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i_mBODY Lab

Interactive Multisensory Body-centred Experiences
at the Intersection of Neuroscience & Technology

imbodylab

Perception of extra body parts & body part weight. Denise Cadete, PhD student at the Body Representation Lab, Birkbeck University of London

Date: 22 nov 2023
Speaker: Lídia Arroyo Prieto, Gender and ICT Research Group, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)

Title: Perception of extra body parts & body part weight
Speaker: Denise Cadete, PhD student at the Body Representation Lab, Birkbeck
University of London
Abstract: In everyday life, we have a constant and reliable experience of our own
bodies. However, the perception of our body can be instantly altered using
multisensory illusions or Virtual Reality. This flexibility is not restricted to the human
body configuration, with recent studies showing we can also feel extra body parts. In
the first part of the presentation, I will present the six finger illusion and what our
findings tell us about how supernumerary body parts are represented in the brain.
We will make a case for the independence and flexibility of how we represent extra
body parts, also aiming to determine what are its limits.
In the second part, I will introduce our studies looking into how we perceive the
weight of body parts. Perception of object’s weight has been studied for over a
century, however little is known about weight perception of body parts. A recent
study of our lab showed that we systematically and dramatically underestimate hand
weight by 49% (Ferrè et al., 2023) , an effect we called weightedness, for how light we
experience body parts, on Earth. We further investigated how perceived hand size
changed felt hand weight, and in another study we looked at perceived hand volume.
We will propose a model of constant density in the perception of body part weight.

The Gender Perspective in Tech Research, Lídia Arroyo Prieto, Gender and ICT Research Group, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)

Date: 25 October 2023
Speaker: Lídia Arroyo Prieto, Gender and ICT Research Group, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)

Title: The Gender Perspective in Tech Research
Abstract: The seminar have the goal to introduce the key issues on the incorporation of the gender perspective in tech research. It is also an invitation to the interdisciplinar dialogue between social science and technological and nature science.
Biography:
Lídia Arroyo is a researcher at Gender and ICT Research Group (Internet Interdisciplinary Institute- Open University of Catalonia) and she is also an Associate Professor at Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). She is the Principal Researcher of the project “Open Data Portal & Research on the incidence of occupational segregation on COVID-19 prevalence from a gender gender intersectional approach”. and she has coordinated the transnational study “Skills and Organizational Elements for Social Digital Inovation” from +RESILIENT project. She is also involved as a researcher in European projects on gender and science (GenPORT, ACT, EFFORTI). She has been a visiting research fellow at Área de Género, Sociedad y Políticas (FLACSO-Argentina) and the Fondation Travail-Univeristé (FTU-Namur)- Unversity of Namur (Belgium). Her researches, based on mixed methods, focus on gender, work and ICT and prevention of gender violence in young people. In 2011, she was awarded the Young Sociologist Prize from the Associació Catalana de Sociologia- Institut d’Estudis Catalans. Currently, she is the representative of data group of the Gender Equality Observatory (Generalitat de Catalunya). Community Manager of the following EU Projects GenPORT (https://twitter.com/GenderPORTal), ACT (https://twitter.com/ACTonGender) and CASPER (https://twitter.com/CasperGender).

Nicola Privato, Intelligent Instruments Lab

Portrait

Date: 04 October 2023 at 12:00 Hrs. Madrid, 10:00 Reikiavik
Speaker: Nicola Privato,
PhD Researcher at Intelligent Instruments Lab

Abstract:

The Intelligent Instruments Lab is an ERC-funded project in Reykjavik, Iceland. At IIL we explore how creative intelligent technologies are shaping our understanding of the world and our social interactions. We use music as the ideal ground for our research as it is a place of intimate, first-person interaction with technology as well as a complex social experience.

My work at IIL focuses on building new interfaces and compositions that facilitate the understanding of AI algorithms and suggest playful musical interaction.
In this talk I will walk you though my first year at IIL, explore concepts such as Explainable AI, Embodiment, Agency, and on how these might be contextualised through the building of interfaces for Neural Synthesis models, through musical practice, sound spatialisation and participatory art.

Nicola Privato is a PhD researcher at IIL. His academic background is in Jazz studies, electronic music composition and linguistics. He performs both as a jazz guitarist and as an electronic musician, using self-built instruments and AI-based software. Formerly director of Keptorchestra, an Italian cultural association dealing with improvised music as a cultural catalyst, he has been incorporating participatory practices both in his works and as a curator.

His current research at IIL is on AI explainability and its framing within the sociality of musical practices.

www.nicolaprivato.com