Michael Nitsche

Michael Nitsche works as Associate Professor at the School of Literature, Communication & Culture (LCC) at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he teaches courses for the Digital Media M.S. and Ph.D. program, as well as for the Computational Media undergraduate program. He founded the Digital World & Image Group (DWIG), which is the home for his ongoing practice-based research projects. He is member of the Graphics & Visualization Unit (GVU) and of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology (GTCMT), as well as other interdisciplinary centers.

How can digital media support the expressive interaction between people? Informed by his background in architecture and media/ drama studies, Michael’s main research interest focuses on the interconnections between digital and physical spaces and how we use them to interact with others. Focusing on the expressive level of this interaction, he often applies drama and performance elements to HCI but the underlying methodology is interdisciplinary and builds on HCI, as well as architecture, film studies, and performance studies.

Nitsche published his first book Video Game Spaces: Image, Play, and Structure in 3D Worlds, published in spring 2009 with The MIT Press and co-edited The Machinima Reader (with Henry Lowood, TBP spring 2011, MIT Press). In addition to his book projects, Nitsche has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in his research fields and won best paper awards at the ACM Sandbox symposium (part of SIGGRAPH) 2008. He has also contributed a range of chapters for edited collections and published in preeminent journals, including IEEE Computer Society, Digital Creativity, and Leonardo. The Digital World & Image Group has received support from industry partners such as Turner Broadcasting, Google, and Alcatel-Lucent as well as substantial funding from the NSF.

Michael holds a Ph.D. in Architecture and an M.Phil. in Architecture and the Moving Image from CUMIS. He received his M.A. in Drama and German Language from the Freie Universität, Berlin and finished his undergraduate studies at the Ludwig Maximillians Universität, München.

Personal home page: http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~nitsche/

Digital World & Image Group: http://dwig.lcc.gatech.edu/

Current projects in the group: http://dwig.lcc.gatech.edu/projects.html

General information about Georgia Tech graduate programmes in Literature, Communication and Culture: http://lcc.gatech.edu/graduate/