I am an Associate Professor on the management team of the Medialogy education and Director of the new Virtual Reality SensoramaLab complex, leading a team of post-doc researchers. Since 1987, I developed SoundScapes, a multi-modal sensory stimulus system for improvised artistic expression through physical interaction by people in the disabled community, where kinetic data was mapped to selected multimedia in performance. It is targeted at all people no matter ability, age, or preferences and has developed to be considered as a non-formal rehabilitation training system for supplementing traditional methods of therapy. It is a non-intrusive (i.e. non wearable) system, which is based upon selectively choosing and combining from 'libraries' of input sensor devices, selectable content feedback, and 'libraries' of delivery methods. Besides traditional camera techniques used in multiple arrays, invisible 3D wireless sensor technology is used for sourcing natural movement that is mapped to personalised multimedia feedback. Robotics are also utilised as interactive content. The interaction is considered as playful activity that is both creative (music & art) and engaging (game playing). Both the creative and the engaging aspects target joy and fun for the participant (and facilitator). The mapped data is also routed and archived for post session analysis for session-to-session progress monitoring in therapy. An interest for the research is the investigation of compensatory sense dynamic that is often evident following a loss of another sense in the communities of people with different abilities. There are over 130 publications on the work, which has been presented globally at major events. Workshops, performances and presentations include the UN/NGO congress 1995; The Inaugural Cultural event for the Paralympics in Atlanta, USA in 1996 and the Millennium event in Sydney Australia (including the parallel scientific congress). It was featured in the European Cultural Capital events 1996 and was also featured in the NeWave festival in New York USA. Touring exhibitions at leading Museums for Modern Art have been ongoing since COIL (Circle of Interactive Light), Brooks' room size interactive installations, from 1998 where the public created the art. A position on the co-ordination group of i3net (The European Network for Intelligent Information Interfaces) is another credit. SoundScapes was at the core of a European Future probe (reported here: www.bris.ac.uk/Twi-aysi/) and the ensuing FW5 IST project titled CAREHERE (reported here: www.bris.ac.uk/carehere) as well as various other national and international projects. In 1999,I was awarded the European EUREKA award for SoundScapes as applied multimedia and in 2006 I received the Vanførefondens Forskerpris award as selected top Danish researcher in my field. IBM, Martin, are amongst the main sponsors of SoundScapes. Emergent from SoundScapes has been the founding of the ArtAbilitation annual international conference which I realised in 2006 as support for the ICDVRAT (International Conference for Disability, Virtual Reality and Associated Technologies). ArtAbilitation again had a supporting role at ICAT 2007 (International Conference for Artificial Reality and Telexistence). ArtAbilitation is also realised as a commissioned international workshop where local artists and students are given the opportunity to collaborate in creating interactive installations for people with disability.
