Category Archives: Virtual Reality

NEW MEDIA DOCTORAL SEMINAR – Thursday, 29 April 2021, 16:30 – 19:30

Welcome to the fourth New Media Doctoral Seminar of 2021, last one for this Spring semester!

The seminar will be held virtually on Zoom on Thursday 29 April from 16:30 to 19:30 (GMT + 02.00, Helsinki, EEST). Mediated by Professor Lily Díaz-Kommonen, there are again two extremely interesting presentations with a Q&A discussion taking place afterwards.

Click here to join the Zoom event!

Presentations are open for everyone. Welcome!

PRESENTATIONS

Picture of Tania Chumaira's work 'Understanding Spatial Affordances in VR environment through Mapping'.

Understanding Spatial Affordances in VR environment through Mapping by Tania Chumaira. Illustration © Harishazka Fauzan.

Understanding Spatial Affordances in VR environment through Mapping

by Tania Chumaira

ABSTRACT

The emergence of technologies has led to creation of novel spaces that aim to mediate and migrate our everyday activities. One of the most engaging novel spaces is the VR environment in which interaction and actions occur in one shared virtual environment in real-time. This new way of constructing space enables the creation of different spatial affordances. This research explores mapping in the VR environment as mapping is one of the most common techniques in architecture to read spaces and understand spatial affordances. This research hypothesises that through using mapping techniques borrowed from architecture discourse, we can be more informed about the VR experience’s spatial affordances.

BIO

Picture of Tania Chumaira.

New Media DA candidate, Tania Chumaira.

Tania Chumaira is an Indonesian-based architect. After few years of practice in architecture and interior design, she started to develop an interest in combining new media and spatial design to experiment with different spatial experiences without making massive and disruptive physical intervention. Being motivated by that idea, she later pursued her masters majoring in Interactive Architecture at The Bartlett, London. Currently, Tania is working on her doctoral research supervised by Lily Díaz-Kommonen and supported by Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation.

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Exploring an Illustrated Manuscript through an Interface based on Interactive Data Visualization

by Ferhat Sen

ABSTRACT

With the advance in digital technology, cultural heritage artifacts are digitized to provide access to wider audiences. These digitization efforts resulted in a vast number of digital collections while introducing a problem of how to explore or present these collections. Going over a gallery of images does not convey much information and keyword-based search does not seem to be useful in scenarios where the user is either does not have prior knowledge about the collection or does not precisely know have what s/he is searching for.

The objective of this research is to investigate alternative ways to display/present image collections using data visualization with a use case of an illustrated historical manuscript. Interactive data visualization can offer users the possibility to explore a collection along with the inherent relationships between the items in the collection with references to the specific qualities of the artifact.

By using a user-centered design approach along with interactive data visualization techniques, we created a prototype web application called Exploring Suleymanname.

In this presentation, we share the design, implementation, and evaluation of a responsive web application that enables users to explore the image collection of the Suleymanname manuscript through interactive data visualization.

BIO

Picture of Ferhat Sen.

New Media DA candidate, Ferhat Sen.

Ferhat Sen is a creative designer and engineer. He brings together design and technology to create innovative online/onsite digital experiences. He has produced and collaborated several projects using various media ranging from interactive installations to web applications. Ferhat is currently working at Stereoscape as Chief Technology Officer delivering solutions involving web, mobile, VR and AR technologies and pursuing a doctoral degree in New Media at Aalto Media Lab. His research interests are interaction design and digital cultural heritage.

NEW MEDIA DOCTORAL SEMINAR – Thursday, 25 February 2021, 16:30 – 19:30

WELCOME TO THE SECOND NEW MEDIA DOCTORAL SEMINAR (DOM-L0007) of 2021!

The seminar will be held virtually on Zoom on Thursday, 25 February, from 16:30 to 19:30 (GMT+02:00, Helsinki, EEST).

Mediated by Professor Lily Díaz-Kommonen we will have two very fascinating presentations. A Q&A discussion will take place after the presentations. The presentations are open for everyone!

PRESENTATIONS
Rtualising Exhibitions: In Search of Novel Engagement Approaches In Experimental Museology

VRtualising Exhibitions: In Search of Novel Engagement Approaches In Experimental Museology. © Cvijeta Miljak

‘VRtualizing Exhibitions: In Search of Novel Engagement Approaches In Experimental Museology’

by Cvijeta Miljak

New Media DA candidate, Cvijeta Miljak

ABSTRACT

The research is carried out in the framework of a pan-European interdisciplinary project that brings together Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture and ZKM – Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (Germany), the Centre Pompidou, Paris (France), the Ludwig Muzeum, Budapest (Hungary), Tallin Art Hall (Estonia) and Tirana Art Lab (Albania), the institutions encompassing fields of cultural heritage, digital art conservation, digitalising heritage, new media art and experimental museology.In broadest terms, this artistic practice-based research in the emerging field of virtual museology is concerned with developing novel engagement approaches with the aim to encourage co-creative participatory practices for community involvement and social inclusion. The research will take a particular interest in documenting and studying museum audiences’ responses to digital cultural heritage and to virtual exhibitions. The research will support further development and implementation of Performance-oriented Design Methods for Audience Studies and Exhibition Evaluation (PORE), a methodology coined by Lily Díaz-Kommonen.

Miljak’s interest focuses on exploring emerging narratives, visual language and implications of digital tools in relation to immersive media, through developing methods for nonintrusive participatory evaluation practices to re-examine and expand forms of storytelling in digital media.

BIO

Cvijeta Miljak is a doctoral candidate working as a researcher with Prof. Lily Díaz -Kommonen on the Creative Europe co-funded project Beyond Matter – Cultural Heritage on the Verge of Virtual Reality (2019-2023).

For a more detailed bio, please check:

‘Gamification In Mixed-Reality for Digital Cultural Heritage’

by Gautam Vishwanath

New Media DA candidate, Gautam Vishwanath

ABSTRACT

This study is focused on the mechanisms through which gamification can be implemented within mixed reality in order to support museum-based activities in the realm of digital cultural heritage. A large part of the work carried out in this study takes place within the context of an EU-H2020 funded project dedicated to citizen curation of cultural heritage called SPICE. Through the use of workshops and tools for design, end-user communities and other stakeholders from the SPICE Case Studies are involved using participatory methods for design and development in order to discern new ideas as well as create prototypes. The research involves a component of practice and draws upon a mixed-method approach employing a variety of qualitative as well as quantitative methodologies such as case sampling, visual thinking strategies, user-experience evaluation, and ethnographic interviews. The projected results of the entire research process are anticipated to provide novel insights regarding mechanisms for gamification in mixed-reality as well as a series of methods that need to be taken into consideration in order to support museum-related activities for digital cultural heritage. In order to ensure maximal ethical integrity and conduct the research in a respectful manner, this study follows the guidelines of the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity TENK as well as other relevant ethical guidelines.

BIO

Gautam Vishwanath is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Media having begun his tenure in June 2020. As a member of the Research group ‘Systems of Representation’, he is advised and supervised by Prof Lily Díaz-Kommonen. His research is focused on integratingserious games and new forms of media such as mixed reality into digital cultural heritage.

For more info on Gautam, please visit: Gautam Vishwanath at Systems of Representation research group in the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Media Lab

Event at Aalto.fi