Welcome Address
Gabriele Kotsis is an Austrian computer scientist. She is full professor in computer science at Johannes Kepler University (JKU), Linz, Austria, while leading the Department of Telecommunication and the division of Cooperative Information Systems. She was vice-rector for Research and the Advancement of Women, and longstanding chairwoman of Universities Austria’s Policy Committee on Research. She is a distinguished member and elected president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
Opening Keynote
Feminist Hacking: Building Circuits as an Artistic Practice
Stefanie Wuschitz works at the intersection of research, art and technology, with a particular focus on Critical Media Practices (feminist hacking, open source technology, peer production). She graduated with an MFA in Transmedia Arts in 2006. 2008 she completed her Masters at TISCH School of the Arts at New York University. 2009 she founded Mz* Baltazar’s Laboratory. In 2014 she finished her PhD on ‘Feminist Hackerspaces’ at the TU Vienna. She held research and Post-Doc positions at the Umeå University, University of Applied Arts Vienna, the Vienna University of Technology, Michigan University, Berlin University of the Arts. She is currently PI of an art based research project at the Academy of Fine Arts (AT) and holds a Post-Doc position at the TU Berlin (DE).
Closing Keynote
Malleable Bits and Mutable Atoms: Toward Expressive Representation for Tangible User Interfaces
In their foundational paper entitled ‘Getting a Grip on Tangible Interaction’, Hornecker and Buur develop a framework around four themes. Three of these – Tangible Manipulation, Spatial Interaction and Embodied Facilitation – have become cornerstones of much work in the field of TUI. The fourth theme, Expressive Representation, has received less attention because it is predicated on the expectation that a TUI can tangibly respond to the actions of a user, ideally in real time. To a great degree, this lack of attention is due to the fact that the technical challenges of actuating an object or surface so that it can respond in a tangible way are non-trivial. Furthermore, there is as yet no language of ‘Expressive Representation’ for tangible interaction that is equivalent to, say, animation for the visual modality.
In this talk, I will draw upon our current work on the design of a fluid-actuated, bi-directional tactile display to suggest some fruitful starting points that we might use to think about modes of Expressive Representation for tangibly responsive user interfaces.
Sile O’Modhrain is an associate professor at the University of Michigan where she holds a joint appointment in the Performing Arts Technology (PAT) program in the School of Music, Theatre and Dance, and in the school of information. Her research focuses on human-computer interaction, especially interfaces incorporating haptic and auditory feedback. She earned her master’s degree in music technology from the University of York and her PhD from Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). She has also worked as a sound engineer and producer for BBC Network Radio. In 1994, she received a Fulbright scholarship, and went to Stanford to develop a prototype haptic interface augmenting graphical user interfaces for blind computer users. For the past eight years, she has been working with Brent Gillespie and Alex Russamanno to design and build a full-page tactile array to support the display of braille and tactile graphics.
