Tag: narrative

Activities related to narratives, and narrative systems, art-science, academic and popular events, including related industry engagements

State of Darkness meeting diary 2022

Diary for the Fall 2022 work-in-progress.

State of Darkness (SOD II; working title)

Image: Team meeting with the script writer Eeva R. Tikka, the designer o f the performative scenography Tanja Bastamow, and Pia Tikka, discussing the responses of the artificial character to the changes in the VR world.

Images: Enactive Virtuality team planning session with Victor Pardinho, consultant and CEO from the start-up Sense of Space, spring 2022

Image by Pia Tikka. Enactive virtuality team discussing the biofeedback Ilkka Kosunen) between different adaptive elements in the sound world (Matias Harju), scenography (Tanja Bastamow) and character design (Ats Kurvet).

State of Darkness II – drafting the co-presence experience in narrative VR

VR Experience – draft April 2021, Pia
An updated version of feelings and experience of co-presence with a stranger as inner early state of darkness, but with upgraded functions and meta human char and perhaps participant may move in the space (t.b.d.)
The story
You (as a participant) put the head set on.
You hear warlike sound from somewhere above around suggesting you are below the ground, maybe a cellar.
You find yourself at the doorway of a cellar room. It is dark. Maybe some light streaming through the window crack to the street level…
You may be able to move around (or then the installation is experienced seated).
You are inside the room. Not sure if you are alone.
Then you realise there is some movement around you.
A flashlight is turned on.
You see a person sharing the room with you.
That person is a stranger for you (three different versions of meta human).
From this onwards, you need to hide in this cellar with a stranger.
External sound scape of the warlike situation outside.
The soundscape of the cellar.
The behaviors of the stranger (and the plausible hidden motivations) and events in the cellar will be written in more detail by Eeva, who will join the enactive team starting May 1.
Tasks:
  • Eeva: responsible of create the situation (story), behavioural motivations for the “stranger” and choreograph the movements and default facial behavior. This includes working with Ats with motion capture.
  • Tanja:performative environment elements.
  • Ats: UE environment,  the characters, visuals, sound scape, etc. all UE related functions, including motion capture.
  • Abdallah: tracking of user behavior and interpreting that into UE environment, finding the suitable way to measure facial expressions, eyetrakcing, etc. inside headsets (you proposed one option) – we should check that in more detail.

Robotitieater by Liina Keevalik with Enactive Virtuality Lab contribution on A.I. Checkov

Image: The artificial A.I. Checkov  created by Enactive Virtuality Lab, Ats Kurvet.
The trailer we used before the performances is here: https://youtu.be/Uyu7aN3AFr0
The trailer that uses material of the actual performances is here: https://youtu.be/rxjJ0Otoj04
For media some more photographs of the rehearsals or of the performance https://robotiteater.ee/gallery/
The full credits are as follows (also on our web page: https://robotiteater.ee/repertoire/

Unio Mystica by Helen Kaplinsky at Tallinn Art Hall Oct 26

26.10 at Niguliste Museum, Tallinn

Unio Mystica: Medieval women’s visions and the virtual imagination

Still from ‘Tragodia’ VR play (2019) by Tai Shani. 30 minutes, with original soundtrack by Maxwell Sterling. Commissioned by Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Jindřich Chalupecký society, and Graz Kunstverein.

The storytelling event ‘Unio Mystica’ concludes the two-month residency research of contemporary art curator Helen Kaplinsky at Tallinn Art Hall for international project Beyond Matter, exploring the virtual technological and mystical visions of women.

17.00 – Intro by curator Helen Kaplinsky at St Catherine’s Friary
17.10 – Anu Mänd is an Art Historian focusing on gender, death, and animal symbolism in the late medieval Baltic region. She will begin by taking us on a tour of the oldest known Estonian woman’s gravestone. At Niguliste museum we will discuss the experiences of poor women and their children – how could the underprivileged prepare their souls for death?
17.45 – Artist Dominika Trapp will read from a hand-written scroll providing an over-view of ten years of her art practice against a backdrop of autobiographical ruminations – coming of age as a young woman in the Hungarian countryside, discomforts with contemporary feminism and her commitment to somatic intelligence, influenced of mystic and philosopher Simone Weil.
18.00 – Artist and conservationist Olesja Katšanovskaja-Münd will present her reconstruction of a rare and deteriorated 15th century painting – ‘The vision of St. Emerentia’. This will be followed by a somatic exercise, guiding a connection between the trinity of visual stimuli, inner feelings and bodily expression.
18.30 – VR screening of ‘Tragodía’ (2019) by artist Tai Shani. Tragodía is a VR play written about three generations of women in the artist’s family and their nonhuman kin. The viewer embodies the avatar of the Ghost Child with each family members’ colossal head orbiting just out of reach. The work could be understood as a mystical vision of undefinable states of being that emerge during grief.

The residency is part of the large-scale cooperation project BEYOND MATTER – Cultural Heritage on the Verge of Virtual Reality, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. It is dedicated to novel, digital approaches to exhibition revival, documentation, and dissemination, as well as the artistic, curatorial and museological development of the opportunities presented by virtual representation.

More information behind this link

Enactive Virtuality Lab presents April 16

Welcome. Please join us!

Enactive Virtuality Lab presents the on-going work in online seminar.

Date: Friday April 16, 2021 
Time: 09:15 -13:00 Helsinki

Zoom Meeting

Meeting ID: 947 9465 7125
Passcode: 019362

VIDEO recording (t.b.a.)

Program

To be confirmed

9:15

Pia Tikka (Enactive Virtuality Team leader, MOBTT90)
Introduction

9:20 KEYNOTE

Ighoyota Ben Ajenaghughrure (t.b.c.) 30 min + Q&A  (Vistiting lecturer of Software Engineering @ DT)

Symbiosis in information society  

10:00

Debora Conceição Firmino De Souza (MA Thesis @DTI)
Exploring the affective states of an interviewee during a Q&A session


10:15

Abdallah Sham (doctoral student @DTI)
Facial Expression Recognition in a Human-human dyadic setting


10:30

Ats Kurvet (computer graphics specialist)
Playing  with MetaHuman for “real” in narrative VR environment


10:45-11:00 coffee break (15 min)


11:00

Robert McNamara (doctor in law (US); doctoral student @BFM)
Cinematic Narratives in Gaming Engines to Explore Compassion towards Refugees

11:15

Sampsa Huttunen (doctoral student @Helsinki University)(t.b.a)
Psychophysiological Reactions to Human Face under Different Lighting Conditions: A Pilot Study


11:30

Mehmet Burak Yılmaz (doctoral student @BFM)
Affective functions of camera movements in cinematographic storytelling


11:45 -12:30 Discussion

 

Open for public!

Join Zoom Meeting
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Meeting ID: 947 9465 7125
Passcode: 019362
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Biofiction -panel: Neurotechnology and how it will shape our future bodies April 8, 2021

BIO·FICTION

Neurotechnology and how it will shape our future bodies

The BIO·FICTION Science Art Film Festival is one of a kind: It’s a creative and boundary-crossing event with a program filled to the brim with content exploring cutting-edge emerging sciences – in the present, but also in possible futures. https://bio-fiction.com/

BIO·FICTION Panel

8 Apr 2021 19:00 — 21:00

 

BIO·FICTION Panelist (in image)
with Riitta Hari, Pia Tikka, Markus Schmidt and Kasperi Mäki-Reinikka (moderator)
Thursday, April 8, 19–21h (Finnish time, UTC+2)
via Zoom | in English

Neurotechnology and how it will shape our future bodies is the underlying question of the BIO·FICTION Science Art Film Festival. For the kickoff of the Helsinki edition, where we will show a selection of nine films, all of which have been awarded or screened at the festival, we invite you to join the BIO·FICTION online panel. During it, Kasperi Mäki-Reinikka will discuss together with festival director Markus Schmidt, neuroscientist Riitta Hari and artist Pia Tikka neurotechnology and its current and potential impact on society.

Join the panel via Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83861833745

– –

Riitta Hari MD PhD is Professor Emerita of Systems Neuroscience and Human Brain Imaging at Aalto University, Finland. She has been developing magnetoencephalography (MEG) for tracking millisecond-scale activation sequences in the human brain, providing fundamental insights into human sensory, motor, cognitive, and social functions in both healthy and diseased individuals. Hari is Academician of Science in Finland since 2010 and member of the National Academy of Sciences USA since 2004. She currently attempts to bridge art and neuroscience without privileging either.

Kasperi Mäki-Reinikka is a Helsinki-based media artist, art educator and researcher working with technological notions of sense. As part of interdisciplinary Brains on Art collective his practice is informed by collaboration with scientists and researchers and the friction between art and science. Mäki-Reinikka is a board member of the Bioart Society, a foil fencer and a teacher of Art and Artificial Intelligence in Aalto University. Mäki-Reinikka is writing an artistic dissertation on interdisciplinary art and its possibilities to discuss changes in human-machine relation. Since August 2020, Mäki-Reinikka has been teaching art in Kallio Upper Secondary School of Performing Arts.

Dr Markus Schmidt founded Biofaction, a technology assessment, science communication and art-science company in Vienna, Austria. With a background in electronic engineering, biology and risk assessment, he carried out environmental risk assessment and public perception studies in various fields, such as GM-crops, nanotechnology, converging technologies, and synthetic biology. He has published over 35 peer-reviewed papers and three edited books about the future of life. In 2010, he helped to chart the field of xenobiology. Schmidt was part of the FUTUREBODY project.

Dr Pia Tikka is a filmmaker and EU Mobilitas Research Professor at the Baltic Film, Media, and Arts School, Tallinn University. She is a founder of NeuroCine research group that studies the neural basis of storytelling. She has published widely on the topics of enactive media, narrative complex systems, and neurocinematics. A Fellow of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image and a member of European Film Academy, her filmography includes international productions as well as fiction films, interactive films and VR films she has directed. Currently, she leads Enactive Virtuality Lab at Tallinn University.

– –

BIO·FICTION is part of the ERA-NET project FUTUREBODY and funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF: I 3752-B27). The BIO·FICTION programme at Bioart Society is funded via the Biofriction European collaboration project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European.

Pardinho Sense of Space at EEVR meeting – March 20

 

Estonian Virtual Reality Society EEVR meeting March 20

Enactive Virtuality Lab is happy to have our artistic collaborator and associated start-up CEO Victor Pardinho (Sense of Space) to present at the meeting of Estonian Virtual Reality Society, March 20, 2021

 

Note, the AltSpaceVR space set up about a week before March 20 event.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/858885618011273/

The schedule  (t.b.c)

12:10 Vladimir Kuts – Taltech (Estonia)
“Short intro of XR Research in Estonian Universities”

12:20 Dr. Linda Lancere – Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences (Latvia)
“Augmented Reality and Wearables for Real-Time Physical Therapy guidance”

12:45 Dr. Niall Murray – Athlone Institute of Technology (Ireland)
“Understanding User Perceptual Quality of VR Experiences”

13:10 Victor Pardinho – Sense of Space / Enactive Virtuality Lab (Finland/Netherlands)
“Sense XR Studio: Making a Content Creation Tool for Volumetric Video Experiences”

13:35 Santeri Saarinen – Helsinki XR Center (Finland)
“Helsinki XR Center and Our Research Activities”

 

 

 

Eesti Virtuaal- ja Liitreaalsuse Assotsiatsioon

Estonian Virtual and Augmented Reality Association

Chapter in “Transdisciplinaridade nas Ciências e nas Artes” (E-book) 2020

Pia Tikka (2020) “Enactive virtuality: from generative to emergent narrative systems” in Transdisciplinaridade nas Ciências e nas Artes” (E-book), eds. Maria Rosa Chitolina, Nara Cristina Santos , and Hosana Celeste Oliveira, 114-127. Capes PrInt/UFSM, PPGART Publishing House, 2020.

https://www.ufsm.br/app/uploads/sites/740/2020/12/livro_transdisciplinaridade.pdf

SIMPÓSIO TRANSDISCIPLINARIDADE NAS CIÊNCIAS E NAS ARTES– Resultados do Projeto Capes PrInt (2018-2020)
20 a 22 de outubro de 2020, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria

ORGANIZAÇÃO GERALProfa. Dra. Maria Rosa Chitolina (PPGs em Ciências Biológicas: Bioquímica Toxicológica e em Educação em Ciências: Química da Vida e Saúde); Profa. Dra. Nara Cristina Santos (PPG em Artes Visuais);Pós-Doc Dra. Hosana Celeste Oliveira (PPG em Artes Visuais)

Enactive Virtuality Lab presents Dec 1, 2020 

Welcome. Please join us!

Enactive Virtuality Lab presents the on-going work in online seminar.

Date: Tuesday Dec 1, 2020 
Time: 09:30 -12:00 Helsinki
Zoom Meeting

VIDEO recording (not edited) Passcode: &%10sVN$

Program

9:30

Pia Tikka (Enactive Virtuality Team leader, MOBTT90)
Introduction

9:45

Mehmet Burak Yılmaz (doctoral student @BFM)
Emotional impacts of camera movements
Exploring the emotional effects of different camera movement techniques (dolly, Steadicam, handheld) and the direction of the movement. Conducting psychophysiological experiments where the viewers watch cinematographic scenes.

10:00

Robert McNamara (doctor in law; doctoral student @BFM)
The creative potential of cinematic game narratives for evoking empathy for asylum seekers.
Exploring machine learning in the asylum seeker narratives in the “Refugee Status Determinations”. Measuring types of empathy response in depicting child separation by immigration enforcement officers in game engine-based cinematic narratives.

10:15

Debora Conceição Firmino De Souza (MA Thesis @DTI)
Humanizing interactions at the Border Control 
Drawing upon topics of HCI and game development, the study investigates the emotional states elicited by interactions with anthropomorphic Virtual Agents at the Border Control.

10:30

Ats Kurvet (computer graphics specialist)
Creating digital humans on a budget
The challenges and options when creating the visual component for avatars/digital humans.

10:45  

Valentin Siltsenko (research assistant)
Real-time text to speech synthesis 
Synthesizing natural sounding human speech with ability to set the emotion of the speaker.

11:00  

Abdallah Sham (doctoral student @DTI)
Machine learning in dyadic human – artificial agent interaction
Exploring the implementation of machine learning to training virtual human behaviour.

 11:15

Ermo Säks (doctoral student @BFM)
Storytelling in Cinematic Virtual Reality: The role of cinematographic techniques in evoking immersion in virtual environments
Using practical research methods this doctoral project seeks the cinematic techniques feasible to increase the perceived immersion in Cinematic Virtual Reality (CVR) where the user’s main agency is to look around in a narrative story-based CVR drama experience that features a beginning, middle, and end.

11:30-12:00

Discussion
 

Open for public!