Projects

The project BIIDEA (Blended Interactive Innovation Distance Ecosystem Architectures) inspects innovation processes in spaces of extended reality. The focus is on how innovations emerge and develop in virtual (VR), augmented (AR) and mixed realities (MR) and in their combinations in blended hybrid spaces of extended reality (XR) in which physical environment, people and mixed reality meet and blend into something novel and useful for the innovation processes. BIIDEA is funded in 2020–2021 by the Business Finland and the Geography Section of the University of Turku and is part of the activities of the research group KREPRO. For more information: https://sites.utu.fi/biidea/fi/

BIIDEA – innovaatiot laajennetun todellisuuden tiloissa
BIIDEA (Blended Interactive Innovation Distance Ecosystem Architectures) tarkastelee innovaatioprosesseja yhdistetyn todellisuuden tiloissa. Fokuksessa on, miten innovaatiot syntyvät ja kehittyvät virtuaalisessa (VR), lisätyssä (AR) ja tehostetussa todellisuudessa (MR) sekä näiden yhdistelmissä laajennetun todellisuuden (XR) hybriditiloissa, joissa fyysinen ympäristö, ihmiset ja tehostettu todellisuus kohtaavat ja sekoittuvat toisiinsa tuottaen jotain uutta ja hyödyllistä innovaatioprosesseihin. Hanketta BIIDEA rahoittavat vuosina 2020–2021 Business Finland ja Turun yliopiston maantieteen osasto ja se on osa tutkimusryhmän KREPRO toimintaa. Lisätietoa: https://sites.utu.fi/biidea/fi/

LuotAI is a bold initiative: we consider independently learning artificial intelligence (AI) as a novel actor alongside humans in the process of creation. AI changes the process of creation profoundly. Unlike the developers of creative AI, we argue that AI does not have to be creative alone or like a human. In the era of AI, the human and AI are creative together. We challenge the thin empirical research on co-creativity of humans and AI that has been produced separated from the everyday process and space where creativity takes place. It is time to redefine creativity in the era of AI: as co-creativity in the process of creation by the human and AI, and in the everyday space where creativity takes place.

LuotAI analyses the process of co-creation by the human and AI in the everyday space in sciences, arts, and their boundaries. We develop a novel method of analysis that allows collecting detailed data along four years about (i) the process of creation in everyday space, (ii) moments of creativity, and (iii) outcomes that are evaluated as creative (or not), and about the role of AI in each stage (i-iii). We focus on about 50 researchers and artists and collect interviews, videos of their AI demonstrations, and evaluation reports of their outcomes. We analyse in detail the creative process of about 12 artists and scientists and map their mobility, emotions, creative moments, and outcomes of creation. Similar long-term empirical research on the processes of creation in everyday space has not been done before.

LuotAI is bold: we challenge current research about the creativity of humans and AI. We conduct an empirical analysis of creative process in everyday space that has not been done before. We are a group of young, international postdoctoral researchers who cross boundaries boldly. We cross boundaries of academic disciplines and combine researchers of human and engineering sciences. We cross the boundary of arts and sciences to redefine creativity in the era of AI together with researchers and artists.

Research group:

• PI Johanna Hautala
• Human science: Riina Lundman, Astrid Huopalainen, Roosa Wingström
• AI-science: Airola Antti, Lahti Leo

Funding: Kone Foundation

The project SMAK analyses knowledge co-creation processes between humans, robots and artificial intelligence in Finland, San Francisco, and Singapore. In the second machine age, we co-create knowledge with artefacts that learn. This challenges any approach to knowledge creation to re-ask: who knows, what is knowledge and how is knowledge co-created from ideas into justified results? The SMAK builds a novel and interdisciplinary spatio-temporal approach to empirically analyse knowledge co-creation processes in the second machine age. The case studies focus on early adopters: robotics university students, and developers of artificial intelligence and Internet of Things.

PI Academy Research Fellow Johanna Hautala, funding from the Academy of Finland

Urbanization has advanced at great pace in Finland. Even so, we continue to lag behind other Western European countries, which means Finland has the advantage of coming from behind. We can look at how urbanization has advanced in other countries and put this information to good use in our own processes of urbanization. The future of urbanization is a wide research theme that allows to analyse a cluster of social challenges in several sub projects. These developments will be looked at in the context of Finland in the year 2039.

URMI conducts multidisciplinary scientific research that is internationally recognized with high scientific impact, substantial societal impact and immediate policy relevance in Finland to respond to the programmatic questions of the Strategic Research Council call Urbanising Society.

Consortium PI Jussi S. Jauhiainen, funding from the Academy of Finland

Project webpages

International Knowledge Creation in Space and Time (IKnow), 2014-2018

The project studied knowledge creation processes in space and time in arts and sciences. The focus was on project groups and individuals who move internationally when they create knowledge. The aim was to develop further a novel spatio-temporal approach to analyze knowledge creation. The key results demonstrate the meaning of geographies for knowledge creation in arts and sciences – i.e., possibilities and challenges of dispersion, gathering, changing international context, and temporal withdrawal from the centers.

PI Johanna Hautala, funding from the Academy of Finland

Knowledge Creation Processes (KREPRO), 2012-2016

In the research project was studied the knowledge creation processes in academy, art, business and communities. The research areas were, among others, in Finland, Spitsbergen, Tanzania, Namibia and Estonia. The research project found out that it is useful to study the knowledge creation as a process. There knowledge is understood as interpretation from earlier knowledge. The research about art and science simultaneously show commonalities and differences in the specific spatiotemporal processes on knowledge creation. The research on knowledge creation gives a better understanding how thoughts develop into ideas and eventually some of them into innovations and hos time and space and their interaction on crucial in this process.

PI Jussi S. Jauhiainen, funding from the Academy of Finland