By Serenity Beaumont, Spiritual Life Division Head

This week, our ASR profile will focus on Allen Gao’s ASR research project. With a mind that loves to immerse itself in culture along with his tech-savvy eye, Allen seeks to create an iPhone app for his ASR project. This app, formatted into a game, will display information about Chinese culture which will specifically focus on antiques, and hopefully will inspire its viewers to learn about Chinese culture through a medium that appeals to Americans. 

Allen’s inspiration for his idea comes from a rather non technologically based idea. The Blue and White was able to sit down with Allen, and he shared that, in his father’s home, he developed a fascination with the tea set located there. This sparked his idea to share with the world the same interest he found with Chinese antiques. Because Allen realizes that the Chinese history and authentic culture is “not very popular in the US,” he hopes that, through this app, more people can understand Chinese historical culture through harnessing the communicative power of technology. 

Building the app will be Allen’s great adventure over the next couple of months as he has taken computer programming classes this past summer to help him understand the mechanics behind constructing an effective app. In the future, he will write the plot of the game, which is a fictional story, and he will take pictures of ceramics at the Museum of Fine Arts for story illustration inspiration. He will then proceed to build the app, and he hopes that, in May, it will be available on the Apple Store, so students will be able to play the game.

Allen shares for future ASR students that “if you are interested in something” and “if you are willing to spend a lot of time on it, then do it!” We’ll follow his progress and report back!