The Media Innovation Lab (MIL) at Northwestern Qatar underwent a transformation last semester and will be known as the Dama Lab ((Digital Advancement and Media Applications Lab).
Under the leadership of Eric Espig, it will build a community of designers, journalists, researchers, students, and educators working on experiments in storytelling and research, focusing on three primary areas of collaboration - creative space and open lab; collaborative course work; and research partnerships and sandbox.
According to Espig, the Dama Lab will position itself to better support research and classwork at Northwestern Qatar so that it is “more connected in helping and sustaining digital and interactive projects that are happening throughout the Journalism, Communication, and Liberal Arts Programmes.”
With this new target in mind, Espig began the fall semester by experimenting with new ways of presenting classes, which included putting an online course on Microsoft Teams and running a certificate course with the Qatar Foundation. Other projects included supporting student projects through grants to work on VR/360 experiences.
“There is another project that is the realisation of a MacArthur Foundation Award,” Espig said. “This is a truly innovative and experimental application that can best be described as a kind of ‘virtual field reporting’ where students are placed in a 360 environment and can use a virtual smartphone to record and document events as if they were there.” Examples of “virtual events” that students can cover in the VR application, Espig said, include a firefight in Iraq and a Black Lives Matter protest in the US.
The Dama Lab is also working on an interactive timeline detailing the events surrounding the production of The Translator, a recent film by Professor Rana Kazkaz. Students Roja Pande and Shahan Ejaz used the same format to develop an interactive map highlighting Northwestern Qatar’s first 270 days in 2020, which was published by The Daily Q, incorporating interactive storytelling in its reporting.
