Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Artcast4D (Artcast4D: Unleashing creativity!)
Berichtszeitraum: 2022-09-01 bis 2023-11-30
Advances in immersive technologies represent an important driver for the “experience economy,” enhancing breadth, depth and intensity of artistic performances or the visitors’ experience at arts and cultural institutions, ultimately contributing to the competitive advantage to the EU industry. Yet, advanced immersive solutions are usually neither readily available nor broadly accessible, as they require specific developments hardly supported by institutions, confined into laboratories, limited in the immersive experience they offer to the users. Artcast4D is a Research and Innovation Action, funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe funding Programme, that aims to design, develop, and test a global framework for Cultural Creative Industries in Europe for producing efficient, cost-effective software and hardware (projectors, computers, cameras, and detectors), multi-user, multi-site, multi-platform non-invasive immersive and interactive users’ experiences.Artcast4D aims to approach culture as an emotionally engaging “communicative experience” in public spaces, to test its potential on 4 different pilots and 4 different scenarios. Pilots will showcase the potential of immersive experiences to boost CCIs as a driver of innovation and competitiveness using impact assessment and measurement techniques. Furthermore, the project will provide evidence on the role of the cultural and creative industries as drivers of innovation in other economic sectors such as Citizens engagement in public space, Art & Creativity in Public Spaces, Innovation in Art and Experience, and Tourism and advertising of cultural events like a global social sculpture. Artcast4D has been funded by under Grant Agreement 101061163. The Consortium is coordinated by Politecnico di Milano and brings together 10 domain-skilled partners from 7 European Countries, merging research, technological, creative and cultural background.
Identification of the Ethical Advisor
Project management plan
Information dissemination plan
Design and development of document templates, press releases and promo materials, dissemination kit,
Definition of video formats
Interviews with experts and creatives
Design and development of ARTCAST4D web site
Activation of social media Channels (facebook, twitter, etc.)
Quality assurance procedure and guidelines
ARTCAST4D presentation on the occasion of Global Forum 2022 in Muscat 817-18 October 2022) , disseminated press releases and promo materials, interviews with experts and delegates
ARTCAST4D The WSIS Forum 2023 is scheduled to be held from 13 to 17 March 2023 at the ITU Headquarters premises in Geneva, with the support of remote participation. Virtual workshops will continue in April & May. The Agenda and Programme of the Forum will be built on the basis of the submissions received during the Open Consultation Process (OCP). The Open Consultation process aims at ensuring a participatory and inclusive spirit of the Forum. This process actively engages multistakeholders in the preparatory process to ensure broad ownership and further improvements of the Forum. The Open Consultation Process will include a collection of inputs from regional and national WSIS related events.
ARTCAST4D Artcast4D partner Université Paris Saclay invited The Battleground to Paris on 22 March to cover technical tests at the Forum des Images in preparation for its study of the Les Fibres d’Ariane installation. An interactive work by Ikse Maître, Les Fibres d’Ariane is a stunning 8000 x 4000 mm audio-visual presentation consisting of infrared and RGB sensors. Maître calls his installation a “living mirror” of how images pass through our bodies, describing it as a behavioural work “conditioned by meteorology and air quality, reacting to the crowd and interacting with users”. Seeing Les Fibres D’Ariane for the first time, we were impressed by the 1960s-style visual elements reminiscent of psychedelia, reinforced by a feed of classic postwar film clips, in black and white. Vincent Hulot’s electronic music for the installation was entirely apropos. Maître demonstrated how sensors triggered different channels of a multitrack version of the recordings using Ableton Live. Hulot’s soundtrack is available from Bandcamp.
ARTCAST4D presentation on the occasion of the European Youth Innovators Festival Graz (April 26-28 2'023)
ARTCAST4D Forum des Images Paris
ARTCAST4D presentation on the occasion of IST Africa Conference in Pretoria (SA) (31May-2 June 2023)
ARTCAST4D The future backcasting workshop involved partners of the ARTCAST4D PROJECT together with artists, creatives and developers in the field of immersive art and cultural interpretation to imagine how immersive technology may look in the future.
Divided into two groups, the experts created future scenarios and imagined which professionals, established or new, could work together to make these scenarios feasible. (23 June 2023)
Project management plan
Information dissemination plan
Design and development of document templates, press releases and promo materials, dissemination kit,
Definition of video formats
Interviews with experts and creatives
Design and development of ARTCAST4D web site
Activation of social media Channels (facebook, twitter, etc.)
Quality assurance procedure and guidelines
ARTCAST4D presentation on the occasion of Global Forum 2022 in Muscat 817-18 October 2022) , disseminated press releases and promo materials, interviews with experts and delegates
ARTCAST4D The WSIS Forum 2023 is scheduled to be held from 13 to 17 March 2023 at the ITU Headquarters premises in Geneva, with the support of remote participation. Virtual workshops will continue in April & May. The Agenda and Programme of the Forum will be built on the basis of the submissions received during the Open Consultation Process (OCP). The Open Consultation process aims at ensuring a participatory and inclusive spirit of the Forum. This process actively engages multistakeholders in the preparatory process to ensure broad ownership and further improvements of the Forum. The Open Consultation Process will include a collection of inputs from regional and national WSIS related events.
ARTCAST4D Artcast4D partner Université Paris Saclay invited The Battleground to Paris on 22 March to cover technical tests at the Forum des Images in preparation for its study of the Les Fibres d’Ariane installation. An interactive work by Ikse Maître, Les Fibres d’Ariane is a stunning 8000 x 4000 mm audio-visual presentation consisting of infrared and RGB sensors. Maître calls his installation a “living mirror” of how images pass through our bodies, describing it as a behavioural work “conditioned by meteorology and air quality, reacting to the crowd and interacting with users”. Seeing Les Fibres D’Ariane for the first time, we were impressed by the 1960s-style visual elements reminiscent of psychedelia, reinforced by a feed of classic postwar film clips, in black and white. Vincent Hulot’s electronic music for the installation was entirely apropos. Maître demonstrated how sensors triggered different channels of a multitrack version of the recordings using Ableton Live. Hulot’s soundtrack is available from Bandcamp.
ARTCAST4D presentation on the occasion of the European Youth Innovators Festival Graz (April 26-28 2'023)
ARTCAST4D Forum des Images Paris
ARTCAST4D presentation on the occasion of IST Africa Conference in Pretoria (SA) (31May-2 June 2023)
ARTCAST4D The future backcasting workshop involved partners of the ARTCAST4D PROJECT together with artists, creatives and developers in the field of immersive art and cultural interpretation to imagine how immersive technology may look in the future.
Divided into two groups, the experts created future scenarios and imagined which professionals, established or new, could work together to make these scenarios feasible. (23 June 2023)
During this first reporting period, solid foundations for the Artcast4D solution have been established. On the theory level, a comprehensive report on immersive technologies and cross-sector applications was written, a study on the keys for immersion in open spaces has been designed and reference scenario data was acquired. Concretely, original visual and sound contents were created to promote immersion in VR and 360 ground-wall environments for additional reference experimental works.
On the technical level, important advances were achieved concerning the development of the core of AAASeed - the first open-source software enabling the creation of real-time, interactive and immersive 3D-graphic installations. In particular, several core rendering functionalities have been developed. An innovative contextual radial menu has been created in the GUI. A jump flood algorithm has been integrated in a module to compute distance fields. Moreover, the development of a machine learning model for real-time detection of individuals using ceiling-mounted cameras marks a major advancement in interactive systems. The project also pioneers a semi-automatic calibration method for typical installations, whether on floors or walls, streamlining the setup process. Finally, a large language model (LLM ) has been trained and fine-tuned as the basis for an AI-powered chatbot. As a first use version trained on the topic of disinformation and societal wisdom, it will be used in one of the pilot installations in a museum setting.
The outcomes of the AI systems used within Artcast4D are 2 (or more, I’m not sure): a chatbot and a motion tracking system.
The AI chatbot, developed by EXUS, was built using a Large Language Model (LLM) trained on pdf articles collected on the EDMO repository (https://edmo.eu/media-literacy/media-literacy-repository/). The dataset consists of research articles related to the topic of disinformation and societal wisdom. No personal data were used to build the LLM and the chatbot. The chatbot will not collect, nor store, personal info from those who will be interacting with it. For this reason, we do not envisage ethical issues arising during the pilot tests. The multi-user interaction kit developed by CERTH, which is tracking motion and posture of visitors, is built respecting personal data by not recording any person identification characteristics. The methods only identify positions, postures and gestures of persons without recording any images that may identify specific persons.
On the technical level, important advances were achieved concerning the development of the core of AAASeed - the first open-source software enabling the creation of real-time, interactive and immersive 3D-graphic installations. In particular, several core rendering functionalities have been developed. An innovative contextual radial menu has been created in the GUI. A jump flood algorithm has been integrated in a module to compute distance fields. Moreover, the development of a machine learning model for real-time detection of individuals using ceiling-mounted cameras marks a major advancement in interactive systems. The project also pioneers a semi-automatic calibration method for typical installations, whether on floors or walls, streamlining the setup process. Finally, a large language model (LLM ) has been trained and fine-tuned as the basis for an AI-powered chatbot. As a first use version trained on the topic of disinformation and societal wisdom, it will be used in one of the pilot installations in a museum setting.
The outcomes of the AI systems used within Artcast4D are 2 (or more, I’m not sure): a chatbot and a motion tracking system.
The AI chatbot, developed by EXUS, was built using a Large Language Model (LLM) trained on pdf articles collected on the EDMO repository (https://edmo.eu/media-literacy/media-literacy-repository/). The dataset consists of research articles related to the topic of disinformation and societal wisdom. No personal data were used to build the LLM and the chatbot. The chatbot will not collect, nor store, personal info from those who will be interacting with it. For this reason, we do not envisage ethical issues arising during the pilot tests. The multi-user interaction kit developed by CERTH, which is tracking motion and posture of visitors, is built respecting personal data by not recording any person identification characteristics. The methods only identify positions, postures and gestures of persons without recording any images that may identify specific persons.