! Mathematics ∩ ICT = ∅ : an artbotics extravaganza

Topdrim presented the world’s first Artbotics-Mathematics Extravaganza session at the Lisbon ICT 2015 conference. The conference was organized by the European Commission and the Portuguese Science Foundation and comprised many parallel activities, including a conference on policy, networking sessions, H2020 thematic sessions and a startup forum.

The Artbotics-Mathematics event was a networking opportunity aimed to increase the visibility of mathematics research as a fundamental pillar of future ICT calls. It was also an opportunity to discuss with fellow participants the need of establishing a roadmap for mathematics within the EU funding schemes and in particular in the context of the DyM-CS projects.

The idea behind Artbotics is to capture the views of the audience by them waving greed cards (I agree) or red cards (I don’t agree). This audience participation is captured by machine vision systems and used for interaction with a robot artist influencing the way it creates dramatic animated displays. This was the world premier of a new Artbotics Project initiated by Topdrim and the Open University, aimed at engaging wide audiences for the dissemination of socially important new ideas in mathematics, science and ICT. This event targeted the European ICT community, while future events will be aimed at other audiences including policy makers, industry, students, and the general public. The underlying principle is engaging audiences to disseminate scientific ideas and their applications through a combination of interactivity, art, creativity and fun.

Participants of the event involved Topdrim partners Jeffrey Johnson, David Sousa-Rodrigues, Armando Marino from The Open University and Emanuela Merelli from the University of Camerino. The Artbotics team also included Jorge Louçã from the Lisbon University Institute, and Mariana Louçã as the Robot.