Overview

Hip Hop as a form of pedagogy has long been explored through questions of strategy and development. However, its questions about how to “do” Hip Hop pedagogy have never been explored as through its history with technology - particularly the integration of VR. So, from this perspective the purpose of the independent study is to explore the implications associated with taking a physical archive to a digital one when challenged with issues of preservation and curation of Hip Hop-inspired cultural artifacts on these platforms. We are specifically concerned with making these artifacts and their use available to college and pre-college learning environments concerned with using culture, art, music, and technology resources to (1) interrogate ideas of democracy, history, and culture as well as (2) facilitate the enhancement of students’ social justice capacities for issues where race, class, and gender adversely influence social equity. As an interactive storytelling medium, we also want to use the archive as a publishing platform for curating student work.

My Role

I will be working directly with Dr. Wilson to design and develop the 2nd iteration of the 4-4 Beat web application. I will also be converting the web app into a VR experience for the HTC Vive. The goal is to give students to ability to curate their own hip-hop artifacts in a virtual gallery to share with others.

Technical Highlights