Month: December 2022

Erasmus XR IO3 – Case Studies

The intellectual output three, case studies of the Erasmus XR project, has been published using the Zotero research assistant. The Erasmus XR case studies are an Open Educational Resource (teaching material – collection of case studies in the form of videos and making-of videos with an introduction), showcasing also produced VR videos created by VNLab, made in both 3 and 6 degrees of freedom (DoF), VR resources created as part of art and curatorial projects. 

Following the fall training for academic staff in Athens/Psachno, the NKUA SMRG team collaborated with the Onassis Stegi Cultural Center team (https://www.onassis.org/onassis-stegi) organizing a two-day symposium focusing on art, science and technology expressed in the field of virtual reality. The main objective of the event was to disseminate the results of the intellectual work. IO3 was published through the presentation of creative, artistic and research projects developed by significant European creators, educators and scientists, which are examples of educational materials within IO3. In parallel, there was an exhibition of VR demo applications and artworks, as well as an exhibition of demos created during the cadre training. 

Educational materials and case studies for VR-based courses include: 

– A series of presentations related to the processes of creating virtual environments, namely: analysis, design, development and evaluation, 

– A series of publicly available Blender files (including 3D objects and environments, nodes and modifiers), 

– Unity project series (use of assets and their properties), 

– VR experience demo series, 

– A series of video tutorials. 

The results have been made available to the public in digital form, with guaranteed free access via the Internet. Open access will help to increase the visibility of European projects, which is in line with the approach to the use of ICT and RES according to the European Commission’s directives “Open Access refers to the practice of making research results and products available online. As all research and innovation builds on previous achievements, it is an effective system for wide dissemination and access to research data and publications can accelerate scientific and economic progress”.  

From the point of view of other HE institutions, the most attractive outcomes are the module documentation in the form of curriculum and syllabus, as it constitutes ready material necessary for the procedure of curriculum revision. On the other hand, from the point of view of the non-formal and vocational education sector, the teaching materials (IO3) are very interesting. It should be stressed that the case studies can be an interesting reading material for people interested in digitalization, virtualization and modernization of culture, which widens the circle of users and makes it possible for the project to achieve a global reach. 

Please follow this link to gain access to the Erasmus XR case studies: https://erasmusxr.eu/casestudies 

Polish premiere of VR Self on the Immersion Festival in Warsaw

The Polish premiere of Patryk Jordanowicz and Tadeusz Chudy’s VR ‘Self’ will take place during the Immersion Festival in Warsaw on 11-12 December.

How does a mentally ill person feel? How does he or she perceive the world? Or perhaps the division between healthy and mentally ill people does not exist at all? For the creators of the project, their interest in creating photographic and cinematic images has for years gone hand in hand with an attempt to understand and be open to the world of mental issues.

“Self”, by design, is intended to be a powerful and memorable immersive experience for the viewer. From the experience, which is conceived as an experience, comes an understanding of otherness. Understanding, in turn, creates tolerance. The visual and aural stimuli of this project are merely a pathway, a tool to generate emotions in the viewer that are similar to the state of those affected by mental illness. The creators want to evoke a state of contemplation, melancholy and compassion in the viewer. “Self” deals with an extremely sensitive subject, which is why it has been created from the beginning with the participation of people who deal with mental health on a daily basis.

The story concept of ‘Self’ is based on a mosaic structure. The stories presented are memories from different stages of the healing process of former patients, and their real silhouettes are set in a minimalist 3D environment. The flashbacks materialise in the form of voice-over commentaries, and the use of ambisonic sound exposes the properties of the category that is cinematic VR.

The VR experience exhibition and VR cinema screenings take place at the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw on 11-12 December 2022 from 10 a.m – 7 p.m
Admission is free of charge.

For more information follow the link.

The School, a world – interactive observation document

S?awek runs through the fields with a metal detector. Marzena is browsing Facebook in the barn. Adam with a bending barbell breaks the world record in weightlifting. Only cows still go to school. Where? In Chlebiotki, a small village in Poland.

Barely 60 people live here. On Sunday they go to church and during the week everyone does their own thing. Houses are rimmed with thuyas to ward off neighbours. In the evenings everyone is online. Dreaming of something different. There is an empty building in the village. It used to be a school, built by a community effort. But there are almost no children in the village anymore. So Wojtek bought the run-down school and for 8 years has been trying to turn it into a business, with no success so far.

“The School, a World” is an interactive documentary based on observation, annoyance and love. Each chapter is devoted to one of 8 characters. The immersive sound leads the narration. The film’s director grew up in the village. The school was her home. She returned after 20 years to seek traces of her past and found a whole, complete world.

 

Iga ?api?ska – director. She is involved in documentary, oral history, editing and self-promotion in TV film channels. She wanted to be a scientist, which is why she studied Polish philology and film studies, but she much prefers practice to theory. For the Stopklatka TV channel, she has conceived and produced programmes about cinema such as „Prywatna historia kina”, „100 kultowych filmów”, „Ja tu tylko ogl?dam” and „8 i pó? filmu”. She directed the 6-part web documentary ‘Krótki kurs kultury romskiej’. With Ewa Jarosz, she invented an instagram educational series for young people entitled. “Nina_innahistoria” – about a teenage girl in a Polish-Jewish town before World War II (main prize in the O?rodek KARTA film hackathon; project not yet realised). Until the age of fifteen, she lived in Chlebiotki, a small village in Podlasie. She talks about it in the documentary ‘The School, a world’, which is her interactive debut.

Ewa Jarosz – project manager, historian, Judaist, activist associated with the food cooperative movement. Graduate of the Jagiellonian University, University of Southampton and the Tischner European University. Enthusiast and practitioner of community management of common goods, interested in the history of grassroots social action during the communist period. For ‘The School, a World’ project, she co-created the concept, interactive narrative, archival layer and editorial.

The project was financed under the Ministry of Education and Science programme within the framework of the “Regional Initiative of Excellence” for the years 2019-2023, project number 023/RID/2018/19, funding sum PLN 11 865?100