Future Tuesdays present: Visual Facilitation in VR During the Pandemic with Stéphanie Heckman 30 March 2021

On 30 March 2021, Future Tuesdays hosted visual facilitator Stéphanie Heckman. Heckman with the support of Future Screens NI has pioneered visual facilitation in VR during the pandemic. When the Covid-19 Crisis emerged Stéphanie identified the challenges of facilitating collective working during the pandemic. In response she developed a hand drawn immersive space for collaboration in response to Covid-19. Stephanie has also tested and developed prototypes for generating VR illustrations to support collective working through visual facilitation. 

Stéphanie is a visual facilitator who had observed the unique set of challenges digital platforms pose to a streamlined communication experience. Heckman has pioneered immersive technology to explore visual facilitation in response to the risk of missing nonverbal cues and clues, proper eye contact and attuned ‘turn-taking’ in speech, and everything from gesticulation to the tactility of whiteboards, paper, and post it notes that are employed in collective planning. With VR drawing apps Stéphanie created live streams in zoom and developed immersive worlds for visual facilitation generating new platforms for collaboration during and beyond the Covid-19 Crisis.

For Future Tuesdays Stéphanie took us through her journey with VR and introduced us to her beautiful and inspiring immersive work.  

Alongside her work as a visual facilitator and graphic recorder, Stéphanie is a singer-songwriter under the name Soma Saloli. Hailing from the Netherlands, Stéphanie lives in Belfast where she combines her passions for the arts and the outdoors with academic and professional training in sustainable leadership development.

You can find more about Stéphanie’s work here:

https://www.stephanieheckman.com/  

On 30 March 2021, Future Tuesdays hosted visual facilitator Stéphanie Heckman. Heckman is a visual facilitator who with the support of Future Screens NI has ...

Future Tuesdays Presents: Performance Without Barriers with Zach Kinstner, 23rd March 2021

On 23 March 2021, FSNI Future Tuesdays and Performance Without Barriers hosted Zach Kinstner, CEO of Aesthetic Interactive for a presentation and Q & A about the musical VR programme EXA: The Infinite Instrument. EXA is a programme for HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Microsoft HoloLens. In the presentation, Zach discussed his experience of developing for the virtual musical environments in Virtual and Mixed Realities.

 ‘Performance Without Barriers’ (PwB) is a research group at Queen’s University Belfast, established in 2015 by Dr Franziska Schroeder in collaboration with the Drake Music Project Northern Ireland. Together, they work with disabled people to identify more accessible and open ways to designing music technologies. They hold a firm belief that music, performance, and improvisation are powerful mediums for expression and communication across difference, as performance can give a voice to individuals in society who are marginalised and remain ‘silent’ because their language or mode of communication cannot be heard. For that purpose, the PwB team is committed to research activities that promote social inclusion through creative performance practice, accessible and enabling technologies, while challenging dominant assumptions or exclusive identities.  

 In 2018, as part of the AHRC/EPSRC funded project 'Immersion and Inclusive Music Technologies’, they joined forces with Zach Kinstner’s EXA: The Infinite Instrument programme, which offers a customisable tool for music interactions in Virtual Reality. It was adopted and re-designed by PwB to be an accessible virtual musical instrument for the disabled musicians who are so integral to the design processes.

 The work of the PwB teams has been showcased at two European music conferences for disability, the Soundform Conference in Hamburg/Germany, and Zukunftmusik in Bern/Switzerland in 2019.

 The agenda-setting research of the group was recognised by the Vice Chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast with the 2020 Prize for Research Innovation!

 Zach Kinstner, CEO of Aesthetic Interactive. A musician and developer who created the musical VR programme EXA, The Infinite Instrument for HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Microsoft HoloLens who will discuss his experience of developing for the virtual musical environments in Virtual and Mixed Realities.

 Dr Franciska Schroeder is a saxophonist, theorist, and a Reader at the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen's University Belfast. She is a Fellow of the HEA (Higher Education Academy in the UK). She serves on the peer review panel for the UK's AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) and is a registered expert for the EU's Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Franziska was awarded her PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 2006, and has since written for many international journals, including Leonardo, Organised Sound, Performance Research, Cambridge Publishing and Routledge. She has published a book on performance and the threshold, an edited volume on user-generated content and a book on improvisation entitled "Soundweaving".

For more information please follow the following links.

http://performancewithoutbarriers.com/

http://aestheticinteractive.com/#/

FSNI Future Tuesdays and Performance Without Barriers Host Zach Kinstner, CEO of Aesthetic Interactive for a presentation and Q & A about the musical VR prog...

Thrive hosts Changing the Game: A roadmap for digital tailored to Northern Ireland’s arts and culture organisations’ needs.

On Monday 22nd March 2021 Thrive Audience Development hosted a roundtable discussion considering a digital roadmap tailored to Northern Ireland’s arts and culture organisations’ needs. The webinar was hosted by Margaret Henry, Chief Executive of Thrive Audience Development and included speakers Prof. Paul Moore, Director of Future Screens NI; Peter O’Neill, Director of Imagine! Belfast Festival of Ideas and Politics and Maurane Ramon, Communications Executive at Thrive Audience Development.

 The press release states:

When lockdown hit at the end of March 2020, a lot of arts and culture organisations turned to digital so they could continue deliver creativity and offer some hope and respite. Some offered live or pre-recorded events filmed from their living room, others explored complete new ways to present their work. Is there an easy step-by-step process that arts, culture and heritage organisations could follow to kickstart their digital journey? 

Supported by the Future Screen NI’s Rewriting the Narrative project and in partnership with Accidental Theatre and Imagine Belfast, thrive undertook a consultation process to better understand their use and knowledge of digital. Based on the insight they discovered, thrive developed a 5-steps framework called ‘Changing the Game’ that NI organisations can use to assess and create their own digital offer. 

In this webinar, thrive and guests shares details about their research, what they found and the Changing the Game Framework. 

For more information on the participating projects please follow the links below.

imaginebelfast.com

wewillthrive.co.uk 

Future Screens NI appoint 20 Future Creatives

Future Screens NI have appointed 20 Future Creatives who will receive a £5,000 award which is accompanied by mentorship in order to advance their research and development programmes, advance their career ambitions, and to develop cutting edge technical innovations.  Successful creatives include PhD researchers and early career researchers in both industry and university settings including founders.  Successful awardees are engaged in research to advance immersive technologies, medtech, equality, diversity and inclusion, film, and business development.  

The Future Creatives scheme has been designed to enable participants to make a step change in their research and innovation by enhanced leadership and collaboration skills and developing new practices in the field of creativity and technology.  Each awardee has been matched with an industry or academic mentor working at the cutting edge of new, emerging and immersive technologies.

Future Screens NI Celebrates International Women’s Day with Antonia Forster

Future Screens NI and Reclaim the Agenda celebrated International Women’s Day with Antonia Forster with an insightful discussion on Closing the Gender Gap: Diversity and Inclusion in Tech

It is no secret that technology is having a diversity crisis. Despite initiatives to diversify, engineering & technology are still perceived as predominantly white, male, middle-class spaces. But this wasn't always the case - in 1943, computing was dominated by women, especially women of colour. What happened? Antonia Forster, XR Technical Specialist, presented a data-driven exploration of the gender gap:- how it affects your bottom line; how AI and machine-learning reinforce bias; and crucially, how we can employ evidence-based, highly effective strategies to combat it.

The event was attended by representatives from across the Creative Industries and Universities and has stimulated a movement of change.

Antonia is a keynote speaker and self-taught programmer, working in the field of AR, VR, and haptics. She travels worldwide, speaking on inclusion and diversity in the workforce. She is a passionate advocate for Women in STEM, a TEDx speaker and mentor, and has been shortlisted for Nature's John Maddox Prize for her work in LGBTQ+ inclusion.

Find out more about Antonia here:

https://antoniaforster.com/

This event was delivered in partnership with Reclaim the Agenda as part of the NI International Women's Day Programme. Find out more here:

https://www.reclaimtheagenda.com/iwd-2021

Celebrating International Women's Day Future Screens NI and Reclaim the Agenda present Antonia Forster for Future Tuesdays.It is no secret that technology is...