Ars Futura: The Art and Design of Our Digital Futures 

Moderator: Scott Fisher
Panelists: Adrian David Cheok, Dooeun Choi, Alex McDowell

Please join the University of Southern California at the 2013 USC Global Conference in Seoul, South Korea, taking place May 23-25, 2013. The conference will take place at the Grand Hyatt Seoul and will reflect on the interrelated themes of science, technology and health; global business, international stability and the rule of law; and education, the arts and cultural institutions.

Online chat with only voice or video is outdated! Now you’re able to hug, kiss, smell, or even taste your buddies remotely! Following Adrian, we experienced a fascinating multisensory tour.

The tour started with his early study, the Real World Pacman. With a pair of glasses, real humans become Pacman picking up cookies on the real world streets. But this is just a warm-up. Buckle up, more surprises are coming!

Following the first sense, sight, one of Adrian’s students using sound transformed a regular umbrella into a katana! Different sound effects are displayed by swinging the umbrella in different ways. Certain movement combinations can trigger special sound effects, such as explosion. Added only sound, an umbrella can have much more fun!

The presentation gradually came to its upsurge when the sense of touch was brought up. With a jacket, or just a ring, you can give your loved one a remote hug. As reported by IEEE Spectrum, Adrian is making a huggable Internet! In fact, it’s not just huggable, but also kissable! Kissenger really blew away everybody’s mind last night.

The tour didn’t stop at the sense of touch. It continued blowing everyone further away by digital smell and electrical and thermal taste.

Now with these possibilities, how can we incorporate all five senses into online teaching and learning? Maybe an online “better kisser” course is a good start?  The stimulated audience had very inspiring and funny chats too. This session is definitely this year’s “must attend” one! The public can access a recording of the session here: http://squirrel.adobeconnect.com/p86lgb32brf/

Adrian David Cheok Professor, Graduate School of Media Design Keio University, Tokyo, Japan will give a speech at Multisensory Internet Learning Using Five SensesTechnology, Colleges, and Community Online Conference

Description: New facilities are arising in the hyper-connected internet era within human media spaces. As a result, new types of communication environments using all the senses (including touch, taste, and smell) can be developed which can increase support for multi-person multi-modal interaction and remote presence. In this alternative computing environment and space based on an integrated design of real and virtual worlds there are different research prototype systems for interactive communication and possibilities for new collaborative internet learning using all of our senses. This allows interaction between humans and their avatars with the aim of novel interactive communication and entertainment.

20th April 2013 11:45 - 12:15 HOW WILL EDUCATION CHANGE?

Inventor, scientist and professor Adrian Cheok will join us from his lab in Japan to talk about how he sees education changing and how we have to be prepared for a very different future and generation.

(Source: coc.a2p.sg)