Tag: highlights

Awards, prizes, special mentions, disseminations gaining special media attention, other highlights of the research

The Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize winner

The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies has been awarded the 2018 Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize for Dance Research by The Dance Studies Association. 

Pia Tikka & Mauri Kaipainen contributed with the chapter on “Screendance as Enactment in Maya Deren’s At Land: Enactive, Embodied, and Neurocinematic Considerations” 

The award will be conferred at the annual Dance Studies Association Conference at Northwestern University, August 8 – 11, 2019.

 

The following is the citation offered by the selection committee about the book:

The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies, which is skillfully edited by Douglas Rosenberg, features a gracefully comprehensive introduction and thirty-six impactful chapters from leading scholars who expand our understanding of screen technologies as creative, collaborative tools for dance. Both foundational and insightful, the essays focus on pioneering figures like Loie Fuller, Maya Deren, and Norman McLaren; on histories from Harlem and Hollywood to Brazil and Bollywood; and on themes that productively intertwine virtual bodies, framing, editing, space, race, gender, and politics. Authors from Dance Studies and related fields turn their gazes toward the way screendance can provide a liberating or controlled space, an ever-changing canvas, a democratic frontier, a site for social justice, new aesthetic pleasure, or a viral phenomenon with many meanings. Readable, rigorous, and thought-provoking, The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies engages popular, contemporary, traditional, and historical dance, offering wide-ranging new ways of understanding how ideas travel and can transform our lives through the “stage” of the screen.

The award will be conferred at the annual Dance Studies Association Conference at Northwestern University, August 8 – 11, 2019.

The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies is the first publication to offer a scholarly overview of the histories, practices, and critical and theoretical foundations of the rapidly changing landscape of screendance.

 

Awarded the 2018 Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize for The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies

The chief editor Douglas Rosenberg is very excited to share the news:

The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies has been awarded the 2018 Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize for Dance Research by The Dance Studies Association.

The following is the citation offered by the selection committee about the book:

The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies, which is skillfully edited by Douglas Rosenberg, features a gracefully comprehensive introduction and thirty-six impactful chapters from leading scholars who expand our understanding of screen technologies as creative, collaborative tools for dance. Both foundational and insightful, the essays focus on pioneering figures like Loie Fuller, Maya Deren, and Norman McLaren; on histories from Harlem and Hollywood to Brazil and Bollywood; and on themes that productively intertwine virtual bodies, framing, editing, space, race, gender, and politics. Authors from Dance Studies and related fields turn their gazes toward the way screendance can provide a liberating or controlled space, an ever-changing canvas, a democratic frontier, a site for social justice, new aesthetic pleasure, or a viral phenomenon with many meanings. Readable, rigorous, and thought-provoking, The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies engages popular, contemporary, traditional, and historical dance, offering wide-ranging new ways of understanding how ideas travel and can transform our lives through the “stage” of the screen.

The award will be conferred at the annual Dance Studies Association Conference at Northwestern University, August 8 – 11, 2019.

The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies is the first publication to offer a scholarly overview of the histories, practices, and critical and theoretical foundations of the rapidly changing landscape of screendance.

Pia Tikka & Mauri Kaipainen contributed with the chapter on “Screendance as Enactment in Maya Deren’s At Land: Enactive, Embodied, and Neurocinematic Considerations” 

EEVR #21 Community meeting @SuperNova Kino Dec 15

TIME Dec 15, Noon

LOCATION SuperNova Kino, room 406, 4th floor, Narva mnt 27

 

An inspiring EEVR community event organised by MEDIT, including presentations, vivid discussions, technical and artistic demos with highlights by visiting  Finnish media artist Hanna Haaslahti (middle) and producer Marko Tandefelt (right).

Announcement by Madis Vasser:

EEVR #21 will once again find itself in familiar territory on the fourth floor of the BFM school in Tallinn, but this time around our host is MEDIT – TLU Center of Excellence in Media Innovation and Digital Culture. We’ll be mixing film, photogrammetry, and some very interesting hardware. Everyone interested in VR/AR are very welcome! The event is free, but do click the attend button early if you plan to show up! Go to FB.

On the schedule:
* Hanna Haaslahti (http://www.hannahaaslahti.net/) – some cool photogrammetry projects
* Madis Krisman & Johannes Kruusma (Avar.ee) – some more cool photogrammetry projects
* Rein Zobel (MaruVR.ee) – VR Days 2018 recap etc

Demos:
* State of Darkness VR – Enactive Virtuality Research Group
* Magic Leap (curtesy of https://www.operose.io/)
* “Hands-on” with some prototype hardware (top secret)

 

Highlighting:
CAPTURED

Captured is a narrative simulation about social injustice where your digital double has a role to play. In the installation, people are captured as 3D Avatars who become actors in a scenario where individual freedom is taken over by collective instincts.

Team

 

 

 

 

 

Hanna Haaslahti is a Finnish media artist working with ideas from technological theater, expanded image and interaction. She holds MFA from Medialab in University of Arts and Design Helsinki (Aalto). Currently Hanna Haaslahti lives and works in Helsinki. She has been artist-in-residence at MagicMediaLab, Brussels (2000), Nifca NewMediaAir, St.Petersburg (2003), Cité International des Arts, Paris (2008) and SculptureShock organized by Royal British Society of Sculptors, London (2015). She has received honorary mention at Vida 6.0 Art and artificial life-competition (2003) and was selected in 50 best category in ZKM Medien Kunst Preis (2003). She has received the most prestigious Finnish media art award, AVEK-award (2005).

 

Marko Tandefelt is a Helsinki based concept designer, educator and musician with extensive experience in art, design, media and technology fields. Among his interests are: Concept design, sensorbased interface prototyping, immersive multisensory cinema, and experimental visualization systems.

Marko has lived in New York for 20+ years, working at companies such as NEC R&D Labs, ESIDesign, Antennadesig and the Finnish Cultural Institute. During 2007-2015 Marko worked as the Director of Technology & Research/Senior Technology Manager at Eyebeam Art & Technology Center. Marko taught Masters Thesis courses at Parsons School of Design MFADT program in New York from 2001 til 2016.

In his native Helsinki Finland, Marko has worked since 2016 as a Technology Consultant and Producer in various interactive projects, including Hanna Haaslahti’s realtime 3D Body scanning installation system “Captured”. Marko works currently at Kunstventures as a media art producer, concept designer and prototyper.

Marko holds a B.M. degree Summa Cum Laude in Music Technology from NYU, and a Master’s degree from NYU Tisch School of the Arts Film & TV School Interactive Telecommunications Program ITP. He is a longtime member of ACM, AES, IEEE, SIGGRAPH, and SMPTE, and has worked as a paper reader and jury member for SIGGRAPH and ACE conferences.

 

 

 

Hybrid Labs The Third Renewable Futures Conference

Hybrid Labs Symposium
The Third Renewable Futures Conference
May 30 – June 1, 2018, Aalto University, Otaniemi Campus

June 31 NeurocinemAtics on narrative experience

Hybrid Labs is the third edition of Renewable Futures conference that aims to challenge the future of knowledge creation through art and science. The HYBRID LABS took place from May 30 to June 1, 2018 at Aalto University in Espoo, Finland, in the context of Aalto Festival. Celebrating 50 years of Leonardo journal and community, the HYBRID LABS conference looked back into the history of art and science collaboration, with an intent to reconsider and envision the future of hybrid laboratories – where scientific research and artistic practice meet and interact.
http://hybridlabs.aalto.fi/hls2018-symposium/

Pia Tikka and Mauri Kaipainen:
Triadic epistemology of narrative experience

We consider the narrative experience as a triangular system of relations between narrative structure , narrative perspective , and physiological manifestations associated with both. The proposal builds on the fundamentally pragmatist idea that no two of these elements are enough to explain each other, but a third is always required to explicate the interpretative angle. Phenomenological accounts altogether reject the idea of objective descriptions of experience. At the same time, a holistic understanding must assume that a narrative is shared on some level, an assumption narratology must make, and that even individual experiences are also embodied, as is evident to neuroscientists observing brain activity evoked by narrative experience. It cannot be that these accounts are incompatible forever. Using these elements, we discuss a triadic epistemology, a mutually complementary knowledge construction system combining phenomenological, narratological and physiological angles in order to generate integrated knowledge about how different people experience particular narratives.

Our approach assumes a holistic, or even deeper, an enactive perspective to experiencing, that is, assuming systemic engagement in the embodied, social, and situational environmental processes. Consequently, we propose understanding narrative content needs to be analyzed not only based on subjective reports of theexperiencer, but they also need to be related to neurophysiological manifestations of the experience. Or, describing the associated neural activity during the viewing of a film is not enough to relate it to subjective reports of the viewers, but the observations also need to be interpreted to conventions of storytelling. A selection of cases are described to clarify the proposed triadic method.

Κeywords: neurophenomenology, narrative experience, narrative perspective, enactive theory of mind, epistemology

eFilm: Hyperfilms for basic and clinical research presented by
my aivoAALTO collaborator professor Mikko Sams showed highlights of neuroscience findings related to viewing films in fMRI and introduced the concept of eFilm, a novel computational platform for producing and easily modifying films to be used in basic and clinical research.

June 1 VR TALKS at Aalto Studios

VR Research Talks organised with Virtual Cinema Lab and FiVR Track dedicated on research in and around VR, with a focus on artistic praxes around sound, alternative narrations and the self.

Daniel Landau: Meeting Yourself in Virtual Reality and Self-Compassion
Self-reflection is the capacity of humans to exercise introspection and the willingness to learn more about their fundamental nature, purpose, and essence. Between the internal process of Self-reflection to the external observation of one’s reflection – runs a thin line marking the relationship between the private-self and the public-self. From Narcissus’s pond, through reflective surfaces and mirrors, to current day selfies, the concepts of self, body-image and self-awareness have been strongly influenced by the human interaction with physical reflections. In fact, one can say that the evolution of technologies reproducing images of ourselves has played a major role in the evolution of the Self as a construct. With the current wave of Virtual-Reality (VR) technology making its early steps as a consumer product, we set out to explore the new ways in which VR technology may impact our concept of self and self-awareness. ‘Self Study’ aims to critically explore VR as a significant and novel component in the history and tradition of the complex relationship between technology and the Self (—).

See more on Daniel’s work here)

 

 

NeuroCine team’s study on Memento gains international media attention Feb 2018

Pia Tikka

The neuroscientific study my research team NeuroCine initiated at the Aalto University some years ago has been published in NeuroImage journal.

 

The Neural Basis of Watching “Memento”

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-02-nolan-memento-reveals-brain-events.html

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180221122954.htm

http://www.sciencenewsline.com/news/2018022116140007.html

http://www.iltalehti.fi/terveysuutiset/201802212200761490_we.shtml

https://www.sttinfo.fi/tiedote?publisherId=37936456&releaseId=66429298

Links provided by Tiina Aulanko-Jokirinne, Communications Coordinator at Aalto University

NeuroCine collaborator Professor Emerita Riitta Hari awarded due to excellence in brain research

Olav Thon Foundation grants the 2018 international research award to Academician, Professor Emerita Riitta Hari

The researcher prize was awarded due to excellence in brain research.

Picture: Mikael Ahlfors, The Women Leaders Program of Finland Chamber of Commerce.

 

The Norwegian Olav Thon Foundation has named Professor Emerita Riitta Hari the recipient of its international researcher award for excellence in brain research. The award totals 5 million Norwegian kroner, which is approximately 518,000 euros.

According to the foundation’s chairperson Olav Thon, Professor Emerita Riitta Hari is a highly respected brain researcher. Many breakthroughs have been made in the field of brain science thanks to Hari.

According to Ole Petter Ottersen, head of the Olav Thon Foundation’s Expert Committee and President of Karolinska Institutet, Hari has been a pioneer of magnetoencephalography (MEG) since the 1980s.

‘This award came as a complete surprise to me. I have been Professor Emerita at the Aalto University Department of Art since 2016, with the aim to lower the borders between art and neuroscience. I take great delight in the award, as well as in the possibility to continue my interesting research, and even to participate in the ceramics courses at the Departments of Art and Design,’ says Professor Emerita Riitta Hari.

Hari directed brain research at Aalto University for over three decades. In 2010, she was granted the honorary title of Academician of Science. Hari has published over 300 peer reviewed articles and numerous other publications. In 2009 Hari was the recipient of the Finnish Science Award, in 2003 she received the Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine and in 2001 Hari was granted the Matti Äyräpää award.

Previous awards

Pia Tikka

Celebrating Academician Riitta Hari, the director and leading neuroscientist of our globally unique neurocinematics research project aivoAALTO at Aalto University (2009–2014). And the inspiring dialogue between arts and sciences continues – now across the Finish Gulf 

See our co-authored papers at neurocine.net

 

 

TALK by Bruce Sheridan on Creativity: Embodied, Extended, and Enactive 19 Jan 2018

Speaker: Bruce Sheridan (University of Auckland) 
Time: January 19th (Thursday) at 15:00
Place: M-213

Creativity: Embodied, Extended, and Enactive

Cognitivism and computational theories of mind drove approaches to creativity through the 20th century, and formal education across arts and sciences continues to draw on assumptions that are increasingly challenged by developments in neuroscience and artificial intelligence. By emphasizing the physically embodied, socially extended, and inherently enactive nature of human mentation, creativity can be understood as a fundamental, ubiquitous, and highly dynamic capacity central to all human activities. In this presentation I consider ways to conceptualize creativity and learning holistically, and how this approach can both draw from and contribute to work in the biological, physical, and social sciences.

Professor Bruce Sheridan is a filmmaker and educator based in Chicago. He began his filmmaking career in New Zealand, where he produced and directed drama and non-fiction projects for cinema and television, and won the 1999 Best Drama Award for the tele-feature Lawless. From 2001-2017 he was Chair of Cinema Art + Science at Columbia College Chicago, where he led the creation of the Media Production Center, a unique laboratory for modeling and investigating professional collaborative filmmaking practice. Professor Sheridan is Chair of the North American region of CILECT, the international organization of screen education institutions, and a member of the Creativity Research Initiative team at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, where he is currently completing his PhD in philosophy.

With Bruce and Pia in the middle: Vice-Rector for Creative Activities and Cooperation Andres Jõesaar, Head of BFM Katrin Saks, and our EU Mobilitas Plus -project coordinator Maria Hansar.