LIST at Enghian Digital Arts Center

"Bains numériques - digital Factory", an international biennial of digital arts explored the theme of the “Human Future” in its tenth edition, held on June 13-17, 2018 in Enghien-les Bains, France. The Digital Factory was conceived to question the place of humans in tomorrow's urban landscape through the presentation of newly developed projects, prototypes, and creative works focusing on 3 areas of research: artificial intelligence, robotics, and new learning methods.

On June 15 and 16, the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) was in attendance, marking Luxembourg's first participation in this one-of-a-kind event, which has endeavored to incorporate multiple aspects of the city to bring visitors a comprehensive experience. The involvement of LIST in Bains Numériques took place as part of a new collaborative effort established recently with the Luxembourg Cultural Mission in France (an initiative of the Ministry of Culture of Luxembourg with the support of the Luxembourg Embassy in Paris) and the Digital Arts Center of Enghien-les-Bains. In this context, the Institute had the pleasure of presenting its work during this event to H.E. Mme Martine SCHOMMER, Ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of Luxembourg in Paris, Mr. Ichirō Matsui, Governor of the province of Osaka in Japan, and Mr. Xavier Caron, Assistant to the Mayor of Enghien-les-bains, Delegate for Heritage, Labor, Networks, and ICT.

Close-up on the problem of digital cultural heritage

Lou Schwartz, Olivier Pedretti and Thibaud Latour represented LIST and presented the H2020 CROSSCULT European project, bringing together partners from over ten countries to focus on issues related to digital cultural heritage. Equipped with a mobile application developed as part of the project, visitors were invited to explore the installations and events of the Digital Factory to re-appropriate art and technology and share their thoughts on how the latter is shaping the future of humanity.

In addition to promoting public discourse on the capabilities of technologies to keep track of and influence them, revealing different kinds of collaborative interaction, and tackling the concept of ambient intelligence and cognitive environment, the project also released a new experiment on this mobile application. As well as leading users to appropriate their common history and share in its interpretation through interaction with objects of cultural heritage (which is the objective of the CrossCult project), LIST's participation in the event has also made it possible to explore the possibility of extending use of application to other themes related to art and culture.

Level of "Roboticness,” more human or robot?

LIST also presented Kniwwelino® through an entertaining game "The Human of the Future is a Robot," allowing players to measure their level of "Roboticness" in order to verify whether participants were more human or more robot, and if they have a place in the world of the future, which is leaning towards automation. Kniwwelino® is a microcontroller developed by LIST as part of the BeeCreative4Kids project

 to enable children to understand the concept of the Internet of Things and to learn to program.

Robots are increasingly reliable, strong, fast, accurate, capable of storing large amounts of information, and performing increasingly complex calculations. They are capable of learning and adapting to their environment. One can't help but wonder whether robots will replace humans one day. "Are U a Robot" allowed visitors, by means of a test and web-connected objects manufactured by "maker" methods to determine whether or not they are robots.

In parallel, the work of LIST concerning tangible interfaces was presented through the application developed as part of the BIM4Vet project, supporting BIM qualification assessment and training selection.

> We invite you to take a look at the interview of Thibaud Latour on LIST's booth at Bains Numériques. 

> Pease email Thibaud Latour with any questions concerning this subject.