On the road for the Research Film and VR 360-Video in Guatemala, impressions above, 9th of October 2018.

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!

First expert interviews in Switzerland with Lars-Erik Cederman, ETH Zurich; Nils Rosemann of the DEZA, Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Switzerland; Christelle Rigual, University Geneva. Upcoming field production in Guatemala in early October, Nigeria mid-November 2018.

You can find the presentation here

The Manifesto presents fifteen key statements on videos in higher education. See, comment, criticize on the whole manifesto: https://medium.com/@jreutemann/manifesto-videos-in-higher-education-1be3e91b786a

«Media Design Expertise for Videos in Higher Education: A Collection of Interviews with Lecturers, Filmmakers and Communication Experts from the Fields of Science Teaching, Media Design, Gesture Studies and Digital Education», open access, 2018.

> researchgate

'Media & Learning' Conference in Leuven, Belgium, June, 14-15. > access slides here

Forthcoming: Tech meets Research Presentation: "Watch your Tendons Stretch as you Kick - a Foot Controlled MR Experience" and a "Workshop on our VR-360 pilots"  Connected Learning Summit at the MIT, Boston, August 1.-3. 18, http://connectedlearningsummit.org/

(TEDX Talk Video will be online end of June)

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?  Fear is not the right sentiment to cope with Artificial Intelligence and robots as they slowly but surely transform our societies. It is time we form a more objective view of where future technologies will take us.

Presentation on "How Stories of AI-Robots shape the Vision of Future Technology" at the TedX Lausanne 'Homo Futuris', May 7th 2018.

Workshop at the Festival of Free Speech: 'When Mixed Reality meets Deep Fake: Third Millennium Challenges for Audiovisual Data in Journalism', Hilversum Netherlands, May 3th 2018. https://www.beeldengeluid.nl/bezoek/agenda/festival-van-het-vrije-woord

Abstract: On the one hand, we have new promising technologies such as mixed reality (virtual reality, augmented reality and anything in between) in journalism, and indeed, various news platforms such as The Guardian, NYT or BBC increasingly produce mixed reality formats, currently mainly VR-360 videos. The immersion of mixed reality storytelling seems promising to bring the story to the recipients and therefore let them experience current issues or conflicts closer than ever before.
On the other hand, we have the latest development of deep fake videos. Already today artificial intelligence can generate video-realistic fakes, increasing the strain to detect forgery on truth-committed organizations such as the World Press Photo Award.
Now imagine how the extreme immersion of mixed reality could affect the recipients in the near future, when it meets deep fake technology.

The course will be part of the interdisciplinary minor program "Responsible Innovation" for students of the Leiden University, Delft University and Rotterdam Erasmus University.

Course Description:

"Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second" (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960). So what about 360-Virtual Reality, at 120 frames per second?

In the digital world, audiovisual data is everywhere. From photographs to videos, games to mixed reality - we're truly living in an audiovisual age. On one hand, new media technologies such as Augmented Reality or 'deepfakes' are in a state of permanent becoming. Innovative formats continuously enter the market place of ideas long before the old ones are fully understood. On the other hand, in this era of fake news, our audiovisual data has become much easier to manipulate than ever before.

In this course, we will explore current digital trends and critically investigate the impact of new media technologies on society. Lectures will reflect on various cases of audiovisual data in the digital sphere such as Virtual and Augmented Reality, AI-robots in moving images, #deepfakes, hacking, webbased-interactive hybridformats from the perspective of audiovisual data in academic research.

Have a look at our current innovative VR-360 experiences at the New Media Lab, Leiden University's Centre for Innovation: http://newmedialab.centre4innovation.org/360-virtual-reality-vr.html

Published in the "Media & Learning News"; March Edition.

On the face side of the coin, there is the speaker. The Roman rhetorician Marcus Fabius Quintilian stated around 50 B.C.: "It is often the case that the same language is free in one speaker, foolish in another, and arrogant in a third." As ancient this quotation is, it still resonates today and becomes almost comically obvious when watching certain videos of educators, performing as Talking Head. [...]

Conference presentation of new research insights:

"The speaker's body image and schema in educational videos"

Today, videos are a part of most online learning experiences. But speaking in front of a camera is frequently found challenging by educators. Therefore, understanding the difficulties to further support our educators is a necessity. March 17th, 2018, http://www.lxdcon.com/index.html#home

(The video reference is from 2014 and shows a mockup 'state of the arts' of videos from universities  all around the world. It is not directly related to the presentation, but still shows the challenges a majority of scientific educators face when speaking into a camera.)

The documentary film was produced during the "Empathies 2017 Conference", European Society of Literature, Science and the Arts, @University of Basel. Video production was kindly supported by Eikones.