The document details the aims and activities of the JISC Inspires project, focusing on the integration of immersive visualization techniques and fostering collaboration within research communities. It emphasizes the need for connections among researchers across various fields and discusses tools like ConnectApp that facilitate these links. Various examples of interdisciplinary research connections are provided, illustrating the potential for innovative and collective thinking through immersive environments.

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