Day 3

10:00-10:20 → Introduction by Ian Biscoe

10:25-11:10 → Welcome to the Xalon: Networked Hybrid Ecologies
Dr Fiona Zisch, Dr Ruairi Glynn, Arshiya Vij, Serra Ozdemir and Jenn Leung reimagine Xalon ‘to mobilize the recursive potential of contemporary technologies upon gender, sexuality and disparities of power’ (Cuboniks, 0X07). This project comes from the
Interactive Architecture Lab of the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London.

By stitching the digital and the physical together into a hybrid ecology, Xalon attempts to generate networks of belonging in reality-virtuality (with technical support of Michael Wagner and Georgios Adamopoulos).

11:15-12:00 → Designing for happiness: digital urban exploration, city design, mobility and mapping
Filippo Lodi and William de Boer from UN Studio will talk about XR aesthetics and XR environments in architectural practice, and give a live demo of a networked link.

12:00-12:30 → Panel
Refolding: Metaverses through the architectural lens
With Dr Fiona Zisch, Filippo Lodi and others.
Moderated by Bianca Carague.

12:30-13:45 → Lunch, Networking
Virtual Handshakes with Gijs den Butter from SenseGlove

13:45-14:30 → Towards Volumetric Video Conferencing
Pablo Cesar and Jack Jansen from CWI will demonstrate a live link to their volumetric streaming setup in Amsterdam and social use case. Other members of their team will join remotely.

14:35-15:35 → Entwined Realities: A Hybrid Exploration into Spaces and Objects
Stella Speziali and Lisa Ochsenbein, with support from Valentin Karl Huber and 22 students of ZHdK, Zurich, will present the outcomes of a four-week transdisciplinary workshop investigating the manifestation of physical entities in metaverse environments. The presentation will be made in real-time via networked realities in Eindhoven and Zurich.

Students:
Elia Geiger, Julian Gisler, Mijs Goosen, Ida Götz, Kaitlynn Harrison, Luca Imesch, Sui Thin Ip, Lorenz Kleiser, Lara Koller, Emma Kouassi, Lea Küchler, Fatimah Ardennes Ornati, Hannah Park, Riccardo Schalcher, Sacha Olivier Schwarz, Miguel Seabra, Dana Senn, Janosch Tillich, Daniel Treystman, Klara Troost, Tanja Vogt, Justine Yee.

15:35-16:00 → Afternoon Coffee/Tea/Biscuits
Virtual Handshakes with Gijs den Butter from SenseGlove

16:00-16:30 → Humans in Metaverses
Talk by Malou Sandig and Vincent Snijders

16:35-17:25 → Discussion
Folding Into: Connecting realities in education, research and culture
With Jan Wester, Pablo Cesar, Paul Melis, Johan Oomen and others. Moderated by Ian Biscoe.

17:30-18:15 → The AI within the AI. How Douglas talks.
Matthias Wittmann will discuss the machine intelligence technologies and computer graphics processes of Digital Domain’s fully autonomous digital human Douglas. A live, interactive demo and a look behind the scenes.

18:15-18:30 → Wrapup and Thanks
With Ian Biscoe

In addition to human moderation by Ian Biscoe, Day 3 will be moderated by a digital human inside the DAE research multiverse, created and animated live by two DAE alumni: Malou Sandig, wearing an xsens mocap suit, and Vincent Snijders

William de Boer
Prof Dr Pablo Cesar
Prof. Dr. Pablo Cesar leads the Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group at CWI and is Professor at TU Delft. His research focuses on measuring and evaluating the way users interact and communicate with each other using a wide range of decentralised digital systems. Cesar’s scientific work has been recognised worldwide with nine best paper awards at top venues. He is as well the recipient of the Netherlands Prize for ICT Research (2020) because of his work on human-centered multimedia systems. Cesar has (co-)directed 14 externally funded research projects. His mission is to bring core human-computer interaction methodologies to computer science research. His firm conviction is that for a humane future and for solving tomorrow’s scientific challenges, an interdisciplinary research approach is required, so he initiates projects where computer scientists explore problems together with other professionals (artists, educators…) Cesar is IEEE Senior and ACM Distinguished member.

https://www.pablocesar.me

Dr Ruairi Glynn
Dr Ruairi Glynn is Director of the Interactive Architecture Lab at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. He is Programme Director of the Bartlett’s Masters in Design for Performance & Interaction (MArch). Alongside his teaching and research, he practices as an Installation Artist recently exhibiting at the Centre Pompidou Paris, National Art Museum of China Beijing and Tate Modern London. He has worked with cultural and research institutions including the Royal Academy of Arts, the Medical Research Council and BBC and built public works for Twitter, Nike, Arup, Buro Happold, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. He has co-authored two books ‘Digital Architecture, Passages Through Hinterlands’ & ‘Fabricate, Making Digital Architecture’ in parallel to curating over a dozen international conferences, competitions and exhibitions. He’s taught internationally including ETH, Zurich; TU, Delft; The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Denmark; and the Angewandte, Vienna.

Valentin Karl Huber
Visual effects, 3D animation, color grading and visuals artist. Founder of “das alte Lager”, research associate at the Immersive Arts Space at the Zurich University of the Arts.

Jack Jansen
Jack Jansen is a researcher at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), with over 25 years of experience in multimedia and distributed systems. Empowering people to put available technology to a use they themselves envision is his driving principle. This results in activities ranging from languages, such as Python, via web standardization work (SMIL, Rich Web Application Backplane) to implementing systems for accessible and reusable multimedia (Ambulant). In the past he was the main programmer with Oratrix, a startup that aimed to bring structured multimedia content to the Web. His current interests include volumetric video (VRTogether project), synchronised networked multimedia (the Ta2 and Vconect projects) and infrastructure for sensor networks and IoT applications.
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jack/

Jenn Leung
Jenn is a 3D glitch artist and interaction designer from Hong Kong. Coming from a background of Film and Media Studies, African studies, and Fine Arts, Jenn has since spent four years working in commercial Film/TV distribution while broadening her horizons at film festivals such as Cannes, Sundance, and Tokyo International Film Festival. Simultaneously, she has also been commissioned to produce SparkAR filters for marketing campaigns, performed as a VJ in independent music and film festivals, and exhibited at multiple international art shows before graduating with a distinction in M.Arch Design for Performance and Interaction at The Bartlett, UCL. She is also an author of Colours of Congo Patterns: Symbols and Narratives in 20th-Century Congolese Paintings, an art catalog published by HKU Press. Currently, she is working on developing XR tools in education for radical inclusivity.

Filippo Lodi

Lisa Ochsenbein
Designer, Research Associate / Associated Lecturer, Industrial Design, Zurich University of the Arts.

Serra Ozdemir
Serra is an interactive architectural designer and creative technologist from Turkey and is now based in London. Inspired by radical inclusivity, Xenofeminism, and cybernetics, she is currently developing Extended Reality spaces for collaborative environments. Serra received her M.Arch with distinction The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL and B.Arch from Pratt Institute, New York. She was a research assistant for interdisciplinary research in technology on robotics as well as Teaching Assistant for comprehensive design and representation studios at Pratt Institute. Her works have been exhibited at the museum without building exhibition in New York and Pratt exhibition center. She has won multiple representation drawings awards and was selected to present her works for the outstanding projects. Her multiple design works have been published in IN-PROCESS magazine. Most recently she has been curating content for XR world.

Stella Speziali
Stella Speziali is a multidisciplinary Interactive Designer living in Zurich. After graduating from Zurich University of Arts with a Master in Interaction Design she’s now working there as a Research Associate at the Immersive Arts Space and in the Interaction Design department.
Since 2015 she is interested in immersive experiences where she explores the spatial experience, manipulating the perception and the relationship between touch, sound, light and space using motion capture, spatial augmented reality projections and other technologies. At Immersive Arts Space she is currently researching on the topic of digital humans and their application in real-time interactive performances.

Arshiya Vij
An interdisciplinary designer from Interactive Architecture Lab, The Bartlett, UCL with a background in architectural design. Her current research and design work combines her interests in philosophy, architecture and cognitive science to create new ways of communicating in hybrid digital-physical ecologies. Arshiya has trained through a multi – disciplinary framework where she leverages technologies to enhance experience design in a spatial context. These technologies range from physical computing to extended reality (XR). Most recently, she has worked in the Virtual and Visualization team at Arup, a global design and business consulting firm in London, to design interactive sound demonstration services for Highways England. She has previously worked on interdisciplinary initiatives that support artist communities and children with special needs. In her work she takes a ‘quality diversity’ approach to innovation, which puts experimentation at the
forefront.

Matthias Wittmann
A recognized digital human pioneer, Matthias Wittmann has worked as an innovator, animator and supervisor on ground breaking digital humans for features, experiential and special projects at Digital Domain since 2004. With a unique background merging his artistic and technological expertise, Matthias now specializes in developing believable interactive virtual humans in real-time engines. His work has achieved recognition across the industry, including a Visual Effects Society award for «Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Motion Picture» for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a Grand NClio for Virtual 2Pac – Coachella and a VES nomination for the character Thistlewit in Maleficent.

Dr Fiona Zisch
Dr Fiona Zisch is an architect and cognitive scientist. Her research explores cognitive ecologies with a focus on intuition and embodiment and how ‘neuroarchitecture’ as transdisciplinary threshold might develop more radical, critical, and progressive thinking. She has an interest in dance and collaborates with choreographers and dance practitioners, investigating movement across different scales of space and time. Fiona runs Pathway 2 ‘Radical Realities’ on the Bartlett School of Architecture’s MArch Design for Performance and Interaction, where she is also Head of History and Theory. She is a collaborator in the UCL research group Spierslab and also lectures at the School of Architecture at the University of Innsbruck. She has published in international journals, has contributed chapters to a number of books in architecture and neuroscience, and has curated exhibitions and organised conferences.