Imagination, Computation, and Expression Laboratory (ICE Lab)
We develop computing systems for creative expression, cultural analysis, and social change.
ICE Lab research includes new forms of gaming, interactive narrative, social media, digital media art, and creative computing forms unanticipated by any of those.
We’re centered on three areas of computation: expression and narrative, social identity, and culture.
Expression and narrative: We examine how narrative imagining happens at the fundamental cognitive level, providing semantic building blocks that translate to formal representations of concepts and algorithms describing how they can be composed.
Social identity: We seek to create tools that allow for some aspects of social identity constructions, but associated with these choices will be rule sets and processes that formally describe identity concepts. Socially realized identity effects will dynamically change based upon user interaction and discourse.
Culture: Deep understanding of the wide range of human cultural stories is necessary for true communication. We believe that diverse cultural practices can present new underpinnings for computational practices.
The computer as a medium offers a unique expressive palette for storytellers. With it, we can build and convey models of crucial, moving issues in our world. As a step toward this aim as it relates to sexism, we present our interactive narrative called Grayscale. The experience is intended to provoke players to reflect critically on sexism in the workplace, both overt & hostile and more subtle.
Our research seeks to discover best practices for using avatars to enhance performance, engagement, and STEM identity development for diverse public middle and high school computer science students. As sites of our research we run workshops in which students learn computer science in fun, relevant ways, and develop self-images as computer scientists.
Mixed-methods qualitative (interviews and coding) and computational (AI) approach to understanding relationships between social identities, cultural values, and virtual identity technologies (e.g., online profiles and avatars).
This study aims to understand the behaviors, motivations, and gameplay types of videogame players through topic modelling, sentiment clusters, and valence analysis of videogame reviews.
We aim to study the impact of computer-supported roleplaying in changing social perspectives of digital media users. Such media could take the form of videogames, VR systems, training software, and other types of interactive narrative technology.
The Imagination, Computation, and Expression Laboratory at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has released a new video game called Grayscale, which is designed to sensitize players to problems of sexism, sexual harassment, and sexual assault in the workplace.
Communicating through computers has become an extension of our daily reality. But as speaking via screens has become commonplace, our exchanges are losing inflection, body language, and empathy. Danielle Olson ’14, a first-year PhD student at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), believes we can make digital information-sharing more natural and interpersonal, by creating immersive media to better understand each other’s feelings and backgrounds.
