Presentation from Immersive Visualisation Event in Coventry on 26th July, 2012 - organised by the JISC Inspires Project.

1. Inspires Project Event -
Immersive Visualisation and
Collective Intelligence
Jim Hensman
Coventry University/Serious Games Institute
July 2012

2. Aims and Agenda
 Not to talk about the work of the project and demonstrate immersive
visualisation
 Well, yes but … the main aim is to get your feedback, interaction and
possible future collaboration (We’ve only just begun!)
 Take you through our journey and key research questions and issues
 Look at the context of immersive visualisation - see how you connect
 If the question is “Can you…? – the answer is “Yes”
 Agenda
 What we’ve done and how visualisation fits in
 Interactive Demonstration/Discussion
 Lunch
 Demonstration of other immersive space applications
 Discussion and future possibilities

3. Background
 Various small projects leading to JISC Brain Project (2009-11)
 Aim: To facilitate building research communities
 User requirements, tools and systems, processes, organisational and
cultural issues
 Focus on Coventry University (Leeds University partners)
 JISC Inspires Project (2012)
 Aim: To integrate and develop techniques from Brain and other
related projects (from Oxford, Warwick, Cambridge)
 Focus on SPIRES Community and connections from this
 EPSRC network on research spaces and environments (physical, virtual
and social aspects) – research about research
 Links with related work (Serena – Serendipity, OpEx – Innovation etc)

4. The Bigger Picture - Connectivity
 Human Brain
 100 million neurons
 1000-10,000 connections
from each
 1 million new connections
each second
 Right hemisphere
specialising in connectivity

5. How do we facilitate Collective Intelligence?
Prolific/
Diverse
Selective
Dynamic
Including
the senses

6. Key Question: Who to connect with?
 Increased specialisation makes relevant
connections – especially
interdisciplinary ones, increasingly
difficult to find
 ConnectApp tool finds links between
researchers, within and between
communities, using information on
expertise, publications, projects etc.
 Links can be through common
techniques or methodologies, shared
problems, conceptual or meta-cognitive

7. Example: Finding Connections in SPIRES
 Research by SPIRES network
member on wallpaper and
similar materials
 Uses similar texture analysis
techniques (and similar terminology) as
used in Cancer Research relating to Colonoscopy at
Coventry University (which also connects to research
in Metallurgy, GIS, Graphic Design etc.)
 This links to another SPIRES member involved in
cancer imaging research

8. Issue – What if connections are at a higher conceptual level?
 Use a structured representation of
expertise and knowledge in a community
(an ontology)
 Can also use organisational ontology
information
 Partly human created, partly
automatically derived
 Reflects both wider subject areas
(and existing ontologies) and specific
expertise of a community
 Capability for automatic inferencing etc.

9. Example: Interdisciplinary connections from
diverse research areas
 SPIRES members working in Petroleum
Engineering
CONNECT TO
 SPIRES members working in Archaeology
CONNECT TO
 Environmental researchers working on
Energy Efficiency
CONNECT TO
 Cancer Researchers using Near Infrared –
Ultrasound combination
CONNECT TO
 CERN Research spinoff on High Energy
Particle Cancer treatment

10. Issue: How to quantify closeness of connection
and identify trends?
 Semantic distance metrics can
integrate with existing connection
weightings (Google like approach)
 Trend metrics can be used to help
identify new and high growth
areas
 With careful interpretation,
potential disruptive technologies/
innovations can be highlighted

11. Issue: These techniques find links to existing research. Could
they be used to suggest new areas of research?
 Consider the ontologies representing
existing expertise as systems
defining “languages” that can
generate new concept specifications
 Example – Infer from existing work
on computer modelling of research
communities, possible work on computer
modelling of learning communities
 Knowledge generally can be represented as structures
and ontologies of “patterns” that provide a powerful
framework for sharing experience and expertise

12. Wider connotations – some possibilities
 A generative framework could include
a wide variety of methods
 E.g., A Remix/Mashup based
approach (Annette Markham)
 An ontological representation of a
particular community’s expertise
within a wider knowledge structure is
analogous to an individual learner
model within a learning curriculum
(usable for personalised learning etc.)

13. Using the techniques to build networks and communities
 Can be used to enable and facilitate
physical, virtual and mixed environments
and spaces for meeting, discussion and
social networking
 Each of these areas is important, with
different capabilities and strengths and
need to be used together to build and
support communities
 Building communities is an art as well as a
science and technology is only one factor.
Organisational, social, psychological and
cultural aspects have all to be taken into
account
 Appropriate use of innovative technology
can make possible new types of collective
thinking, working and learning

14. Immersive Environments and Spaces – What’s so special?
 Combines physical and virtual, real time and asynchronous modes
 Can include local and online groups and individuals
 Provides unique capabilities for individual and particularly
collective engagement, presence and interaction
 Can replicate to a considerable degree our “normal” experience and provide
“authenticity” – providing a key component of the “experiential web”
 Can include and integrate stimuli to all our senses – and response from them
 Both conventional ( vision, sound etc.) and others (e.g., kinaesthetic)
 Can “externalise” some of our internal sensations, facilitating and
stimulating collective interaction (SurroundMind concept)
 Can potentially transcend conventional divisions between “intellectual” and
“aesthetic” modes of thinking (with implications for creativity etc.)

15. Today’s Demonstrations
 Immersive polarised 3-D systems
 Different aspects and applications of immersion
 Main demo – facilitating collective thinking and
discussion
 Uses several techniques described earlier through web
services (e.g., Semantic grouping of ideas, Generation of
new concepts based on collective knowledge) and core
facilities (e.g., Collective visualisation and filtering)
 Other demos – related to learning, crowd sourcing,
citizen science, performance etc.

16. Questions and Comments
 Thanks to the JISC for funding and support, Project Team and
Partners, Coventry School of Art and Design for event facilities
 Further Information
 The Project
– project-brain.org (+ project-inspires.org)
 SPIRES
- www.spiresnetwork.org
 Immersive Systems
- Ian Upton (ian@ian-upton.com), Joff Chafer‎(j.chafer@coventry.ac.uk)
Thank You!
j.hensman@coventry.ac.uk