PREVIOUS SESSIONS
Check out the abstracts and video recordings of presentations from our previous speakers.
#01
MAY 20th 2021
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
FOR
SENSORY
AUGMENTATION
The inaugural session of the re:MAKING SENSE series took stock of the state of the art in sensory augmentation and asked what the most significant challenges are to the widespread use of these technologies, and where the field may be headed in the near future.
Wherein lie the hurdles? Our scientific understanding of perception? Our technological capability to interface with the body? Conceptual quandaries around the nature of subjective experience? Public resistance to the notion of enhancement?
LINEUP #01
TO KICK OFF THE SERIES WE'VE
CURATED THE FIRST DISCUSSION
(presentations in order)
*captions are auto-generated
Marianna Obrist
Professor of Multisensory Interfaces at UCL
Marianna's research ambition is to establish touch, taste, and smell as interaction modalities in human-computer interaction (HCI), spanning a range of application scenarios, from immersive VR experiences to automotive, and health/wellbeing uses.
Scott Novich, phd
CTO & Co-founder of Neosensory
Non-invasive sensory augmentation--using touch in particular--is a nascent field with massive untapped potential. To realize this potential, Scott thinks that we need to be focusing our efforts on low-power highly scalable systems designed to interface directly with our sensory receptors.
www.neosensory.com
Liviu Babitz
CEO & Co-founder of CyborgNest
Liviu creates devices that he calls 'Plug n Be' - he will be speaking about the time it takes for the brain to learn a new permanent sensory input. It takes years for newborns to understand sensory data, and as adults it can be pretty frustrating to start this long process anew, but totally worth the journey.
Madeline Schwartzman
New York City artist, author, and educator
Her book See Yourself Sensing: Redefining Human Perception, established conceptual categories for perception-altering art and technology, and examined projects for the human sensorium across multiple disciplines from the 1960’s onwards.
#02
JULY 1st 2021
TRANSLATING
SUBSTITUTING
AUGMENTING
SENSES
This session focuses on the process of translation between sensory modalities. It questions how the attributes of one sense are mapped onto another, how this new sensory information is integrated to perception, and how novel information is translated into senses. What technology is needed to do this? What information is sent? What is lost? How does that affect the resulting perception? And how does this, in turn, affect social interaction and performance?
Our brains receive information from our sensory organs, interpreting the incoming electrical signals and conveying them to us as a sensory perception. Today, technology makes it possible for individuals to receive information in one sensory mode and have it interpreted in another. For instance, ‘hearing’ light is possible. It is also possible to transmit non-sensory, or non-human sensory information to the brain to interpret as a sensory perception. For example, one can feel the Earth’s magnetic field.
For humans, this means that they either substitute some original (natural) senses with technology-based ones, try to add new senses to those they have, or to perceive in an enhanced manner. Perhaps, sensory augmentation technologies are even both substituting and augmenting senses at once.
LINEUP #02
SPEAKERS WERE CHOSEN FROM SUBMISSIONS TO OUR OPEN CALL ON THIS THEME
(presentations in order)
Dr Giles Hamilton-Fletcher
Postdoctoral Research Fellow at NYU Langone Health
Giles is a postdoctoral researcher at NYU Langone Health, his research focuses on finding optimal ways of turning visual images into sound, so that listeners can accurately reconstruct the original image. psychology (University of Sussex).
Antal Ruhl
Lecturer and researcher at Avans University of Applied Sciences
Antal was trained as an industrial product designer at the Hague University of Applied Sciences. After his master’s degree in Media Technology at Leiden University, he focused on conducting research by creating custom interactive tools.
Roseanne Wakely
Designer, Directer &
co-founder of Rusty Squid
Roseanne is a future-focused designer, artist and maker, with playfulness and inclusive design at the core of her practice. She works within an ecosystem of robotic technology, digital fabrication, and social experimentation.
&
Carl Hayden Smith
Director of the Learning Technology Research Centre at Ravensbourne
Carl is also co-founder of the Cyberdelics Society and the London Experimental Psychonautic Club. He is focused on using both the technological and biological means to alter, probe and study the spectral nature of consciousness.