This Dagstuhl Seminar builds on prior work that highlighted that supporting sport and exercise activities with technology should not only be concerned with functional aspects, such as measuring and comparing athletic performance, but also consider the experiential aspects, in other words, how sports people feel about their athletic performance. Therefore, the seminar brings together researchers and industry members who understand that successful sport and exercise activity-support technology needs to be designed with also this experiential perspective in mind, and seek to develop guidance on how to support it. This seminar invites experts from both industry and academia, including experts from sports science as well as HCI and design experts, to work towards identifying the grand challenges in SportsHCI so that a coherent approach can be developed in order to help more people profit from the benefits of sports and physical exercise.
Haptic technologies have long sought to simulate the tactile properties of materials for virtual or remote interactions. Although the engineering aspects of these technologies have been extensively studied, little is known about the sensory and experiential spaces they offer for design. The human experience of materials can extend beyond their immediate sensory attributes, such as roughness, to influence user emotion, perceptions of one’s body, or encourage human expression, reflection, or action. This workshop aims to bring together haptic device creators, perception scientists, and interaction designers to explore and map the user experience of materials across various technologies. Workshop participants will rotate through 4-6 stations featuring natural and programmable materials and document their experiences through notes. These notes are then used to create and compare experiential maps, identify design gaps, and guide future engineering and design in haptics.
As Light as Your Footsteps: A shoe-based wearable device for real-time modification of footstep sounds for illusory changes in body weight, will be part of the Show and Tell Demo Sessions in the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) Conference. The Show and Tell Session 2 will happen on June 7th, 2023, in the conference venue in Rhodes Island, Greece. Amar D’Adamo will be there showing the device and corresponding poster.
Joakinator: An Interface for Transforming Body Movement and Perception through Machine Learning and Sonification of Muscle-Tone and Force will be present in the Demo Sessions of the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) 2023 conference in Mexico City. Demo sessions will take place on June 2nd at Biblioteca Vasconcelos.
Over the last 15 years, HCI and Interaction Design have experienced a “material turn” characterised by a growing interest in the materiality of technology and computation, and in methods that support exploring, envisioning, and crafting with and through materials. The community has experienced a similar turn focused on the body, on how to best design for and from a first-person, lived experience, and the moving and sensual body. In this workshop, we focus on the intersection of these two turns. The emerging developments in multimodal interfaces open up opportunities to bring in materiality to the digital world as well as to transform the materiality of objects and bodies in the real-world, including the materiality of our own body. The different sensory qualities of (touchable and untouchable, physical and digital) objects and bodies, including our own, can be brought into the design of digital technologies to enrich, augment, and transform embodied experiences. In this “materials revolution” [15], what are the current theories, approaches, methods and tools that emphasise the critical role of materiality to body-based interactions with technology?
To explore this, in this workshop we will focus on five related themes: material enabling expression, material as a catalyst for human action, material enabling reflection and awareness, material enabling transformation and material supporting the design process for the re-creation of the existing and the yet-to-exist. This workshop with technology presentations, panel sessions with experts, and multidisciplinary discussions will: (i) bring together researchers who work on (re)creating sensory properties of materials through technology with those who investigate experiential effects of materials and material-enabled interactions, (ii) discuss methods, opportunities, difficulties in designing materiality and material-enabled interactions, and (iii) form a multidisciplinary community to build synergies and collaborations.
This workshop aims to build a community and open the design space for materiality and material-enabled body-based multisensory experiences by integrating research from various perspectives.
Postdoctoral Researcher Mohammad Mahdi Dehshibi presented a talk entitled “Exploring Advances in Machine Learning and their Multidisciplinary Applications” at the Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos (GISC) Seminar Series in the Department of Mathematics of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
The talk consisted of an overview of the latest development in machine learning techniques and of real-world examples of machine learning in action, including Affective Computing as well as Medicine, Physiological Signals Analysis, and Citizen Science. Additionally, it conveyed the importance of developing explainable AI methods. Finally, the talk covered a taste of Unconventional Computing, specifically regarding biological intelligent sensors and neuromorphic Computing.
The scientific-technological evolution poses a change in the conception of the living being and the machine, as well as its essential and spiritual aspects. David Chalmers asked: “Can a machine be conscious?”, a question that artists and technologists have addressed, studying and researching the self of the machine as its own entity.
In the same way, scientific and technological progress is enabling the hacking of living systems, causing them to extend their consciousness and senses, thus varying their own perception and the way they communicate with the world.
Mesas redondas Canal Connect 2023 – La percepción extendida: El hackeo de los sistemas
Moderator: Ricardo Iglesias, multimedia artist and philosopher (UCM).
Speakers: Monica Rikic, electronic artist; Enrique Radigales, artist, curator and researcher; Ana Tajadura, lecturer in Computer Science and AI (UC3M), and researcher.
Canal Connect offered a series of round tables that invite us to reflect, to ask questions, which allow us to dialogue with experts from different artistic, scientific and technological fields. This time, the conversation revolved around ethical issues, the confluence of the human and the machine, interspecies communication, etc. For this 3rd edition, we have the support of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, affiliated with the Fondation de France. Attendance at the round tables will allow free access to the exhibition Organic Machine.
Body perceptions are important for people’s motor, social and emotional functioning. Critically, neuroscientific research has shown that body perceptions are not fixed, but are continuously updated through sensorimotor information. In this talk, I will present work from our group on how sound and other sensory feedback on one’s body and actions can be used to alter body perception, creating Body Transformation Experiences. I will talk about how neuroscientifically grounded insights that body perceptions are continuously updated through sensorimotor information may contribute to the design of novel body-centred technologies to support people’s needs and for behaviour change. I will then present various studies from our current project, Magic OutFit, aimed to inform the design of wearable technology in which sensory-driven changes in body perception are used to enhance behavioural patterns and emotional states in the context of exertion. I will discuss how apart from the focus on real-life applications, novel technologies for body sensing and sensory feedback may also become a research tool for investigating how emotional and multisensory processes shape body perception. I will conclude by identifying new challenges and opportunities that this line of work presents, some of which we are addressing in our current ERC project BODYinTRANSIT.
Lab member and PhD student José Vega won first place in the Teaching and Researcher Personnel (PDI) category during the 10km Intercampus XXIII running race! With an official time of 39:09, he also finished 8th place in the category of students. Here’s a video of the finish line. Congratulations!
On the 11th of March, the performance Una Noche con Ramona was presented at the international dance festival Soto a Chi Danza, organised by the association AMAT, from the region of Le Marche in Italy.
The performance took place at the Rotonda a Mare in the seaside town of Senigallia, in what used to be a resort.
This particular space with a sea view and qualities similar to those of a Greek forum hosted the Dream performing arts company, for the presentation of the site-specific piece Una Noche con Ramona.
Una Noche con Ramona is an interactive performance.
Ramona is a “Love Influencer”, a “heroine of love”, a “collective body” that exists on the net, feeds through networks, feeds on desires and fantasies, travelling in our collective dreams.
Through a ritual, she is embodied in those who wish to experience it. The audience has the role to imagine and, if they wish, to interact and co-create Ramona. This performance arises from real experiences. Ramona has her Instagram page (IG: ramona_abate) and interacts with the people who write to them.
The play is inspired by these relationships filtered through the technological medium.
Director and performer: Raffaella Menchetti Performer and multimedia creator: Joaquín Díaz Playwright: Sara Serrano Performer and creator: Francesca Vantu Performer: Sofia Galliano Online performer: Elissa
This project has been funded and supported by: Sneo.es, Hamlet.Love and BODYinTRANSIT ERC project
