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The first of three episodes recorded at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2018. This was the third year that we’d recorded at the event and once again, we were thankful to ICCO for hosting us in their House of PR, which was set up in one of the cabanas on the beach front outside the main festival hall. In this episode we looked at looked at some of the technology on show and we were joined by:
Part 1 – Chris Duffey and Doug Gould
Chris Duffey of Adobe and Microsoft’s Doug Gould had presented earlier on the interactive stage at the Festival in a session titled, ‘Human + Machine: Stronger Together in the Age of Co-Creation’.
Chris explained the talk was about combining Human Creativity with Computational Power of technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI). He explained that AI’s role in the creation process can be that of an assistant, a peer and a muse, i.e. a source of inspiration.
Within their talk they shared a number of interesting examples that we’ve included below.
A new AR tool where you can merge the physical with the virtual world, combining Augmented Reality (AR) with AI
Doug showed a video of how a team were working collaboratively in different locations, helping the member of the team based in the physical retail space to digitally redesign it, whilst she wears the HoloLens glasses enabling her to see the suggestions from her colleagues and the AI assistant.
The final example Chris talked about that they showed in their talk was how AI had analysed all the company’s product shapes and designs of every product it has ever made, identifying core shapes and geometric compositions to create, what they called a ‘design language’ for them.
Grey London + Adobe Braun Design Language 2018 from mark heap on Vimeo.
We also talked about how AR & AI can impact on a sound experience too and Doug gave some interesting examples of how that might work, which he felt isn’t as pervasive given he said people are over looking at their phones all the time.
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Part 2 – Adrian Leu & Graeme Cox
Adrian Leu, CEO, Inition, a technology experiential company & Graeme Cox, CEO & Founder, Emteq, a company that makes biometric technology that reads expression and emotion from the face of the wearer, were another example of two companies collaborating at Cannes in their presentation, in this instance, combining Biometrics and Virtual Reality.
Adrian explained that their presentation at Cannes Lions was about showing not just what people can see when experiences Virtual Reality, but what they feel too and how it triggers different emotions, because they can then create content that has meaning, that is much more interesting and responds to emotional triggers [of the person wearing the headset.]
Graeme explained that the face is the natural human way of expressing how we feel, subconsciously and consciously continually and this can be used to understand human emotion. His company therefore built a pair of glasses that looks back at the face of the wearer and can understand the movement of the face and the electrical activity of the muscles underlying it, as well as heart rate and various other aspects of your physical activity such as stance and head posture and translate that using AI Machine Learning into usable data.
As well as in the creative space, Emteq work in healthcare, using this technology for symptom monitoring of neurological problems.
In terms of VR’s use in the market, Adrian thinks it is being used at a very superficial level and companies don’t know if they want to invest, as VR projects can require a large investment from their marketing budget to happen, mainly because a lot of the content is bespoke. He added that unless you can provide some measurable ROI, the market will just stagnate. The other challenge, he said, was how to measure a medium, from an emotional standpoint, which is extremely non-linear and one which allows the user to take their own decisions inside.
Adrian shared some examples of where this technology can be used to overcome phobias, such as a fear of heights, with their case study from the Shard in London and from the Burj Khalifa in the UAE.
Graeme added a case study of Emteq’s where they have recently started helping autistic teenagers by introducing them to difficult social situations in VR and AR. This works by the them being faced with an avatar that is unfamiliar and then puts them through a gamified training process that tests whether they can deliver the right emotional responses for the situation but also desensitises them to that trauma that it is for them of dealing with an unknown individual. The actual avatar that they are dealing and experiencing as a stranger is being driven by their mum or dad who are wearing another VR headset.
Adrian added that Inition have used the technology for training at Fostering and Adoption agencies, to help parents to understand the background of the kids they are adopting and what they’ve gone through.
However, what Adrian wants to get to is a point where they can measure what is the actual strong emotional trigger that will have the biggest impact when people are going through these sort of experiences and in order to do that, they have to measure and understand what are the triggers that will drive that sort of content and so he hopes to get to a point where the content is updated in real time based on your own emotions.
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In the final part of this episode, we spoke with Nikos Acuña, Chief Visionary at Sizmek about the presentation he gave at Cannes Lions, which was titled, ‘What AI teaches us about creativity and the universe’.
Nikos explained that Sizmek brings together what they call the three pillars of marketing of the future:
He was hoping his talk at Cannes show what the creative process really is and what it means for brands. He said when looking at technology for marketing, it only does three things:
Nikos said that with any kind of brand that is looking to launch something into the marketplace, you are looking to inspire people and that with inspiration comes optimising experiences. He therefore believes that in order to understand what inspires people, you have to look at how neural configurations within the brain are starting to form, and ask those bigger questions like:
We also spoke about Nikos’ video series Symbiosis, which is expertly produced:
Nikos said that the series is all about how technology is transforming our lives and he gained his inspiration from Kevin Kelly’s book, What Technology Wants.
He explained that as technological trends are transforming our brains the way that we connect with one another, he wanted people not to fear technology but be more optimistic in the future in how technology is going to be fully embedded in our daily lives.
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