Teaser video

MindSpaces resident artists translate and present their residency research into virtual experiences to be hosted at Sonar+D festival in October. The proposed content of the exhibition will feature MindSpaces resident artists in a virtual game-like experience. The artists’ current research is being translated into a digital environment while inscribing them in a broader discussion on urban life and emotional engagement. Through this exhibition, MindSpaces articulate some key elements of the project into a different narrative and discussion context. Artists-in-residence: Haseeb Ahmed (US), Sarah Derat (FR), Emanuel Gollob (AT), Emmanuel Van der Auwera (BE), João Martinho Moura (PT), Michael Sedbon (FR)

MindSpaces Resident Artists

 

Acknowledgements

MindSpaces Consortium

Centre for Research and Technology, Hellas, University of Maastricht, Pompeu Fabra University, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, McNeel Europe SL, Up2Metric, Nurogames,Zaha Hadid Architects, Maurice Benayoun, Analog Native , Espronceda, e-Sèniors, The town of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat,The university of Hong Kong)

Artists

Maurice Benayoun

Refik Anadol

Artists in residency

Haseeb Ahmed, Sarah Derat, Emanuel Gollob, Emmanuel Van der Auwera, João Martinho Moura, Michael Sedbon

Architecture today is a multidisciplinary knowledge platform, combining input from engineering, the humanities, and the environmental, cognitive and social sciences. Technological advancements in artificial intelligence, machine learning and physiological sensing are radically affecting the entire world of architecture and can foster and enhance the creative process of architects. By engaging architects, engineers, scientists and artists in a broad exploration of these technologies, it is time to expand the design capabilities of architects, transform the attributes of architectural and urban, physical or virtual designed environments; while respecting human needs and sensitivities and promoting a new, more inclusive agenda for human life and experience. How can the dialogue between art, science and technology lead to a design process that makes our habitat (cities and nature) more inclusive, innovative, and creative? In this session, we have invited artists, architects and researchers on AI from the STARTS H2020 MindSpaces project to present their exploration with these technologies and their creative practice at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, architecture and design. Program Keynote: AI technologies for Art & Design. The MindSpaces paradigm, Stefanos Vrochidis (GR) Senior Researcher (Grade C’) with CERTH-ITI and the Head of the Multimodal Data Fusion and Analytics Group. Speakers: Refik Anadol (TR/US), media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of machine intelligence; Maurice Benayoun (HK/FR), French pioneer, contemporary new-media artist, curator and theorist, based in Paris and Hong Kong; Tyson Hosmer (UK), Associate Researcher at Zaha Hadid Architects, leading grant-funded research development of cognitive agent-based technologies and machine learning for generative design; Anastasios Tellios (GR), Professor of Architectural Design: Theory and Practice at the School of Architecture, AUTH. Moderator: Nefeli Georgakopoulou (GR), Senior Research Associate with CERTH-ITI, architect and media artist.

Refik Anadol

Maurice Benayoun

Tyson Hosmer

Anastasios Tellios

Stefanos Vrochidis

Georgakopoulou Nefeli

Garden Thessaloniki

Acknowledgements

MindSpaces Consortium

Centre for Research and Technology, Hellas, University of Maastricht, Pompeu Fabra University, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, McNeel Europe SL, Up2Metric, Nurogames,Zaha Hadid Architects, Maurice Benayoun, Analog Native , Espronceda, e-Sèniors, The town of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat,The university of Hong Kong)

Artists

Maurice Benayoun

Refik Anadol

Artists in residency

Haseeb Ahmed, Sarah Derat, Emanuel Gollob, Emmanuel Van der Auwera, João Martinho Moura, Michael Sedbon

An interactive application called Workplaces.ai has been developed by Zaha Hadid Architects’ ZH-Social Research Group as part of the Mindspaces STARTS project. The team focuses on the development of a new methodology for the comparative appraisal of the social functionality of design options, by investigating the social interaction processes to be expected in architectural environments via agent-based simulations with differentiated agent populations and autonomous decision processes. Through this process, it studies the relationship between human life process behaviour in relation to architecture to actively measure and predict social behaviour in the spaces we design. The research focuses on designing workspaces with high social performance, while expanding to investigate social interaction processes in virtual environments and events. The group aims to understand how features in built environments communicate with users and influence their collective behaviour, enabling the design of architecture with high social performance. The research involves three main components developed in parallel: 1) an agent-based computational framework for simulating and analysing the behaviour of social crowds in relation to architectural space planning. People are modelled as cognitive agents with individual internal and external state parameters, perception, and an autonomous decision-making framework to act within designed architectural environments while generating collective occupancy data; 2) a generative design model for workplace space planning, using machine learning to generate high performance layouts negotiating between a series of social and spatial performance criteria analysed through simulations; 3) an immersive experiential simulator enables users to experience and interact with designed virtual environments, while studying their behaviour in relation to them. The Workplaces.ai interactive app allows a user to enter two modes. The first enables the user to generate workplace design options by adjusting parameters which drive the model’s decisions. The second allows the user to immersively enter the virtual model, navigate and interact with it, while the social simulation runs with autonomous agents interacting within the virtual workplace environment. A series of data maps can be visualized describing the collective behaviour of the agent-based simulation in relation to the design. The program includes a menu system with options and instructions for how the user can interact with the application.

 

Credits

Patrik Schumacher – Chief Researcher Tyson Hosmer – Team Leader Team: Ziming He Soungmin Yu Sobitha Ravichandran Baris Erdincer

Acknowledgements

MindSpaces Consortium

Centre for Research and Technology, Hellas, University of Maastricht, Pompeu Fabra University, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, McNeel Europe SL, Up2Metric, Nurogames,Zaha Hadid Architects, Maurice Benayoun, Analog Native , Espronceda, e-Sèniors, The town of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat,The university of Hong Kong)

Artists

Maurice Benayoun

Refik Anadol

Artists in residency

Haseeb Ahmed, Sarah Derat, Emanuel Gollob, Emmanuel Van der Auwera, João Martinho Moura, Michael Sedbon

Ars Electronica is one of the biggest new media art festivals in the world. MindSpaces will be part of Ars Electronica Festival of 2021 with activities related to its technologies, digital artists and artists in residency.Thessaloniki Garden will host the MindSpaces project, funded by the European HORIZON2020-STARTS program. MindSpaces is an endeavor that brings together artists and scientists in order to tackle societal and urban city design challenges by leveraging the inspiration of the former and the technological innovations of the latter. People experience the built environment differently according to their social, cultural and economic background. The variety of this experience requires consideration if we want all users to feel that a particular space or place belongs to them. To this end, MindSpaces seeks to transform the practice of architecture by integrating the full diversity of how people experience and behave in the spaces we design through innovative, artistically-driven digital technologies. With the use of virtual reality, biosensors, artificial intelligence, algorithms and simulations, design decisions may be taken with regard to a detailed understanding of the users’ preferences and collective behaviour.MindSpaces Garden will host a) a teaser of an upcoming exhibition showcasing the research of the Open Call artists in collaboration with the technical partners of the MindSpaces consortium b) the ZHA Workplaces.AI interactive app, which allows each user to generate their own workplace environments by manipulating design parameters to simulate how a crowd of workplace “agents” behaves within it and experience it immersively and, c) an online meet-up that will bring together the artists and architects of the MindSpaces consortium.

Acknowledgements

MindSpaces Consortium

Centre for Research and Technology, Hellas, University of Maastricht, Pompeu Fabra University, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, McNeel Europe SL, Up2Metric, Nurogames,Zaha Hadid Architects, Maurice Benayoun, Analog Native , Espronceda, e-Sèniors, The town of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat,The university of Hong Kong)

Artists

Maurice Benayoun

Refik Anadol

Artists in residency

Haseeb Ahmed, Sarah Derat, Emanuel Gollob, Emmanuel Van der Auwera, João Martinho Moura, Michael Sedbon

Haseeb Ahmed (US), Sarah Derat (FR), Emanuel Gollob (AT), Emmanuel Van der Auwera (BE), João Martinho Moura (PT), Michael Sedbon (FR)

These interviews will discuss the work of the artists throughout their MindSpaces residency. They will present their work so far and their collaboration with the technical partners of the MindSpaces consortium. Their innovative ideas will be introduced by their art practice, through their ability to imagine futures that go beyond the current consensus in logic and engineering, setting in motion new ways of seeing, hearing, touching, feeling, transforming and experiencing spaces, places and community.

MindSpaces Consortium

The MindSpaces platform, encompassing the technologies of the project, will be demonstrated, showing how to design solutions for both indoor and outdoor environments using data from emotional, behavioral and discourse analysis.

Then MindSpaces platform proceeds in real-time through assessment of users’ emotional responses via wearable EEG (Electroencephalography), capturing the neuro-feedback of a VR experience of the space which will adapt accordingly.

Refik Anadol (TR) and Maurice Benayoun (FR)

In the public space (L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain) two “living” entities face each other. They don’t look like the living beings we know. They don’t speak any language we know. They are aliens, strangers, immigrants. Facing each other they gradually mutate. They seem to react to their environment. Even more, it is clear that they are desperately trying to understand each other. In the context of social diversity of L’Hospitalet, the second city of Catalunya, a popular suburb of Barcelona, DïaloG reflects on the difficulty of building a mutual understanding beyond social and cultural differences. The real-time generated creatures have behaviors and appearance affected through AI based on their cultural background, their environment and what they perceive from the “locals” that interfere with their attempt to communicate, to understand each other.

For MindSpaces Kepler’s garden, we’ll connect online, both DïaloG living entities and observe them growing before this “encounter of the 4th kind,” when they will be facing each other. From Refik Anadol’s studio in Los Angeles, and Maurice Benayoun’s Neuro Design Lab in CityU Hong Kong we’ll see them growing, moving, and expressing their condition and their desires. DïaloG uses technologies developed by MindSpaces partners to allow a large spectrum of perceptive features that, combined with R. Anadol and M. Benayoun graphic generators and AI algorithms, create this empathic disalienation.

Refik Anadol (TR) and Maurice Benayoun (FR)

In the public space (L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain) two “living” entities face each other. They don’t look like the living beings we know. They don’t speak any language we know. They are aliens, strangers, immigrants. Facing each other they gradually mutate. They seem to react to their environment. Even more, it is clear that they are desperately trying to understand each other. In the context of social diversity of L’Hospitalet, the second city of Catalunya, a popular suburb of Barcelona, DïaloG reflects on the difficulty of building a mutual understanding beyond social and cultural differences. The real-time generated creatures have behaviors and appearance affected through AI based on their cultural background, their environment and what they perceive from the “locals” that interfere with their attempt to communicate, to understand each other.

For MindSpaces Kepler’s garden, we’ll connect online, both DïaloG living entities and observe them growing before this “encounter of the 4th kind,” when they will be facing each other. From Refik Anadol’s studio in Los Angeles, and Maurice Benayoun’s Neuro Design Lab in CityU Hong Kong we’ll see them growing, moving, and expressing their condition and their desires. DïaloG uses technologies developed by MindSpaces partners to allow a large spectrum of perceptive features that, combined with R. Anadol and M. Benayoun graphic generators and AI algorithms, create this empathic disalienation.

Ars Electronica is one of the biggest new media art festivals in the world. Due to the pandemic, this year’s Ars Electronica Festival will be held virtually and in a hybrid model. MindSpaces will be part of Ars Electronica Festival of 2020 with activities related to its technologies, digital artists and artists in residency.

Garden Thessaloniki

Garden Thessaloniki

Abstract

MindSpaces project tries to improve the designing process of indoor and outdoor environments through participatory design involving and integrating multisensory measurements of individuals’ responses. Artists and architects provide ideas, after which MindSpaces’ researchers will monitor participants while they experience them. The emotional aspects of the environment will be obtained through the use of electroencephalography (EEG) and other physiological sensors that will be incorporated in a virtual reality experience. Then, the virtual space will adjust according to the neuroresponse of each individual, which will result in the creation of a space tailored emotionally to the user.

Acknowledgements

MindSpaces Consortium

Centre for Research and Technology, Hellas, University of Maastricht, Pompeu Fabra University, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, McNeel Europe SL, Up2Metric, Nurogames,Zaha Hadid Architects, Maurice Benayoun, Analog Native , Espronceda, e-Sèniors, The town of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat,The university of Hong Kong)

Artists

Maurice Benayoun

Refik Anadol

Artists in residency

Haseeb Ahmed, Sarah Derat, Emanuel Gollob, Emmanuel Van der Auwera, João Martinho Moura, Michael Sedbon