If you had unlimited digital resources, what would you invent? What would you catalogue, analyze, or take note of? On February 3rd, 2026, the Digital Studies Institute celebrated the work of 29 students across 24 faculty-nominated projects at the AMPLIFY: DSI Student Showcase. The North Quad Space was barely large enough to contain the creativity, innovation, and exciting conversations that bounced around from student to student. Projects were not limited to traditional slide presentations or research papers; walking around, I encountered an 8-bit music machine, zines, photobooks, podcasts, and more. Here’s a snapshot of some of those projects!
Almost everyone at some point has dreamed of making a podcast, but how many of us actually do it? Professor T. Hetzel’s DIGITAL 200 course, “The Art of Podcasting,” allows students to create their own podcast episodes for a season of Michigan Voices. This season was titled “In Pursuit of Passion: Cracking open the passions that shape us.” Students Shawn Patterson-Lee, Sydney Fraser, Chloe Castille, and Willow Dimmer each brought their own episodes to the student showcase, sharing both their inspirations for their episodes and the process of making a podcast.
For Sydney’s spin on the season’s theme, she made her episode about passions instead of focusing on her own interests. She conducted “man on the street” interviews with students around campus and interviewed a psychology professor to learn about the science of passions and how it impacts our brains. In the process, she found such a wide variety of interests and unexpected humor, which created a satisfying result after all the interviews were edited and stitched together.
In Dr. Apryl Williams’ DIGITAL 359 course, “Gendered and Racialized Bodies and Technologies,” students experiment with wearable technology such as the Fitbit. But what about other forms of wearable technology? Chloe Cadello and Lola Nordlinger asked, “While various apps allow users to input data regarding their periods, what would it be like to have a device that directly measures period data?” Their project, The Reimagined Tampon: The Revampon, details the design of a reusable, smart tampon with an outer absorbent sleeve. The goal of The Revampon is to “rebuild the tampon, not as a commercial product shaped by gender assumptions, but as an inclusive, equitable tool that serves the health and dignity of all menstruating people, regardless of their income, race, or gender identity.”
Regarding the event, Lola shared, “It’s been so exciting to be here and be surrounded by other people who are coming up with new ideas. There’s a captivated audience who have really good questions, bringing up new ideas for us to better our project and better ourselves.”
Students Kerri “K” Graham, Rachel Oliver, and Aanya Mishra were inspired by the lack of sleep that both students and healthcare workers receive. In Williams’ course, they created ROUSE Band: Guiding the Sleep Cycle with Wearable Tech, a wristband that can be worn during sleep that uses thermal modulation therapy, producing a small amount of heat near major blood vessels to help regulate sleep. While current Wearable Tech can track sleep patterns, they don’t help users actually fall asleep and gain more hours of essential rest.
Exploring art in the form of sounds, student Latimer Rogland created their project Brokenness, Resolution, and Tactility Within Electronic Music and Physical Mediums. The final project of Latimer’s PAT 498 course, “NOISE,” was to record and mix audio and then transfer it to a cassette tape. The music centered around themes of decay and destruction. They also made an accompanying zine—a compilation of visual art that corresponds to the “broken” songs. For Latimer, creating new worlds through sound is like “Virtual Reality for the ears.”
From Professor Ellie Abron’s DIGITAL 411 course, “Becoming Digital,” Michael Emmerman presented his project, Temporal Rhythms Online: Imagining a Temporal Internet for Shared Rest and Collective Attention. This paper explores the internet’s relationship to time and how that shapes everyday life. His work asks, “What if the internet followed rhythms of rest and pause instead of non-stop acceleration and the need for an instant response? “
In the conclusion of Michael’s paper, he writes, “Slowing down online might be more than just a personal wellness technique, but also a community act of care and resistance—an effort to recapture attention, reestablish shared rhythms, and restore digital life to its proper alignment with the people, communities, and surroundings that sustain it.” Michael said that getting to share his work at the AMPLIFY student showcase was such an unexpected and exciting opportunity that also allowed him to see the variety of projects of his peers.
Like prior years, the 2026 AMPLIFY Showcase continued to reexamine technology and explore opportunities in a new year of tech. How can we merge our own passions with technology? How do digital and physical mediums work together? And what happens when we break things apart and rebuild them for the common good?
