Architempo /~ alok b. nandi design.architempo.net

Alok Nandi will be convening a session at the ECSITE 06 conference which is taking place in Technopolis Mechelen from June 8th to 10th. He was also convenor in previous ECSITE conferences in Helsinki and Barcelona.

This year session takes place on June 9th:

The newest technologies for exhibitions: available now!

Location: Lamot conference centre, Mechelen

Convenor: Alok Nandi, Writer/Director, Architempo, Brussels - Belgium

Presenters: Alexander Nischelwitzer, Professor, University of Applied Sciences JOANNEUM, Graz - Austria
Douglas Walker, Commercial Director, Our Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh - UK
Bruno Uzzan, Chief Executive Officer, Total Immersion, Suresne - France
Laurent Bury, Sales Director, Total Immersion, Suresne - France
Philippe Chiwy, General Manager, De Pinxi, Brussels - Belgium
Eric Braux, Market Director Edutainment & Entertainment, Barco Presentation & Simulation, Kuurne - Belgium

The newest technologies can add to the visitor’s experience in science centres. Several projects implementing state of the art technology will be presented.

In 2004 and 05, Alok Nandi worked with the scientist Marc Cavazza and his team, on designing and developing an interactive installation in a cave which he entitled Ego.Geo.Graphies : the idea was to explore the relation between user and context. This was done as part of the EU consortium ALTERNE. M. Cavazza is presenting Alterne, Creating alternative realities in virtual realities art installations, and will show the research we did with Ego.Geo.Graphies on May 26th in Bilbao, at TECHNARTE.

The ALTERNE platform is based on the SAS Cube”, which is a 4-wall, PC-based, CAVE”-like, immersive visualisation system. A game engine, Unreal Tournament 2003″, is used as a visualisation engine as well as a development environment. Game engines are now increasingly used for visualisation in scientific research due to their rendering performance and their ability to communicate with external software modules, which in the present case was essential to the development of a simulation layer that will override basic physics mechanism to implement Alternative Reality. In addition, game engines also support the creative content creation process by importing 3D models and animation from popular software packages.

TECHNARTE is an international conference on art and technology. The aims are to present technological developments that enhance a broader expression of modern art, and to provide a forum for debate and reflection on the convergence between technology and art.

Modern art, stimulated and encouraged by new technologies and its own impetus for innovation, is advancing in a surprising manner. Art and technology, science and creativity are influencing each other, and that influence has proved extremely fruitful over the last few decades to the point where the two disciplines now seem inextricably joined.