Introductory Statement 

Remote paper presentation, date: June 10. Session: Visual learning in virtual environments

Keywords: Immersive Experiences, Social Shared Spaces, Virtual/Augmented Reality Exhibitions, Media Arts, Cognitive Sciences, Social Sciences

This paper analyses the use of Immersive Experiences (IX) within artistic research, as an interdisciplinary environment between artistic, practice based research, visual pedagogies, social and cognitive sciences. This paper discusses IX in the context of social shared spaces. It presents the Immersion Lab University of Malta (ILUM) interdisciplinary research project. ILUM has a dedicated, specific room, located at the Department of Digital Arts, Faculty of Media & Knowledge Sciences, at University of Malta, appropriately set-up with life size surround projection and surround sound so as to provide a number of viewers (located within the set-up) with an IX virtual reality environment. The set-up is scalable, portable and provide easy to use navigation and allow the user to move around within the virtual environment. The paper discusses how ILUM combines and integrates three research strands that are part of a major, sustained artistic or scientific focus of the partnering academic institutions, namely the Visual Narratives Laboratory (VNLAB at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, Filmschool Lodz), the Instytut Kultury at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland, and the Spatial Media Research Group (SMRG) at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. In those labs researchers, artists, film-makers investigate and create different kinds of IX. ILUM provides the opportunity to situate artistic research in the context of scientific. The thematic backgrounds of these research strands and the infrastructure of ILUM serve as starting points from which the partners collaboratively create new communication content, exhibition settings and research as well as teaching materials.

For the video recording of the presentation see: Amalia Creus — Visual learning in virtual environments

• Dr. Adnan Hadzi is currently working as resident researcher at the University of Malta. Adnan has been a regular at Deckspace Media Lab, for the last decade, a period over which he has developed his research at Goldsmiths, University of London, based on his work with Deptford.TV/Deckspace.TV. It is through Free and Open Source Software and technologies this research has a social impact. Currently Adnan is a participant researcher in the MAZI/CreekNet research collaboration with the boattr project. Adnan is co-editing and producing the after.video video book, exploring video as theory, reflecting upon networked video, as it profoundly re-shapes medial patterns (Youtube, citizen journalism, video surveillance etc.). Adnan’s documentary film work tracks artist pranksters The Yes Men and net provocatours Bitnik Collective. Bitnik’s practice expands from the digital to affect physical spaces, often intentionally applying loss of control to challenge established structures and mechanisms, formulating fundamental questions concerning contemporary issues.