Lab Projects

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Ongoing Projects

Neophyte Studios

Neophyte Studios

Professor of Fiction, Pinckney Benedict, and MFAs Dylan Davis and Matthew Gordon formed Neophyte Studios in 2020 as a way to share their passion for literary games with the world. Over on Twitch, they streamed and discussed the narratives of their favorite games, but in 2021 something happened... We expanded!

Viewers can subscribe to our channels and watch academic streamers play your favorite games, catch cutting edge work from SIU's creative writing classes, and get great new series FOR FREE, like The Neophyte Chronicles: All Guts, No Glory.

Check out our Twitch to catch streams live and chat with us: Neophyte Studios Twitch Channel

Check out our Discord to stay engaged and up to date on all of our game jam announcements: Neophyte Studios

 

Chapters

Image that says Chapters and shows image of a campus

Chapters is written, edited, and produced by SIUC History Students at the Digital Humanities Lab at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Join Ben and Josh as they talk to student researchers about a wide variety of historical topics, from psychedelic drugs, to the Irish rebellion, to mining disasters and radio stations! Chapters is sponsored by the SIU Foundation, the Department of History, the Creative Writing Program, the Department of English, and the College of Liberal Arts.

Example Projects through Neophyte Studios:

Professional writers bumble their way through Disco Elysium!

 

Again- Short Film by Lindsay Pierce

 

Black Beauty: Tech Talks & Creative Thoughts: MFAs Explore Intersectional Representation in AI Art

 

Narrative Game Jam 5 Stream

Individual Projects

Dajonea Robinson

Artificial intelligence can take form in many ways. Fiction student and DHL assistant, Dajonea Robinson webbed together an AI work of art: Meet the Black Goddess. She used GPT3 as a writing partner. GPT3 is a machine learning platform that enables developers to train and deploy AI models. She prompted and refined her output to get the prose that resonated with her vision.

Dajonea also used the Night Café and Midjourney platforms to create and share artificial intelligence-powered art. These platforms provide users with access to a variety of tools and resources that they can use to create their own AI-powered artworks.

Dajonea then placed her prose into a text to voice AI, which is called a voice synthesizer. The platform she used is Typecast. After this, she used her editing skills, refined her audio, and created a video!

You can follow her work @blackgoddessaiart

 

Coopwood Explores Black History Through Digital Humanities

History graduate students are actively employed in the Digital Humanities Lab of SIU. H'Aeneise Coopwood (pictured here) has learned how to operate AI engines, and developed 3D modeling and animation skills. She assists the Digital Humanities Lab with fundraising, and exposure by presenting her work to audiences at SIU. She is currently working with the Digital Humanities Lab on a video game recreating a black town in the Reconstruction-era U.S. South.image of H'Aeneise Coopwood

H'Aeneise has this to say about her project:

“My grandfather told me once that after slavery many Blacks did not speak proper English but communicated what they could not articulate through soulful sound. The concept of the game is based on this notion. The project is an open map quest game where players move into a thriving Black town, and through music and soulful sound only, they collaborate with other characters to create their estate and family business.”