early Colonial Period Through an examination of late 19th-century photographs and carved ivory sculptures
from the coastal region of the Congo this project seeks an intimate history of identities
along racial, gender and class lines, thereby reworking the top-down narratives of
colonialism for this region.
