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Section of Media Technology, Copenhagen
from CREATE Department Brochure
by create_aau
The Media Technology section in Copenhagen (with its five research groups) spans across the many facets of interactions between humans and digitality – ranging from direct interactions between humans and technology, to implicit reactive interactions, and to broader perspectives of how technology can influence and enhance society as a whole. The key in both approaches is to have the end user in mind, i.e., human-centered design. The section’s staff has diverse backgrounds both in terms of expertise as well as cultural, which allows us to explore highly interdisciplinary areas in detail.
Direct and Indirect Interactions between Humans and Computers
We design, develop, and study interactive prototypes including both software and hardware to investigate how we can improve our direct interactions with technology. By direct, we mean an explicit and dedicated interaction with a technology. We study how virtual realities help in the context of rehabilitation, and how specialized computer games can help training people for real-world problems. Here, we follow a rigorous design-oriented process, where we identify the need, design for that need, build the soft- or hardware, evaluate it with end-users and iterate until the best solution is found. In addition to these direct interactions, we also look at indirect interactions, where humans are not directly aware of such yet, brain and muscle activity can be detected. This area of research feeds into the direct interaction as well, thus closing the loop of interactions between humans and technologies.
Designing for Society as a Whole
Besides looking at individual and direct interactions, we are also looking at how technology affects society as a whole. We are involved in designing services for the broader population and managing those services. In particular, we are interested in how service design as approach can facilitate exploration, co-creation and empowerment to address broad societal issues. Furthermore, we are also involved in designing lighting solutions that meet the need of end-users through contextual analysis, concept design, prototyping, and evaluation. In this field, we bridge knowledge from architecture, engineering, and computing technology.
SEBASTIAN BORING
Deputy Head of Department sebo@create.aau.dk
RESEARCH GROUPS
Media Cognition and Interactive Systems
The Media Cognition and Interactive Systems research group focuses on the development of theoretical and empirical frameworks for the integration of cognition, performance, and technology in order to enhance and understand human experience in interactive and immersive systems. Through international transdisciplinary work in basic and applied research, we bridge qualitative and quantitative methods, improve methodologies, and prospect innovative applications in many different socio-cultural and commercial domains. The group has two laboratory facilities in Copenhagen the Augmented Cognition Laboratory and the Augmented Performance Laboratory.
Multi-sensory experience Laboratory
The research group work on virtual reality, augmented reality, and multisensory experiences, exploring the combination of different input and output modalities in interactive applications. We are interested in both development of novel hardware and software technologies as well as evaluation of users’ experiences. We apply our technologies to health, rehabilitation, training, learning and entertainment. We are particularly interested in researching topics related to sonic interaction design for multimodal environments, simulating walking experiences, sound rendering and spatialization, haptic interfaces, cinematic VR and evaluation of user experience in multimodal environments.
WEB: www.melcph.create.aau.dk
The Service System Design Laboratory
The Service Design Laboratory is dedicated to studying and applying service design, as an exploratory co-creative and empowering approach to address broad issues of societal concern. The laboratories key areas of research are service design management and strategy, civic service design and data driven service design. The three different areas are explored from a methodological perspective, defining methods and tools that can be used in the process of value co-creation and from an infrastructuring perspective, considering the socio-technical ecosystems and interactions that would support the generation of value in services.
WEB: www.servicedesignlab.aau.dk
The Lighting Design Research Group
The research group has as its mission to contribute to new and improved ways to use and perceive light in our daily lives. Current research activities include projects spanning from coloured light in health care, circadian rhythm lighting in old-age homes, public lighting installations for municipalities and schools, smart city applications of dynamic lighting as a scenographic tool, to combining daylight and dynamic artificial lighting to improved motivation, engagement and sustainability in work environments. LiD_RG combines architecture, engineering and technology in a human centric approach to lighting solutions that seek to improve our built environment with applied knowledge of lighting design. Researchers, private business partners, municipalities and graduate students in Lighting Design team up to solve relevant societal problems. In this trans-disciplinary approach, the learning process of analyzing, making, implementing and testing is created in real-life scenarios.
WEB: www.light.aau.dk
Media Innovation & Game Research
At the Samsung Media Innovation Laboratory for Education, we research engaging user-, learner- and player experiences by developing and evaluating interactive adaptive narratives, transformational and serious games, storyworlds and motivational learning environments.
We develop tools for film-, TV- and animation productions and collaborate with various external stakeholders to utilize state-of-the-art real-time game- and media technologies for development on multiple platforms such as smartphones, tablets, panorama screens, mixed reality displays and video walls.
We host the Center for Applied Game Research’s Game Laboratory (SMILE) te, which aims to promote interdisciplinary applied game research across a variety of research fields by connecting AAU researchers working with the development, use and evaluation of games and gamification. One of the purposes of the SMILE Laboratory is to engage learners to become technical solution makers who utilize and develop innovative real-time game- and media technologies to address the challenges of a sustainable future. The laboratory is supported by Samsung.
WEB: www.game.aau.dk
The Nordic Sound and Music Computing Network brings together a group of internationally leading sound and music computing researchers from all five Nordic countries.
The constellation is unique since the network covers the field of sound and music from the “soft” to the “hard,” including the arts and humanities, the social and natural sciences, and with a high level of technological competency.
Sound and music computing is a research field that studies the whole sound and music communication chain from a multidisciplinary point of view. By combining scientific, technological and artistic methodologies it aims at understanding, modeling and generating sound and music through computational approaches.
PROJECT, MEDIA TECHNOLOGY, COPENHAGEN NORDIC SOUND AND MUSIC COMPUTING
PROJECT PERIOD:
January 2018 – December 2024.
PARTICIPANTS:
KTH Stockholm / Aalto University / University of Island / University of Oslo
FUNDING:
NordForsk 27 Mio NKK Department share 5 Mio NKK
CONTACT PERSON:
Professor Stefania Serafin e-mail: sts@create.aau.dk
WEB:
http://smcnetwork.org
PROJECT, MEDIA TECHNOLOGY, COPENHAGEN RHUMBO
MODELLING AND PREDICTING HUMAN DECISIONMAKING USING MEASURES OF SUBCONSCIOUS BRAIN PROCESSES THROUGH MIXED REALITY INTERFACES AND BIOMETRIC SIGNALS
RHUMBO is an innovative multinational, multi-sectorial and interdisciplinary excellence doctoral training network program. The project is hosting 11 Early Stage Researchers in the intersections between cognitive neuroscience, mixed reality technologies, biometric signals and artificial intelligence, integrating a multimodal-sensing platform to examine consumer behavioural patterns during dynamic, complex and realistic situations for a deeper understanding of internal human psychological states and decision-making processes.
PROJECT PERIOD:
January 2018 – October 2022.
PARTICIPANTS:
Universitat Politecnica De Valencia / Universitaersklinikum Bonn / Universita Di Pisa / Universitat De Valencia / Artinis Medical Systems BV / G.TEC Medical Engineering GMBH / Neurons Inc Aps, Stichting Katholieke Universiteit / Universitat Linz
FUNDING:
Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie ITN: 22 mio DKK Department share: 2,4 Mio DKK
CONTACT PERSON:
Associate Professor Luis Emilio Bruni (PhD) e-mail: leb@create.aau.dk
PROJECT PERIOD:
January 2017 – January 2020.
PARTICIPANTS:
Palermo Urban Solutions Hub / Istituto Superiore Mario Boella Sulle Tecnologie Dell’informazione e Delle Telecomunicazioni Associazione / Bag! Consulting / LLD / Luca School of Arts VZW / Fundacio Privada I2cat / Internet I Innovacio Digital A Catalunya / Forum Virium Helsinki Oy / Municipio do Fundao / Comune di Palermo / Stichting Waag Society / Institut Municipal D’informatica De Barcelona / Stad Gent / Luxembourg Institute Of Science And Technology / Gemeente Amsterdam
FUNDING:
Horizon2020 Mobility for Growth 30 mio DKK Department share 1.8 Mio DKK
CONTACT PERSON:
Professor Nicola Morelli e-mail: nmor@create.aau.dk
WEB:
https://www.muv2020.eu
Mobility Urban Values is a Research and Innovation Action levers behavioural change in local communities and promotes a shift towards more sustainable and healthy mobility choices by engaging local communities, local businesses, policymakers and Open Data enthusiasts. The solutions are piloted in a set of diverse urban neighbourhoods spread across Europe: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Fundao, Ghent, Helsinki, and Palermo.
