The Immersive Arts Space conducts practice-based research on the field of interaction between art, design and digital technology. The team members have their professional roots in film, game design, interaction design, music, computer science and engineering, and often members have a background in more than one discipline. The IASpace is part of the research cluster of the Digitalization Initiative of the Zurich Higher Education Institutions (DIZH).
Bodies Remediated: Another Next First Conversation
International Workshop, 12. & 13.09.2024
How do skilled practices in current domains of art, science, and technology engage with new forms of digital remediation? What contemporary “dialectic[s] of de- and re-skilling” (Bishop 2017) are at play? This workshop sets out with tackling the raised question. Therefore, it brings together qualitative researchers in the social sciences, arts practitioners, and education scholars approaching and reflecting upon Bodies Remediated in and beyond their current work.
The international two-day workshop takes place at Kino Toni (3.G02) and is open to the public. For further information, please contact Philippe Sormani
SNSF-Project: Probing XR’s Futures. Design Fiction, Bodily Experience, Critical Inquiry
“Extended reality (XR) devices like Apple’s recently announced Vision Pro or Meta’s Oculus Quest 3 enable new possibilities for mixing the real world with a computationally generated one, promising to “change interaction as we know it.” Yet, there is little research on exactly how XR might reshape bodily subjectivity and experience. Probing XR’s Futures utilizes a critically-historically informed, practice-based design approach to examines how XR technologies reimagine bodily subjectivity, interaction and experience, on the one hand, and how bodily experience could reimagine XR, on the other. The 4-year project employs critical, creative, conceptual and empirical approaches to address three questions: How is everyday interaction in XR achieved? How will XR change interaction and what social reciprocity and mutual access will be enabled? What concrete effects and forms of discipline will be enacted on disabled bodies interacting in XR? The objective is to use design fiction, a design research method that prototypes objects and scenarios to provoke new ways of thinking about the future, as a form of critical inquiry to probe the present and future of social interaction in XR in three different settings and contexts: the lab, public space and in collaboration with disabled researchers and communities. Situated at the Immersive Arts Space at the Zurich University of the Arts, the project is at the interdisciplinary intersection of Critical VR studies, Science and Technology Studies (STS) and experimental media design. It will constitute one of the first in the context of Swiss and German speaking design research to develop alternative thinking and experimental aesthetic-design analysis, reflection and critique of XR directly in situated action and use with the general public.
Team:
Christopher Salter (Project Lead)
Puneet Jain (PhD Candidate)
Eric Larrieux (Researcher)
Chris Elvis Leisi (Researcher)
Oliver Sahli (Researcher)
Philippe Sormani (Senior Researcher)
Stella Speziali (Researcher)
Project Partners:
Andreas Uebelbacher (Access for All Foundation)
John David Howes (Concordia University Montreal, Sociology/Anthropology)
Sabine Himmelsbach (Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel, HeK)
Pilar Orero (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Transmedia Research Group)
Lorenza Mondada (Universität Basel, Institut für Französische Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft)
Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF (01.11.2023 – 31.10.2027)
SNSF-Project: Spatial Dis/Continuities in Telematic Performances
Unraveling distributed space through 3D-audio, embodiment and Spatial Augmented Reality. SNSF-project by the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology (ICST), 2020-2024.
Telematic performances connect two or more geographically distant stages via communication technologies in such a way that performers can interact with each other. The audience experiences a specific insight into the overall event at each of the different locations, with the real presence of the local and virtual presence of the performers simultaneously overlapping.
Previous research has focused on technological developments that enable a high-quality connection with low latency, as well as the minimization or artistic handling of latency, i.e. the delay in the transmission of audio and video signals. Due to the mostly flat representation of the remote performers on a static screen (video) and in stereo monitoring (audio), the spatial information of the remote stage is largely lost. The research project investigates how spatial characteristics from the stages involved are superimposed. It draws on current technologies such as 3D audio (where sounds are reproduced in high spatial resolution) and spatial augmented reality techniques (where visual information from the remote stage is integrated into the local scenography by means of motion tracking and video mapping). Particular attention is paid to forms of embodiment and communication processes that enable an immersive experience.
Credits:
Patrick Müller (ICST, project lead)
Benjamin Burger (ICST)
Joel de Giovanni (ICST)
Martin Fröhlich (IAS, ICST)
Roman Haefeli (ICST)
Johannes Schütt (ICST)
Matthias Ziegler (ICST)
Hannah Walter (MA Transdiciplinary)