WORKSHOPS

September 9th 2019

A space and time travel based in AR+VR technologies: a Renaissance fountain and a Baroque bell-tower from Coimbra to FAUP

The eCAADe + SIGraDi 2019 Conference, Faculty of Architecture – University of Porto

In 2016, Renshaw, Sonnenfeld and Meyers anticipated, at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, the ground rules for a future development of a Turing type test for Virtual Reality in order to pursue the objectives of the imitation game created by Alan Turing in 1950. This challenge, initially focused on aspects related with Artificial Intelligence, also promotes studies of how humans construct a judgment about the veracity and tangibility of their routine observations. Accordingly, in this workshop, a Virtual Reality Turing Test is shaped and used as a reference for the accomplishment of created immersive environments.
Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, two emergent development fields that gave birth to what was recently coined as Mixed Reality, are combined to empathize the sensory and intellectual experience. To do it, several senses, mainly visual and auditory, are explored.
The final composition will be constituted by a stereoscopically captured architectural element (the Renaissance still standing Manga tempietto and fountain) and a 45m high 3D modelled monastic Baroque bell-tower (demolished in 1935 and which was visible from inside the Manga cloister), both abruptly mixed with present Alvaro Siza´s building and the landscape environment.


May 2nd 2019

Dinner at the Table: VR/AR Convergence Applied to the ‘Last Supper’

7th RIS eCAADe, Aalborg University, Denmark

Imagine you are sitting at the table with Christ and the Apostles…! In a VR / AR convergence exercise we took the Last Supper terracotta ensemble of human scale (by Hodart, 1531-34), belonging to the refectory of the Santa Cruz Monastery in Coimbra, to the dining room of the CREATE building of the University of Aalborg, where the 7th eCAADe regional international symposium was held. The aim of the workshop was to develop strategies for reconciling Virtual Reality reconstructions with local concrete reality (raised through 3D point cloud and 360º Stereo 4K photographs) in order to develop continuity between the two worlds. Thus, we asked participants to elaborate a 3D survey (dot cloud and stereoscopy) of the CREATE building dining room, with state-of-the-art technology provided by the Santa Cruz Project, in order to reconstruct the Last Supper sculptural ensemble and attempt a solid convergence between Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.


April 11th 2019

Talk Cycle Design + Multimedia

Department of Informatics Engineering, FCTUC, Coimbra

Imagine you are sitting at a meeting table with Christ, St. Peter and St. John…! In a VR / AR convergence exercise we brought part of the Last Supper Terracotta Ensemble (by Hodart, 1531-34) to room E4.6 of the DEI (Department of Computer Engineering at the University of Coimbra). This Workshop is another methodological exercise to reintroduce the set of 13 human scale figures, currently in the Machado de Castro Museum, in its original setting, a niche in the upper wall of the still existing refectory of the former Santa Cruz Monastery in downtown Coimbra.