Tag: avatar

Activities related to avatars, art-science, academic and popular events, including related industry engagements

SCSMI conference Hamburg

Image: Dr Johannes Riis opens the plenary session for honouring the academic career and contribution of professor Torben Grodal at the SCSMI, chaired by Dr. Stephen Prince (right corner). 5 invited speakers included in addition Ed Tan, Mette Kramer, Pia Tikka, and David Bordwell on the June 13th.

 

Conference presentation Pia Tikka: Enactive Virtuality: Modelling triadic epistemology of narrative co-presence

 

The presentation discusses the concept of enactive virtuality in terms of a triadic epistemology, in which holistic understanding is accumulated via reflecting subjective experience against its psychophysiological epiphenomena and varying narrative contexts. Film narrative can evoke strong emotional identification with the screen character, however, in a context-dependent manner. The aim is to deepen the holistic understanding of cinematic narrative in particular as simulated person-to-person encounter. Two concretising case studies of person-to-person encounter are discussed. The first setting applies conventional film as a model of life situations, while another dramatic setting assigns the viewer an enactive role when engaging with an artificial screen character. These settings are compared and analysed in terms of the mentioned triadic epistemology.

EEVR @ EKA Estonian Art Academy

EEVR nr 23 tuleb EKAs!

Estonian Virtual Reality Community meeting at the EKA Estonian Art Academy June 8, 2019.

Image: The Head of the VR Lab, teaching staff, and specialist tutor Johanna Jõekalda, presenting the EKA’s student projects that have applied biosensor data for studying the participant experience.

 

Program in Estonian:

Enne suurt suve vaatame üle Eesti Kunstiakadeemia VR Labori ja kuulame/proovime palju huvitavat. Kohtumisel tutvustatakse EKA VR Laboris möödunud aasta jooksul läbi viidud kursuseid (Johanna Jõekalda), VRi rakendusvõimalusi disainiprotsessis (Artur Staškevitš) ning VR-prillide uut tähte Oculus Questi (Kristjan Oliver Kuus). Olete oodatud mõtteid vahetama!

12:00 Esitlused:
– EKA VR Labori kursused (Johanna Jõekalda)
https://www.artun.ee/erialad/arhitektuur-ja-linnaplaneerimine/vr-labor/
– VR tehnoloogiate kasutus projekteerimistöös (Artur Staškevitš)
http://arturstashkevitsh.berta.me/
– Oculus Questi esmamuljed (Kristjan Oliver Kruus)

13:30 Demod:
– EKA VR Labori projektid
– Oculus Quest
– TASE lõputööde näituse VR projektid

Ürituse järel soovi korral ringkäik EKA uues majas ja TASE lõputööde näitusel.

Sissepääs peauksest aadressil Põhja puiestee 7. Üritus toimub 4. korrusel arhitektuuriosakonna ruumides.

Prague Quadrennial’s 36Q˚ exhibits The State of Darkness

The State of Darkness is exhibited at BLUE HOUR of the Prague Quadrennial’s 36Q˚ June 8-16, 2019.

Enactive Virtuality Lab is presented by associated team members Tanja Bastamow (Virtual Cinema Lab, Aalto ARTS) and Victor Pardinho (Sense of Space Oy). Biosensor adaptation for  the event by Ilkka Kosunen.

Prague Quadrennial’s 36Q˚ (pronounced “threesixty”) presents the artistic and technical side of performance design concerned with creation of active, sensorial and predominantly nontangible ironments. Just like a performer, these emotionally charged environments follow a certain dramatic structure, change and evolve in time and invite our visitors to immerse themselves in a new experience.

WORKSHOPS, MASTERCLASSES
Curated by Markéta Fantová and Jan K. Rolník
8 – 16 June
Small Sports Hall

Our global society seems to be obsessed with fast paced progress of technology and elevates rational intellectual and scientific pursuits above arts that are intuitive and visceral in their nature. And yet creative minds based in the arts are proving that the boundless imagination paired with new technological advancements often result in original and highly inspiring mind-expanding projects. Even though performance design doesn’t need to use modern technology and is often the most inspiring when it uses simple human interaction, we need to explore and experiment with wide range of possibilities new technologies have to offer. PQ Artistic Director Marketa Fantova established 36Q˚ with those thoughts in mind and with a focus on the young, emerging generation of creatives.

Blue Hour

An experimental, interactive environment that fills the entire space of the Industrial Palace Sports Arena will welcome visitors on 8 June and remain open until the end of PQ 2019. The project, based on intensive team work that brings together experienced artists with emerging designers to collaboratively create, will be led by renowned French visual new media artist Romain Tardy.  The curatorial team seeks to experiment with the shifting boundaries between the “non-material” or “virtual” and the “real” world, to explore the capacity of performance design to enlist technology in cultural production.

See more here

A talk by Robin Zebrowski — aftermath at MEDIT

Dr Robin L. Zebrowski, Associate Professor of Cognitive Science and the Chair of Cognitive Science Program at Beloit College, WI, USA invited by Associate Professor of General Psychology Kristjan Kask at the School of Natural Sciences and Health,TLU.

***

An intellectual aftermath inspired by Robin’s talk at the MEDIT’s meeting space, BFM, (from right) PhD student Jelena Rosic, professor Robin Zebrowski, senior researcher Ilkka Kosunen, associated senior researcher Mauri Kaipainen, professor Kristjan Kask and professor Pia Tikka.

 

Presence and Telepresence: Bodily Experience With and Through Technology“

What does it mean to be present somewhere? In this talk, I’ll explore this question by looking at telepresence technologies and ways of extending our reach across wide distances, while also critically examining what we mean by “the body” that gets extended. We’ll look at what phenomenologists have called “intercorporeality” – the felt experience of being present with other beings like us, and we’ll look at how this interacts with our experience of telepresence technologies, including virtual reality, telerobotics, and EEG-type prosthetics.

About lecturer:

Robin  L. Zebrowski is an Associate Professor of Cognitive Science in Beloit College, Wisconsin (USA). She has a PhD in philosophy from University of Oregon. Prof. Zebrowski is interested in her research in embodiment, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. Prof. Zebrowski is coming to Tallinn University as a Fulbright Specialist Scholar.

Additional information: Kristjan Kask kask@tlu.ee

 

Here Robin’s webpage https://www.beloit.edu/philosophy/faculty/zebrowski/

Visit to Department of Paediatrics Tartu University Hospital

Department of Digital Learning Games, professor Martin Sillaots organised a visit hosted by Professor Anneli Kolk (image) and her team  at the Department of Paediatrics at the Tartu University Hospital.  Among other things they focus on developing the social perception and cognitive abilities of children with neurological damage, using touch screen and VR technologies.

Program
  12:30 – 13:00 Anneli Kolk, Marianne Saard et al – Welcome and Visit to training lab
            13:10 – 13:20 Liina Reinart (image below)- Modern Experimental Training of Socio-Cognitive Deficit in Children with Acquired Brain Injury
            13:20 – 13:30 Anneli Kolk – Interactive Virtual Reality Metaphors for Social Deficit and Anxiety Remediation
            13:30 – 13:40 Kirsi Sepp – Cooperation and development plans
            13:40 – 13:50 Martin Sillaots – DLG intro (http://dlg.tlu.ee/)
            13:50 – 14:00 Katrin Sigijane – MEDIT intro (http://medit.tlu.ee/)
            14:00 – 14:10 Pia Tikka – NeuroCine and Enactive Virtuality Lab (http://www.neurocine.net/)
            14:10 – 14:30 Summary

 

Against loneliness – Enactive Avatar

Against Loneliness: Sharing with Enactive Virtual Agent

The very nature of the human species is social. Loneliness correlates with mental and physical ill-being within, for instance, the elderly, or people with disabilities, or other conditions causing reduced life-environment. Simultaneously, an increasing trend in the European lifestyle is to outsource taking care of such members of family, or in a broader scale, the society, into the hands of professional social and medical care. In the light of recent studies, loneliness can be considered a fatal condition. Loneliness reduces the ability to improve one’s life-conditions, motivation of taking care of one’s health, and affects negatively the functions of society, thereby indirectly also the European economy. As an indication of the urgency of the matter, UK has even appointed a Minister of Loneliness.
The issue dictates the need to figure out all plausible ways to fight loneliness. While human company must be the primary solution, other solutions must be considered to provide socio-emotional comfort to those who suffer of the lack of human accompaniment. An intriguing suggestion is whether technology in some form might contribute to relieve this sore issue.

Work-in-progress: Enactive Virtuality Lab, BFM, TLU (MOBTT90) in collaboration with University of Tartu (UTARTU) Estonia, University of Barcelona (UB) Spain, Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC)Israel, Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) Germany, Sense of Space Oy (SoS) Finland, Trotzkind GmbH (TRO) Germany and Tartu Linna Pensionäride Organisatsioon “Kodukotus” (TLPO) Estonia.

Image below: Skype group session during the project in development.

Video image: A conceptual 3D sketch of the shared experience between a bed-bound elderly and an enactive virtual accompaniment in VR immersive environment. The video depicts a first-person perspective to the co-presence when addressing loneliness by means of artificial accompaniment and virtual reality technologies. Against Loneliness: Sharing with Enactive Virtual Agent, MOBTT90. The 3D art work Eeva R Tikka, 2019.

2 TALKS on EMOTIVE VR Film by Marie-Laure Cazin

Freud’s last Hypnosis, a neuro-interactive 360 movie for EMOTIVE VR

Presentation of the ongoing project Emotive VR prototype, an innovative form combining VR and EEG headsets. A neuro-interactive omnidirectional movie has been realized, visualized in Virtual Reality (VR) Head-Mounted Display (HMD). During the visualization, the EEG signals are recorded and analyzed in real time. Some visual effects and an interactive music vary according to the emotional state of the viewer.

Marie-Laure Cazin is a Fine Arts teacher in the High school of Arts and Design ESAD-TALM (France) and in Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Part of the Enactive Virtuality Research Group, in BFM, University of Talinn, she is currently completing a PhD in Aix-Marseille University (France) on Cinema and Neurosciences. As an artist and a filmmaker, she has developed many experimental cinematic prototypes, using digital tools to create a live interaction between the film and performers or spectators. She collaborated with scientists for art-science projects, working with brains’ datas of emotions in her last interactive projects.

See projects on line (Fr)

Sound designer Matias Harju webpages (Eng) 

EMOTIVE VR documentation online (Fr)

2 TALKS on EMOTIVE VR by Marie-Laure Cazin (ESAD-TALM, France)

Visiting lecture at Aalto University, Aalto Studios, organised by Virtual Cinema Lab & Enactive Virtuality Lab, January 30, at 14-15

January 30, at 14-15 Place: N-416, BFM, Narva Mnt 27, Nova Building, Tallinn University.