Overview:
In the beginning of Fall 2024, The Department of Art's Living Art and Ecology Lab partnered with the Emerging Technology Studio (ETS) to provide undergraduate students with an interdisciplinary research opportunity and a chance to grow their digital art creation and immersive technology skills, through a project that strengthens sustainability and the campus community’s connection to their natural surroundings and history.
The students conducted research on historic changes to campus that have impacted biodiversity and ecosystem services. They then worked together on creating a virtual reality simulation that visualizes what some of the campus landscape might have looked like over a hundred years ago, as well as an augmented reality application that visualizes the stream that used to run across some of the campus areas. The XR project involved collaboration with the ETS designers and developers in creating and later facilitating the immersive experiences.
Find more information about the project and the team on the Lost Waters project website.
Collaborative teams:
OSU Department of Art
OSU Knowlton School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Planning
Emerging Technology Studio (ETS)
Facilities, Operations, and Development (FOD)
Planning, Architecture, and Real Estate (PARE)
Museum of Biological Diversity Herbarium
Friends of the Lower Olentangy Watershed (FLOW)
The project culminated in being showcased during the Earth Day celebration on campus on April 22nd, 2025, where the students, faculty, and staff who worked on the project interacted with the campus audience. The audiences experienced the AR application through phones and tablets on the South Oval, as well as the virtual reality simulation and the corresponding 3D game environment on the Pomerene Hall Patio at Mirror Lake.
The VR simulation allowed visitors to walk around the virtual Mirror Lake area and explore how the landscape might have looked like in the past, while the AR application enabled visitors to walk alongside the virtual Neil Run stream and a narrative trail overlaid on the South Oval landscape.
