This week took place the 2nd online alumni gathering with teams from Cohort 1 and 2.
After sharing updates on the MediaFutures programme, the 3rd cohort and the final event, the participants were invited to present the development of their projects. What a pleasure to discover that the teams are still working on their MediaFutures projects and improving them.
The developments are diverse:
- Presentation of the results in venues and events
Some teams are disseminating the results of their works through events and exhibitions. This will allow us to discover Invisible Voice and Critical Climate Machine in Paris during the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) from the 16th to the 21st of May.
Gaëtan Robillard will also present Critical Climate Machine in Dublin (June 19 – 21) during the 6th European Climate Change Adaptation Conference where he will meet climate scientists.
After a first presentation in Bremen (Germany), the city asked for a second exhibition of Edit Wars (date to be announced soon).
- Research and development on the current projects
Most teams are still developing their projects. Eventhough the first versions were presented during the Demo Days, the artists and startups are constantly improving their projects and enhancing their technics. The Synthetic Identity Speculations team is developing the image generation trying to reduce the computational costs of the installation. They are also still willing to make it open source, which requires some additional work and research.
After the desktop version of Invisible Voice, Mark Farid and his team are working on the App version (to be released in a few days!). This allows using Invisible Voice on your phone and being able to scan products.
The Biblio-graph team received additional funding from the Netherlands to continue developing their publishing and annotation tool. The amount of data they collect from the libraries is constantly growing as they are installing more annotation tables in libraries and onboarding new archives.
The OCHI team has been working on the beta version so far and is now planning the national launch of the App in Ukraine for October 2023.
- Development of new projects inspired by the MediaFutures research
Several of the teams attending the alumni meeting presented new projects inspired by their work with MediaFutures.
The Mind Bugs team is working on a mobile horror game based on the visuals created for the MediaFutures project. They are also developing a new Augmented Reality experience directly inspired by the MediaFutures project.
Gaëtan Robillard is also working on a new project inspired by Critical Climate Machine which will lead to the construction of a participatory critical data set on climate change from Twitter. It will take the form of poetry.
Being together also allowed teams to share their questions, issues and needs for user testing.
It’s always nice to see this community vibrating!
By IRCAM
