scientific research – Spatial Media Research Group

IMPULSE – IMmersive digitisation: uPcycling cULtural heritage towards new reviving StratEgie

[Horizon Europe | Website]

We are excited to introduce IMPULSE — IMmersive digitisation: uPcycling cULtural heritage towards new reviving StratEgies — an EU-funded project launched on February 2024, that enters the digitisation processes of cultural heritage. Here, it will radiate waves of transformation of how we engage and interact with our cultural heritage, breathing life into timeless stories waiting to be told anew.

As such, IMPULSE will connect researchers, artists, cultural heritage practitioners, CCSIs, local institutions, and other relevant stakeholders to work and explore together immersive narratives, reaching out to diverse audiences across Europe and beyond.

Objectives:

1. Enhance accessibility to cultural heritage through XR technology, fostering diverse narratives and audience engagement.

2. Improve access and presentation of digitized cultural content, supporting education and creativity within the Metaverse.

3. Streamline digitization processes for immersive environments, prioritizing usability for education, arts, and CCSIs.5. Foster collaboration and capacity building in immersive digitization through tailored engagement platforms and initiatives.

4. Develop legal frameworks and solutions to address risks and barriers in utilizing cultural heritage data within immersive technologies.

Partners:

IMPULSE is a HORIZON EUROPE project, coordinated by Uniwersytet Jagiellonski (Poland), and developed in collaboration with Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna (Italy), Universita Ta Malta (Malta), Heritage Malta, Filmuniversitat Babelsberg Konrad Wolf (Germany), Ethniko Kai Kapodistriako Panepistimio Athinon (Greece), Magna Zmien Foundation (Malta), Associazione Clust-ER Industrie Culturali e Creative (Italy), K8 Institut Fuer Strategische Aesthetik GGMBH (Germany), and Explodedview sp. z o.o. (Poland)

GEM – Green Education in Media

[Erasmus+ | Website]

GEM aims to reconnect media curricula to today’s environmental reality by introducing subjects and methods that reflect on and work at the intersection between environmental reality and digitality. “Environmental reality” encompasses nature and its phenomena, as well as the interrelation of man-made environments and the natural environment.
The curricula of study programmes related to digital media design and production currently focus on the creation of digital and virtual worlds. These worlds occur in different forms, such as storyworlds in filmmaking, serial writing and games, virtual explorable worlds in XR and digital communities in social media design. While digital skills and competencies are important to the students in today’s labour market, the related study programmes tend to create a kind of “digital bubble” of their own, neglecting the impact of digital technology on our natural environment.

GEM explores these challenges from different perspectives, which will each be pursued in dedicated work-packages:
WP2 – Alternative media learning spaces
WP3 – Environmental Impact of Media Design & Production
WP4 – Stories of environmental impact and climate change
WP5 – Building an environmental media curriculum

Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership between nine partners:

Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, Germany (Project Lead)
Tampere University, Finland
Tampere University of Applied Sciences, Finland
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
University of Malta, Malta
Academy of Dramatic Art, University of Zagreb, Kroatien
Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland
Lodz Film School, Poland
Institute for Art and Innovation e.V., Germany

Together they are working on:

Heightening environmental awareness and fight against climate change
Supporting digital and green capabilities of the higher education sector
Disseminating green skills among teachers and students
Creating new, innovative or joint sustainable curricula or courses
Developing digital content, technologies and practices

ERASMUS XR – Experience and immersive technologies – from creative practice to educational theory

[Erasmus+ KA2 – Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices | KA226 – Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness | 01-05-2021 – 30-04-2023]

Background

The ErasmusXr project “Experience and immersive technologies – from creative practice to educational Theory” was prepared for the special call KA226 – Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness during the COVID-19 pandemic. When preparing the project in the summer of 2020, we did not yet know how the pandemic would develop and how long it would last.

Nevertheless, we were experiencing more and more the development of digital technologies (including immersive technologies), which is now called WEB 4.0 and virtual worlds
(https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_3718 ). The COVID-19 epidemic reduced our social activity by locking us in our homes and led to an unprecedented activity in the digital world, forcing not only entire areas of culture and education to move their activities into the virtual realm, but also to seek new ways to engage and enhance participation in this form. This was the main external factor motivating us to undertake the project. Therefore, a project was prepared that addressed the urgent need to enrich existing educational programs for both cultural and media managers, but also for artists aspiring to connect with audiences in the digital space.

Objectives

The main goals of the project were:
1. To develop educational offerings for cultural and media managers and artists on new immersive technologies such as XR, VR, AR, MR and how to use to engage audiences, and
2. Increase skills and competencies in designing and evaluating experiences using immersive technologies to effectively manage culture in the digital realm.

To achieve these goals, we decided to focus on increasing the knowledge and competence of academic staff on immersive experience design and evaluation through the implementation of training courses, the development of open educational resources (OER) on the topic of immersive experience management in culture (IO3 and IO4), but also building an open attitude among students and staff to new methods and technologies – offering participation in a summer and winter school.

We believed that we would be able to achieve this, but we did not anticipate that under such difficult conditions the project would become popular and recognized throughout Europe. Due to the specific moment, we managed to join the mainstream of change and become a positive example illustrating the HE sector’s activities in XR and Virtual Worlds development.

Implementation

In the project we implemented:
– Training activities (C1 and C6) carried out by partners from Greece and Malta due to their experience and extensive technical and human resources,
– a summer school organized in Malta,
– winter school – as a test of the Jagiellonian University whether it will be able to implement the courses on its own,
As well as we developed as the results of our work in groups (WG) under the guidance of the coordinator (WGC) following outputs:
IO1 – curriculum, WGC: Dr. Katarzyna Kopeć UJ
IO2 – syllabuses of 6 courses on immersive technologies, WGC: Dr. Marta Materska- Samek UJ
IO3 – Open educational resources – collection on Zotero, WGC: Dr. Adnan Hadzi MU,
IO4 – Handbook: experience management and immersive technologies in the form of a collection of articles in two volumes of the quarterly journal Media Management, ed./WGC: Dr. Anna Modzelewska and Dr. Malwina Popiołek.
In addition, there were 4 project meetings (TPM) and two dissemination events (E1 in Lodz, E2 in Greece).

Results

The particular outcome of the project is the improvement of the knowledge of academic staff and the development by them of work (IOs) that allow the introduction of new content of the education. The package of results consists of the development of the program (IO1) syllabuses IO2, OER – IO3 for the following topics included in the form of courses:
1. introduction to CinematicVR (including the language of CinematicVR, comparison with the language of film, working with an actor, staging): WGC: Prof. Krzysztof Pijarski ŁFS,
2. Immersive experience level 1 – generated environments (digital scenery, virtual studio, 6 degrees of freedom) – WGC: Dr. Adnan Hadzi MU, Dr. Filip Pudło ŁFS – 2 ECTS
3. immersive experience level 2 – design and evaluation – WGC: Prof. Dimitris Charitos NKUA – 2 ECTS
4. production management (workflow) – WGC: Marta Materska-Samek JU/ Dr. Małgorzata Kotlińska ŁFS (tbc) – 2 ECTS
5. VR financing: green production, business models and European policies- WGC: Dr. Marta Materska-Samek JU- 2 ECTS
6. legal, social and political aspects of immersive media production- WGC: Dr. Marzena Baranska JU- 4 ECTS
Each WGC had 4- 8 people who had their own workspace on teams/sharepoint and met mainly online, but also during LTT.

Partners

Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, Panstwowa Wyzsza Szkola Filmowa, Telewizyjna I Teatralna Im. Leona Schillera W Lodzi, Universita Ta Malta, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

European Mobile Lab for Artistic Research (EMDL)

[CULTURE Programme 2007-13 – Cooperation], Projects with Third Countries (Strand 1.3.5), European Commission Education, Audiovisual& Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) (Jan 2014 – Sep 2015)

EMDL project website: http://www.emdl.eu/

This project aimed to facilitate interdisciplinary research on the subject of creating interactive immersive experiences and narratives in digital FullDome environments. More specifically, the main objective of the project was the collaborative creation of experimental, artistic content and immersive experiences for FullDomes, by adopting a design research methodology and by involving an interdisciplinary teams of experts (artists, scientists and academics from universities and cultural organisations in Montreal, Vienna, Plymouth, Dresden, Berlin and Athens).

In the course of this project, several workshops have been held in various European cities and Montreal, Canada with the purpose of bringing together a number of experienced content creators and scientists for experimenting with the process of creating interactive, immersive FullDome experiences, ultimately aiming to investigate and understand the communicative potential and characteristics of the FullDome as a medium.

The Spatial Media Research Group and the NTLab organized the first workshop in the series of events centred on dome content creation, and the members of the group actively participated in the creation process for the events that followed. Additionally, the Spatial Media Research Group team headed by D. Charitos, in collaboration with the research teams of the above organizations, conducted a series of studies on various aspects of the User Experience, as well as on the creative process and the characteristics of the FullDome as a medium. Finally the research team designed and implemented a multi-user virtual environment, as a performative, interactive installation, titled “Murmuration”, which was presented for 3 weeks in 2015, at the FullDome of the SAT center in Montreal and at the FullDomeUK festival in 2016 in England.

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MITOS

In the context of the FP7 project SmartSantander, International collaboration with Mobics Ltd., (Oct.2012- Sept. 2013)

Project funded by the European Union through the 7th Framework Programme of the European Community for research and technological development.

The research team of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens worked on the design and evaluation of a mobile experiment in cooperation with Mobics (a start-up of the University of Athens) and the Transport and Transportation Infrastructure Department of the School of Civil Engineering, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), for the promotion of smart mobility. The application was developed for the city of Santander in Spain and uses the wide network of sensors that exist there to promote an ecological concept of moving within the city and to enhance the use of mass transportation media. It provides the possibility of smart parking, detailed monitoring of the MMM routes and complete information on road conditions so that the citizens could organize their travels more efficiently.

LOcation-based Communication Urban NETwork (LOCUNET)

[Regional Operational Programme for Attica 2000-2006] (May 2006 – May 2008)

LOCUNET was a research project that aimed to investigate the novel forms of communication that emerge as a result of the convergence of geographical positioning services, mobile communications, and graphical user interfaces. The result of this convergence is the appearance of locative media. More specifically, the result of this research programme was a theoretical model of the use of locative media and the forms of social interaction that may take place during locative media use, within the contemporary urban context. This model is expected to inform the design and development of locative media. For the purposes of evaluating the proposed model, a location-based multi-user communication system was designed and developed and used for supporting an activity comprising numerous mobile users in a central location in the city of Athens.

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Virtual Museum

In collaboration with the Virtual Reality Group of the Department of Informatics & Telecommunications of the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens under the direction of Prof. C. Halatsis.

[Greek General Secretariat of Research and Technology, EPET]
(1999 – 2001) Analysis, design and development of an immersive and a desktop virtual reality system as well as an on-line database, for presenting the content of 10 museums, under the title “Virtual Museum” (duration 30 months)

The aim of the project was the design and development of an immersive virtual environment (VE) that would function as a context within which the digitized content of 10 existing museums would be exhibited. The visitors of these museums would be able to interactively navigate through this virtual museum system, view the exhibits and interact with them. The project included the processes of exhibit digitisation, architectural design and exhibit presentation of ten museums with exhibits that varied from archaeological to geological and from hygiene to forensic. Through this project, the potential of a VE system as a context for exhibiting the content of a museum in a remote location was investigated, since it may afford a larger number of people the possibility of experiencing museum collections without having to be physically present at the exhibition space.

Furthermore, a second version (web-based) of the digital museum environment was created, featuring fewer representational and navigation capabilities, in order to be accessible through the web. This virtual environment could be used for educational, research and cultural purposes. Additionally, an administrative platform was developed in order to allow system administrators and museum curators to add and remove exhibits from the virtual museum.

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VR Autism

[Greek General Secretariat of Research and Technology, 1999-2000, 19 months]
Analysis, design and development of a desktop virtual reality system for educating autistic children in everyday tasks.

The aim of the project was the development of training and communication tools, functioning both in an autonomous manner and also available at the web, designed specifically for children with autistic syndrome, their trainers and training centers respectively. A group of specialized multimedia applications (employing video, video, speech and virtual reality) was designed and developed, aiming to meet the needs of people with autistic syndrome (that could be used with or without the help of trainers). In particular, a scenario describing the sequence of events and consequent requirements for an interactive application were described, in order to aid the organisation of autistic children’s behaviour in everyday activities. These requirements and scenario fed the design of a desktop virtual environment which afforded autistic children the interactive experience of navigating within a simulation of a home and participating in a realistic and embodied approximation of experiencing these everyday activities. Also, a web-based communication environment was designed and developed, in order to allow communication between the stakeholders.

European Mobile Lab for interactive media Artists” (e-MobiLArt)

[CULTURE Programme 2007-13, European Commission Education, Audiovisual & Culture Executive Agency (EACEA)] (Nov 2007 – Nov 2009)
www.media.uoa.gr/emobilart

e-MobilArt promoted interdisciplinary collaboration by experienced european artists toward the production of interactive art. For the purposes of this project, the UoA NTLab collaborated with the University of Lapland (Finland) and the University of Applied Arts (Vienna, Austria), the State Museum of Contemporary Art in
Thessaloniki (Greece), the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice (Poland), as well as with two hardware manufacturers and software developers (Cycling74, Making Things) and the acclaimed electronic art academic journal LEONARDO/OLATS. Each higher education institution involved in the project organised a workshop. The aim of these three (Greece, Finland, Austria) workshops was twofold: workshop participants were trained in the use of relevant hardware and software by scientists and qualified experts; in addition, cooperation among artists was supported at all stages of the creative process. The works produced by the artists were exhibited by the art galleries involved in the project.

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City Is a Hybrid Interface

Hybri-City: City Is a Hybrid Interface

[CULTURE Programme 2007-13, European Commission Education, Audiovisual & Culture Executive Agency (EACEA)] (Nov 2011 – Nov 2013)

The aim of the project was to develop a creative and technologically informed look at several european cities (Athens, Prague, Istanbul, and Marseille), in order to create innovative forms of interactive representations for the processes that shape these cities. In the context of this project, the Spatial Media Research Group and the NTLab (in collaboration with the University Research Institute of Applied Communication) organized an academic conference (“Hybrid City 2”) and a series of workshops (May 2013) with several noted researchers and artists as invited/keynote speakers and/or workshop organizers. Invited keynote speakers included Steve Benford (UK), Eric Kluitenberg (Netherlands), Julian Oliver (Germany), Stephen Kovats (Germany), Dietmar Offenhuber (USA), and Nikolaos Avouris (Greece). The Hybrid City Conference 2013, in Athens, Greece, consisted of three days of paper presentations, discussions, workshops and satellite events, under the theme “Subtle rEvolutions”.

The web site of the conference is at: http://uranus.media.uoa.gr/hc2/

The Hybrid City 2013 events also include an oline exhibition (http://uranus.media.uoa.gr/hc2/onlineresource/) and a series of workshops, relevant to the theme.

Theme – Subtle rEvolutions

ICTs, whether mobile, wireless or embedded in persistent architectural forms, facilitate the collection and dissemination of data, infusing the physical expression of the city with digital layers of content, contributing thus to the emergence of new hybridized spatial logics and novel forms of social interaction. These systems and the hybrid spatial experience they afford, encourage encounters among users; both embodied and mediated, and influence community dynamics, giving rise to networks around common interests and collectives of affect. Sometimes, such groups, irrespective of how ephemeral, unstable and dispersed they may be, negotiate a new kind of engagement with the urban environment and civic life, suggesting thus an organizational paradigm that manages to surpass traditional vertical hierarchies of space and consequently of power and control. Such configurations among communities, locations, contexts and intentions were manifested intensely in the interlinking of protest events around the world since 2011, the Arab Spring uprisings, the Occupy movement and anti-austerity demonstrations in Southern Europe, but they also gradually permeate everyday life in the contemporary metropolis. As sharing and collaborative tactics migrate from online culture to the urban realm and ICTs become increasingly open and personalized, rich opportunities for new forms of participation in civic life arise. Citizens are enabled to access information about the city but also to become involved in the production, collection and distribution of data related to urban matters. The Hybrid City Conference considered a further investigation of such processes of crucial importance, so as to gain a deeper understanding of the effect they have on the urban experience and to explore their contribution in shaping the future cities. In this respect, Hybrid City invited papers both of a theoretical and practical approach that present concepts, case studies, projects, works of art and best practices that promote the discussion on the theme. Emphasizing the inherently interdisciplinary nature of technologically mediated urban activity, we welcomed proposals which critically examine the following topics:

• Open cities, open urban data.

• Environmental sensing and the Internet of things.

• Urban data visualization.

• Environmental perception, cognition, immersion and presence in the context of hybrid urban spaces.

• Citizen science and peer production of knowledge.

• Psychosocial perspectives into the impact of locative and pervasive media use.

• Placemaking, place attachment and place identity in the hybrid city.

• Cartography of hybrid spaces.

• Mobile commons and wireless practices.

• Public spaces and mediated presence.

• Gamifying the urban space: playful engagement and game-like citizenship.

• Hybrid spaces of conflict: forms of power and counterpower in the networked city.