Valor Afegit, a leading socio-economic program that airs after the Evening News on TV3, dedicates a series of three reports to the laboratories and projects that are being developed at the Interactive Arts & Science Laboratory (IASlab), the new unique and innovative space that was recently inaugurated on the La Salle-URL campus. The programs, which air on January 13, 14 and 15, were recorded in different spaces and laboratories of the IASlab: the immersive room, the acoustics laboratories and the HRI Lab.
The programs are an opportunity to discover all the possibilities and potential of the IASlab and the research and knowledge transfer that is practiced there, through the testimony of researchers and professionals who explain the projects that are currently being carried out in different areas and disciplines and with the support and collaboration of agents external to the university.
The programs, thematic and focused on different lines of research, are broadcast on the following dates:
- January 13: We discover the IASlab immersive room, the artistic residency that is being carried out with the MIRA Digital Arts Festival and the development of the immersive and audiovisual industry in Barcelona and Catalonia. It features the participation of the Director of Research and Innovation of La Salle-URL, Rosa Ma. Alsina; the Director of the Degree in Digital Arts and the Master of Science in Digital Arts and Creative Technologies, Xavi Bové; the Professor, Researcher and Coordinator of the Master of Science in Digital Arts and Creative Technologies, Albert Barqué-Duran; and the digital artist and researcher Daniel Sabio (The Glad Scientist).
- January 14: Research carried out in the acoustics laboratories. Acoustics is the oldest line of research at La Salle Campus Barcelona and has different laboratories that have been remodeled and adapted to the evolution of the campus. In this program, we learn first-hand about Suaramap, the project to offer personalized assistance to elderly people who live alone at home and which is carried out jointly by Suara Cooperativa, the Institute of Biomedical Research of Girona Dr. Josep Trueta (IDIBGI), the University of Girona (UdG) and La Salle-URL. The same episode talks about AEDOS, a transversal project between the fields of acoustics and digital arts at La Salle-URL. The episode features the participation of the Director of Research at La Salle-URL, Rosa Ma. Alsina; the Vice President of Suara Cooperativa, Bàrbara Outeiro; the Professor, Researcher and Head of the acoustics laboratory at La Salle-URL, Marc Arnela; and the Professor and Researcher in Digital Arts, Jorge Egea.
- January 15: The HRI Lab and how to put technology at the service of society. In the last report in the series, the IASlab robotics laboratory is the space where the DivInTech project, which uses robotics to help the inclusion of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and BeNeXT, a tool based on machine learning for deep automatic phenotyping, diagnosis and prognostic prediction of Turner syndrome, are explained. The report features the participation of the Technical Coordinator of the DivInTech Project, Xavier Canaleta; the Professor and Researcher at La Salle-URL, Selene Caro; the Teacher at La Salle Seu d’Urgell, Meritxell Nieto; the Professor and Researcher at the University of Barcelona, Neus Martínez-Abadías; and the Professor and Researcher at La Salle-URL, Xavier Sevillano.
The IASlab, a pioneering laboratory in Europe
IASlab is the first digital arts and technology research laboratory in Spain and one of the first in Europe located on a university campus, a unique and innovative facility of 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.
With more than 3,000 m2, it includes an immersive room for digital art creation, spaces for experimentation with technologies such as visual effects, virtual and augmented reality or artificial intelligence (AI), several content creation, 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 acoustics research -also equipped with a Faraday cage- and a recording studio. Digital artists, scientists and researchers from La Salle-URL are already working at IASlab, leading around forty research projects, many of them in collaboration with agents external to the university.
