NextNOW Fest 2026
Dimensional Fabrication for DIY Sock Puppets
Get ready for Henson Week with Soft Souls Foundry @ Sandbox and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities by learning digital fabrication techniques for DIY sock puppets! Learn 3D modeling to create ears, eyes, and other attachments; digitally knit garments and decorations; or design augmented reality stickers to bring your puppet into the digital dimension. No experience required; all welcome!
Speakers
Christin Washington is a PhD Candidate in the Department of American Studies and a Flagship Fellow at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the Assistant Director of the African American Digital & Experimental Humanities (AADHum) research and design lab. Christin’s scholarship stretches media and modes of digital storytelling (i.e. photography, photogrammetry, laser scanning, virtual reality) to articulate cultural memory across black geographies. Her current research project, 9Night and Good Mourning, uses speculative mapping to look at Caribbean women’s lives in the context o...
Click to learn moreDr. Marisa Parham is Professor of English & Digital Studies at the University of Maryland, where she serves as director for the African American Digital & Experimental Humanities (AADHum), and is the associate director for the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH). She also co-directs the Immersive Realities Lab for the Humanities, which is an independent workgroup for digital and experimental humanities (irLhumanities). Parham’s current teaching and research projects focus on texts and technologies that problematize assumptions about time, space, and bodily materiality. S...
Click to learn more