HCII Seminar Series - Jim McCann
Speaker
Jim McCann
Associate Professor in the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute
When
-
Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305
Video
Panopto
Description
"Computational Fabrication, Four Ways, with Examples from Machine Knitting, and Interruptions"
Computerized tools -- both hardware and software -- have been transformative in, e.g., manufacturing, materials discovery, architecture, fashion, industrial design, and crafting hobbies (to name just a few of many). Computational Fabrication is an umbrella term for the research that seeks to further these trends -- developing and refining how we use computers to make things. This talk will describe four ways computational tools can help us make things: programming machines, specifying designs, optimizing designs, and exploring possibilities. These categories are based on my own experience in making creative tools (tools that help people make things), and the particular lens of my involvement in building tools for machine knitting, an additive fabrication process that almost certainly been used to produce something you are wearing right now.
I will use these four categories of computational assistance to highlight the different ways that computer science -- and its particular, operationalized, view of other disciplines -- comes into play in the creation of new things. And it will give me an opportunity to highlight fun examples from different projects in my lab and the greater computational fabrication community, including the semantics of programming languages for physical objects (what do programs that make machine knitting even mean, in a mathematical sense?).
This talk is designed to be accessible to a general technical audience. The talk will be interrupted by a set of thoughts about programming, computer programming, and "AI." The talk, and the interruption, can be enjoyed without prior knowledge of any specific fabrication equipment, programming languages, craft practices, or mathematical constructs.
Speaker's Bio
James (Jim) McCann is an Associate Professor in the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute. He thinks that creativity – making things and ideas! – is the best thing that humans do. So his research involves producing creative tools (software, hardware, and even theories) to help people do more creating. He is particularly interested in systems and interfaces that operate in real-time and build user intuition; lately, he has been applying these ideas to textiles fabrication and machine knitting as the co-leader of the Carnegie Mellon Textiles Lab.
Jim earned his Bachelor's degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics from University of Michigan in 2005 and his PhD from Carnegie Mellon in 2010 (advised by Nancy Pollard). He worked in industrial research at Adobe and Disney and made video games as TCHOW llc, before joining the faculty at Carnegie Mellon in 2017. He continues to make video games as TCHOW llc and music as part of Jimike.
Host
Chris Harrison