Fintech Hackathon Zurich

Around 25 terabytes of film material in the editing process. The research documentary is taking shape.

We've designed a massive role play game about the future, climate change, robopocalypse, immortality and space travel from scratch. Mitigation, adaptation, investment in AI robots or basic research? Dependent on the choices of the different countries, the future of our planet drastically changes over the next 100 years. Facilitated at Brave New World conference in Leiden.

Intense and deeply insightful week with the Gender Dimension team of the University of Geneva, colleagues from Indonesia and the local team in Nigeria for a research documentary synthesis project. 

A small Nigerian "fairytale": On the road with local colleagues, hunting for images about inequality. First meeting with the chief of Durumi 1 - he accepts and sends his (handsome) prince with us. A little later, meeting with the chief of Durumi 5 - he accepts and sends another prince to join our journey. Stuffed in a car with two Nigerian princes sharing the front seat, visiting a Internally Deplaced Person Camp of refugees from the Northern states. These images will stay in my head for a while.

Field notes: Nigeria is officially a "post-conflict" state. However, the trip to Nigeria in November was our second, as we've been there in July already for only two days. One week before we arrived in Abuja, there was another genocide in Jos, excatly the place where we've planned to go. So much for post-conflict status.

The ongoing fight for the rights of ethnic minorities. Mayan guerilla movement, political and economic inqualities, state reactions: On the road for the research film and VR 360-Video experience in Guatemala, with the fantastic team of the Prof. Ricardo Saenz de Tejada, Prof. Marta Juana López and students of the USAC. Project of the ETH Zurich, under the umbrella of the 'Research for Development' program of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Many see intelligent robots in the future as evil – taking over our livelihoods and eventually even taking our lives. Can it be the sci-fi stories that make us think this way? What do these stories, especially movies, tell us and make us believe?

What do you do over the weekend? The professional dancer, choreographer and lecturer Sarah Keusch and me took some time and initiative to follow our passion and create a short dance performance music video with some amazing dancers and kind helpers – after almost ten years again!

As part of the full-lenght research documentary on social conflicts, we've put our researchers in front of the camera. They all did a fantastic job! Filmstills (not colour graded), from left top on; Nils Rosemann (DEZA), Lars-Erik Cederman (ETH Zurich), Steve Reichert (Expert in collaboration with University of Lausanne); Elizabeth Pruegl (University of Geneva); Christelle Rigual (University of Geneva).

A Novel Approach Towards Anatomy Learning! Whereas other MR-productions for anatomy focus on 3D-visualization only, we assume that the involvement of the whole body of the user in the experience leads to more playful learning, and can be particularly helpful for concepts difficult to understand such as the movement dynamics of the lower feet. Moreover, the pure representation of a 3D-model in MR is consider an instance of a classical media fallacy of the affordances (see image comparison of anatomy learning in 1935 and the MR-app from 2015). While such pure visualizations add a spatial factor to the experience of traditional moving images, they do not play towards the strengths of MR, as they only marginally interact with the body of the learners.

Through recent advanced technological development, media formats such as VR360-videos for Virtual

Reality (VR) seem promising and enter the educational sector rapidly. Although VR360-videos resemble

traditional videography in some of their affordances, innovative storytelling, playful elements and

strategies for directing the gaze-attention of the recipient are genuinely different and still need to be

explored. In fact, standard VR360-videos are a rather passive medium besides the option to turn the

head. We at the Centre for Innovation at Leiden University believe, that a majority of educational topics could benefit from more interaction and playful elements in VR360. Hence, we’re currently developing several projects with playful interactivity in VR in which we try to overcome the passiveness. You can find the MIT presentation here