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We present Auxtrument, a prototype instrument that allows audiences to experience the acoustic qualities of remote locations. Using the metaphor of a reverberation chamber, artists send signals from the mixers, bus, or aux via the Auxtrument's network connections from a concert hall to a few different locations. At each location the signal is played through loudspeakers and captured, colored by the acoustics and noises of the place, via a stereo or ambisonics microphone. The signal is sent back and played for the audience in a surround sound system conveying the spatial qualities of the places. The Auxtrument allows us to merge and layer the different locations in the concert hall. However, this arrangement places great demands on the network. The audio signals need to be high-resolution to preserve the inherent quality of the sounds, which creates large streams. The system must be equipped to work over different types of networks, and to enable any location, the system must work with mobile devices. After ruling out several commercial and opensource solutions, we built the Auxtrument with web technologies: mainly node.js, WebSockets, WebRTC, and WebAudio. 

This text discusses today's digital transformation through the lens of Horkheimer and Adornos’ study of the enlightenment. Policy and public discourse around digitalisation embrace and adhere to the narrow tenets enlightenment thinking; the idea that rationality, individual freedom, and a society free from superstition are necessary and attainable goals. The costs of what has come to be called ‘Modernity’ are many. Through the application of rationality to all spheres of life, married with disruptive technological advancement, humanity has diminished its’ imagination – its ability to seek new directions. To paraphrase Horkheimer and Adorno, Modernism fights against nature, of which we are a part, and thus, paradoxically, sets us in a fight against ourselves. Environmental degradation, the price of progress, being just one example of this – deadening work, consumerism and severed social connections being amongst others. In this framing, digitalisation itself comes to be understood itself as akin to a force of nature – one that we can do little about, other than adjust and adapt or be swept away. But this by no means a foregone conclusion, there is light at the end of the optical fibre. Albeit that recent technical developments around artificial intelligence appears to be pushing policy makers into hasty decisions, the pace of the technical development is not as fast as we believe, and in comparison with the Reformation – we have time. If we can restrain ourselves from the resist, adapt or die responses promoted in popular discourse in face of the shock of large language models and rising threat of automation, then we create room to consider economic, social, and ecological alignment and accord, in the decision making and design of future interactive artefacts and digital services. The article argues that through postdigital aesthetics, technology makers can embrace materiality and the inherent qualities of digital technology to formulate a critique of existing trajectories in digital transformation, with consequences for a more sustainable future.

This paper describes the effect on the listeners' experience of headphone listening to a music composition including inner-city sound while being in an inner-city environment, using a research through design approach. The study focuses on the listeners' described experiences through the lens of Berleant's aesthetic sensibility and Bull's phenomenon of the auditory bubble. We produce a composition which participants listen to in an urban context and discuss the two main themes found, soundtrack and awareness, together with the indications of the possibility to direct listeners' attention and level of immersion by including inner-city ambience and sound in music when listening with headphones in an urban environment.

This study investigates how Human Factors (HF) is applied when designing and developing Immersive Visual Technologies (IVT), including Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, and Virtual Reality. We interviewed fourteen people working at different organizations, that develop IVT applications in the Nordic region. We used thematic analysis to derive themes from the interviews. The results showed an insufficient knowledge and application of HF in IVT development, due to the lack of awareness of both scope and significance of HF, resource allocation strategy, market inertia, stakeholder's involvement, standardization of HF application and IVT uses, and technology maturity. This situation could be improved by allocating experts, adjusting organizational strategy to balance resource allocation, training developers and user organizations to raise awareness and to encourage co-creative design and knowledge sharing, create a sense of ownership amongst stakeholders, and ensure the usefulness of the technology to the user's work.

Visual perception plays an important role for recognizing possible hazards. In the context of heavy machinery, relevant visual information can be obtained from the machine's surrounding and from the human-machine interface that exists inside the cabin. In this paper, we propose a method that classifies the occurring collisions by combining the data collected by the eye tracker and the automatic logging mechanism in the mixed reality simulation. Thirteen participants were asked to complete a test scenario in the mixed reality simulation, while wearing an eye tracker. The results demonstrate that we could classify the occurring collisions based on two visual perception conditions: (1) whether the colliding objects were visible from the participants' field of view and (2) whether the participants have seen the information presented on the human-machine interface before the collisions occurred. This approach enabled us to interpret the occurring collisions differently, compared to the traditional approach that uses the total number of collisions as the representation of participants' performance.

Simulations are often used for training novice operators to avoid accidents, while they are still polishing their skills. To ensure the experience gained in the simulation be applicable in real-world scenarios, the simulation has to be made as realistic as possible. This paper investigated how to make the lifting capacity of a virtual mobile crane behave similarly like its real counterpart. We initially planned to use information from the load charts, which document how the lifting capacity of a mobile crane works, but the data in the load charts were very limited. To mitigate this issue, we trained an artificial neural network (ANN) using 90% of random data from two official load charts of a real mobile crane. The trained model could predict the lifting capacity based on the real-time states of the boom length, the load radius, and the counterweight of the virtual mobile crane. To evaluate the accuracy of the ANN predictions, we conducted a real-time experiment inside the simulation, where we compared the lifting capacity predicted by the ANN and the remaining 10% of the data from the load charts. The results showed that the ANN could predict the lifting capacity with small deviation rates. The deviation rates also had no significant impact on the lifting capacity, except when both boom length and load radius were approaching their maximum states. Therefore, the predicted lifting capacity generated by the ANN could be assumed to be close enough to the values in the load charts.

This paper investigates the possible visualization using transparent displays, which could be placed on the excavator’s windshield. This way, the information could be presented closer to operators’ line of sight, without fully obstructing their view. Therefore, excavator operators could acquire the supportive information provided by the machine without diverting their attention from operational areas. To ensure that there is a match between the supportive information and operators’ contextual needs, we conducted four different activities as parts of our design process. Firstly, we looked at four relevant safety guidelines to determine which information is essential to perform safe operations. Secondly, we reviewed all commercially available technologies to discover their suitability in the excavator context. Thirdly, we conducted a design workshop to generate ideas on how the essential information should look like and behave based on the performed operation and the chosen available technology. Fourthly, we interviewed seven excavator operators to test their understanding and obtain their feedback on the proposed visualization concepts. The results indicated that four out of six visualization concepts that we proposed could be understood easily by the operators and we also revised them to better suit the operators’ way of thinking. All the operators also positively perceived this approach, since all of them included at least three visualization concepts to be presented on the windshield.

We have investigated the visualization of safety information for mobile crane operations utilizing transparent displays, where the information can be presented closer to operators' line of sight with minimum obstruction on their view. The intention of the design is to help operators in acquiring supportive information provided by the machine, without requiring them to divert their attention far from operational areas. We started the design process by reviewing mobile crane safety guidelines to determine which information that operators need to know in order to perform safe operations. Using the findings from the safety guidelines review, we then conducted a design workshop to generate design ideas and visualisation concepts, as well as to delineate their appearances and behaviour based on the capability of transparent displays. We transformed the results of the workshop to a low-fidelity paper prototype, and then interviewed six mobile crane operators to obtain their feedback on the proposed concepts. The results of the study indicate that, as information will be presented closer to operators' line of sight, we need to be selective on what kind of information and how much information that should be presented to operators. However, all the operators appreciated having information presented closer to their line of sight, as an approach that has the potential to improve safety in their operations.

Operating heavy vehicles, for instance an excavator, requires a high level of attention to the operation done using the vehicle and awareness of the surroundings. Digital transformation in heavy vehicles aims to improve productivity and user experience, but it can also increase the operators mental load because of a higher demand of attention to instrumentation and controls, subsequently leading to reduced situation awareness. One way to mitigate this, is to display information within the operators’ field of view, which enhances information detectability through quick glances, using mixed reality interfaces. This work explores two types of mixed reality visualizations and compares them to a traditional display setup in a simulated excavator environment. We have utilized eye-tracking glasses to study users’ attention to the task, surrounding awareness, and interfaces, followed by a NASA-RTLX questionnaire to evaluate the users’ reported mental workload. The results indicate benefits for the mixed reality approaches, with lower workload ratings together with an improved rate in detection of presented information.

Motion capture acting is a challenging task, it requires trained and experienced actors who can highly rely on their acting and imagination skills to deliver believable performances. This is especially the case when preparation times are short and scenery needs to be imagined, as it is commonly the case for shoots in the gaming industry. To support actors in such cases, we developed a mixed reality application that allows showing digital scenery and triggering emotions while performing. In this paper we tested our hypothesis that a mixed reality head-mounted projection display can support motion capture acting through the help of experienced motion capture actors performing short acting scenes common for game productions. We evaluated our prototype with four motion capture actors and four motion capture experts. Both groups considered our application as helpful, especially as a rehearsal tool to prepare performances before capturing the motions in a studio. Actors and experts indicated that our application could reduce the time to prepare performances and supports the set up of physical acting scenery.