Copenhagen, Denmark

October 31 – November 3, 2001

Report by Judy Brown

Figure 1. Copenhagen's Icon, the Mermaid

The first Nordic Interactive Conference, held in Copenhagen, hosted six hundred attendees. Although the majority of attendees were from the Nordic countries, twenty-two countries were represented. Morten Kyng, NIC2001 Chair, opened the conference with highlights of Nordic Information Technology activity. He discussed the necessity of crossing boundaries, creating new partnerships, and breaking down the boundaries between application, development, and research. Preben Mejer, the Chair of the Nordic Interactive organization, discussed the future of the Information Technology landscape with its pervasive internet and the change from homo sapiens to "robo sapiens" via micro-embedded systems.

The first keynote speaker JØrgen Lindergaard, President and CEO of the Scandinavian Airlines Group, spoke on the world class potential of the Nordic region and the importance of cross-border research and development. Nordic Interactive is for persons from academia, research, and industry, with important links across borders, across disciplines, and across mind sets.

At the end of the first keynote talk, an official signing of the agreement of cooperation between Nordic Interactive and ACM SIGGRAPH was held. This agreement is the first step in bringing together two international organizations that share many of the same goals. Figure 2 shows the officials who took part in the signing. They are, from left to right: Lise Bolhorn, Preben Mejer, Judy Brown, Morten Kyng, and Alan Chalmers.

In the second keynote talk, Kevin Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, UK, discussed cyborgs and the potential for thought communication in his comparison of robots to humans. He told about programming a robot to run in a race by having it run three meters behind a light on the back of a human, thus speeding up or slowing down as the human with the light did. However, an unexpected event occurred. The sun came out, and the robot took off after the sun, running as fast as it could to try to maintain the designated three meters between itself and the sun.

Alan Chalmers gave a talk on his work in realistic rendering of archaeological sites. Some challenges to achieving realism include creating accurate flames and smoke for the particular location, time and culture, modeling a highly complex environment, the multi-disciplinary nature of the project, and the need for multi-sensory environments.

There were several other keynote speakers. Bob Stone, Virtual Presence Ltd., gave an overview of virtual reality hardware and processes. John Thackara, Director of Doors of Perception, a conference and knowledge network based in Amsterdam, talked about design "in the bubble," a term used by air-traffic controllers that refers to the need to see both the large overview and a detailed view. He stressed the importance of putting content and values at the beginning of every design process. Kathryn Clark, the Space Station Chief Scientist in NASA's Office of Space Flight, gave a very interesting talk on the use of intelligent environments in space exploration. Most of NASA's research is centered on perceptual models and metrics, cognitive models and metrics, haptic controls and displays, eye-movement monitoring, intelligent imaging, speech recognition, and neural networks and fuzzy logic. The long term goal is to integrate these into intelligent displays, intelligent user interfaces, and intelligent perception systems.

In addition to the keynote talks, papers, and panels, there was a small, but excellent exhibit of interactive computing projects, primarily from research institutions. Figure 3 shows Alan and Judy at the ACM SIGGRAPH booth which was part of this exhibit.

One of the interesting interactive games was Brain Ball, a game where relaxation is the goal. Biosensors are fastened across each player's forehead, and relaxing causes the ball to move away from you towards your opponent. The "winner" is the one who can relax the most. (Judy handily defeated Alan in Brain Ball.) Other exhibits included a large wooden, multi-player percussion instrument, eye tracking, and Ballectro, a collaboration between Intermedia of Oslo University and the University of Bergen, and the National Ballet School in Oslo, that employs multimedia in dance students' learning and dancing. Figure 4 shows Alan with Albertine Aaberge and Marika Lüders at the Intermedia booth. These two graduate students are already involved with Nordic Interactive.

There was also a computer art gallery. My favorite piece was "Your Digital Shadow" by Oliver Langberg and Thomas Lagoni of Denmark. This piece places a single user at the center, in a small room, and whole body movement activates the space, filling it with more and more light. A poster session was held on the first day of the conference, and five tutorials, three workshops, and a full-day "research school" on interactivity and narrativity were held on the Saturday following the three-day presentation of keynotes, papers, and panels.

Nordic Interactive provided breaks and group lunches to allow participants to get acquainted. In addition, there was a very informal reception during registration the evening before the conference began, a reception at the City Hall the first night of the conference, and a conference dinner and "Blues Brothers" band on the closing night. The banquet was held on what used to be the ferry between Copenhagen and Sweden. Since the bridge was built, the old ferry has been turned into a floating place for dinner, music and dancing.

In the closing remarks, the conference organizers reiterated that Nordic Interactive is both open and inclusive. In defining a new field between art and technology, they are bringing together a collaboration of science, art, and business. They hope to see more universities, businesses, and other organizations join with them. As part of the conference exhibit, they issued a "future visionaries challenge" to students to create new leading edge projects with interactive digital technology. This contest was judged on technical content, organization, and originality. This turned out to be quite difficult to judge because there were five excellent nominees, and the projects were very different.

The conference organizers felt that the highlights of the conference included a large number of students attending, major participation by women, and the combination of presentations, expo, and art gallery. They feel that Nordic Interactive will turn out to have been important in creating and strengthening international relations in ways that cut across traditional boundaries.

A potential side benefit of recent ACM SIGGRAPH international collaborations came up with the observation that there were many people from Ghana on the attendee list who weren't there because they were unable to get visas. However, the Nordic Interactive organizers told them about the Afrigraph conference and association. We hope that the Ghanaians and the Southern Africans will be able to collaborate on computer graphics activities in Africa.

Next year's conference, Nordic Interactive 2002, will be held in Sweden. For more information on Nordic Interactive, see www. nordic-interactive.org.