Barcelona has, since this October, the first digital arts and technology research laboratory in the state and one of the first in Europe located on a university campus. The IASlab (Interactive Arts & Science laboratory) is a unique and innovative facility at La Salle-URL open to artists, researchers, startups, companies and institutions that promotes Barcelona as a benchmark in southern Europe in digital arts and transdisciplinary creation projects, research of excellence in technology and knowledge transfer.
The IASlab, with more than 3,000 m2, includes an immersive digital art creation room, experimentation spaces with technologies such as visual effects, virtual and augmented reality or artificial intelligence (AI), various content creation and animation and digital art laboratories to develop projects that interrelate art, science and technology, an audiovisual post-production laboratory, an interactive robotics laboratory, a reverberant chamber, an anechoic chamber for acoustic research -also equipped with a Faraday cage - and a recording studio. Digital artists, scientists and researchers from La Salle-URL already work at the IASlab, leading around forty research projects, many of them in collaboration with agents external to the university.
At the inauguration of the new laboratory, the General Director of La Salle-URL, Josep M. Santos, highlighted: “The IASlab is the natural evolution of our campus. For more than 100 years, we have been pioneers first in telecommunications engineering; then in acoustics, in image and sound and in multimedia; and from some years ago in animation, visual effects, digital arts and also in artificial intelligence. We innovate with programs, creating infrastructures and carrying out applied research with the constant purpose of generating a positive impact on society, a transformative impact.”
On the other hand, the Director of Research and Innovation at La Salle-URL, Rosa Maria Alsina, explained: “The IASlab is a facility for Barcelona and Catalonia that drives us further, in research and transfer, as a city and as a key region in southern Europe in the development of the audiovisual industry, digital creativity, immersion and multisensory technologies."
The IASlab, with a total investment of more than €6 M, has been 50% co-financed in the initial project with European funds (€1.8 M), granted by the Department of Research and Universities of the Generalitat of Catalonia to 'Projectes Singulars'. In addition, La Salle Campus Barcelona has invested an additional €2.4 M in expanding laboratories and instrumentation.
The IASlab, multiple laboratories in one
The IASlab is a university laboratory designed to take another step in the integration of teaching, research, innovation and culture. The new unique La Salle-URL has spaces conceptually grouped into structured creation rooms, maker spaces, production spaces and workshops, city labs, exhibition rooms and agoras. All of these are points of debate and conceptualization of ideas, in which students, researchers, companies and entrepreneurs interact from the basis of learning by challenge that characterizes the training of La Salle-URL and the Rapid Tech Tansfer, the innovation model from La Salle Campus Barcelona.
The central space of the IASlab is its immersive room, a laboratory for 360º visual creation and projection, with spatial sound (generates a three-dimensional experience) and interaction technologies (lidar lasers and depth cameras). It is, in turn, an innovative space for training, creation, exhibition and experimentation that responds to the boom in immersive experiences that has been experienced in recent years in cities around the world, with applications not only artistic, but also medical and to improve the lives of people in their daily lives.
The new room is also an artistic residency space in which projects that merge technology and art are created, and collaborative projects are developed with researchers, companies and institutions that want to experiment with new applications of immersion. The IASlab also includes a laboratory that allows research in areas such as AI applied to art, procedural animation techniques (which allow generating realistic movements in real time), use of augmented reality and virtual reality to create digital and interactive artistic experiences, etc
In addition, the equipment is completed by a laboratory for research on robotics and its relationship with people, with special emphasis on the field of health, and a reverberant chamber (designed to cause high sound reverberation) and an anechoic chamber, where waves sounds propagate without reflecting anywhere, key to research in acoustics, audio and digital arts. An example of use is supporting startups in the development of their products.
A sustainable and energy efficient building
At the IASlab, bioclimatic architecture techniques have been applied to minimize energy consumption and optimize comfort. The rehabilitation of the building, instead of demolishing it, has made it possible to optimize the use of resources by improving energy efficiency and the performance of the materials used. The use of wood in interior dividers and walls has also been key to reducing waste, accelerating construction deadlines and contributing to energy efficiency. In addition, the new equipment has solar panels that provide almost 70% of the energy required by the building and 120 biological batteries to save water, compensate for heat and generate energy thanks to the activity of microorganisms in the soil. It also has a 250 m2 gallery on the south façade that captures radiation in winter and protects from excess sun in summer.
Openings for the campus community; institutional with administrations and companies; and open to the city
Between October 23 and 24, nearly 500 people were able to learn about the IASlab in three opening events aimed at various audiences: the first, for the community of educators and students on campus; the second, of a more institutional nature, with administrations, top-level companies, civil society institutions and organizations from the country's cultural and audiovisual scene; and the third, open to residents of the Sarrià-Sant Gervasi district and the entire city of Barcelona.
During the events, tours of the facilities were carried out, which allowed attendees to see the laboratories first hand and learn about many of the research projects that are already being carried out. They have been able to discover the construction process of the building, and all the sustainable actions that have been carried out, with the help of the chief architect of the work, Josep Ferrando, Director of the School of Architecture and Building Engineering La Salle. They have also enjoyed the multisensory possibilities of the immersive room, where works by students and researchers from the campus have been projected and also by the three resident artists at the IASlab in the initiative shared with MIRA: Portrait XO, The Glad Scientist (Daniel Sabio) and Marta Minguell (Soulstice).
Various authorities participated in the institutional inauguration ceremony, explaining what the IASlab implies for the city of Barcelona, for Catalonia and for the Universitat Ramon Llull. Brother Josep Espuny, President of the Board of Trustees of FUNITEC, has opened the turn for interventions by the key interlocutors speaking about identity, the role of La Salle in Catalonia and in the world and how the IASlab demonstrates the validity of the mission that Saint John Baptist de La Salle began more than 300 years ago. The Rector of the URL, Josep Rom, has assured that "this new installation is not only a space, some walls, a simple building. Today, what we are celebrating is the future. La Salle will continue to lead the challenges of the audiovisual sector together with the industry and its professionals".
On the other hand, Anna Bröll, Head of the Department of Science and Innovation of the Barcelona City Council, has congratulated La Salle-URL "for this magnificent space" and has assured that "Barcelona is the Spanish capital of the audiovisual sector, a sector with a future, which we are building together". Finally, the General Director of Research of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Joan Gómez Pallarès, has applauded how La Salle-URL "builds the future at the IASlab based on the past and the present" and on the work of the campus and the laboratory, he added: "Everything that is being done represents an important part of what Catalonia hould be."
La Salle Campus Barcelona
La Salle Campus Barcelona, a founding member of the Universitat Ramon Llull, is a university center of international prestige with more than a century of history. Teaches studies in Engineering, Architecture, Management, Animation & VFX, Digital Arts, Philosophy and Health Engineering, with technology and humanism as essential elements of its DNA. It has been a pioneer in the creation of educational programs in emerging areas, such as animation, digital arts or virtual fiction production, and today has almost 8,000 students.
La Salle has been innovating for more than three centuries, promoting the changes that society requires, responding to changing realities, to the continuous transformations of the environment. From La Salle Campus Barcelona it has also been carried out for more than 100 years, especially in the field of image and sound, being pioneers in telecommunications, acoustics and, now, in animation and digital arts, innovating with programs, creating infrastructures and conducting applied research with the constant purpose of generating a positive impact on society.
La Salle is the largest global non-profit network dedicated specifically to education. It has more than 300 years of history and is present in 80 countries. It is made up of 1,200 educational centers and 65 universities, with more than 1,250,000 students, 300,000 of them university students.
