14/06/2022

Visgraf and Centro Pi are promoting seminars on the metaverse.

Crédito: Freepik

From the preservation of cultural heritage to advances in medicine and art, these are themes present in debates about new media and metaverse. Visgraf (IMPA's Computer Graphics Laboratory) and the IMPA Projects and Innovation Center (Centro Pi) are promoting a series of three seminars on the subject, which will take place next Wednesday (15) and on June 22 and 29. The lectures will be open to the public and broadcast on Visgraf's YouTube channel .

With support from the Rio de Janeiro State Research Foundation (Faperj), the program “Space XR – A Locus of Experimentation for Augmented Reality in Shared Media Spaces” seeks to disseminate the use of augmented reality technologies with applications in three research areas. The webinars feature guest speakers from the fields of knowledge that will be covered in each presentation.

“Research in the area of new media and metaverse shows how in tune we are with what is happening in the most advanced world. It is a project that, to be viable, requires a lot of mathematics, both in the theoretical and practical sense. And we are also collaborating to bring the future to these areas of art, health and cultural heritage, which are important for the development of Rio de Janeiro,” said Luiz Velho, lead researcher of Visgraf, who conducts the project with Jorge Lopes, coordinator of technological projects at IMPA.

This Wednesday, at 1:30 PM, the first lecture will discuss the role of the metaverse in the preservation of cultural heritage and expanded reality . The National Museum and the Digital Image Processing Laboratory (LAPID – UFRJ), in partnership with IMPA, have created more than 10 rooms in the metaverse to house the museum's collections, ranging from Egyptian artifacts to paleontology, as well as new creations. Some of these were recovered from the fire that struck the space in 2018.

Sérgio Azevedo, director of LAPID and former director of the National Museum, states that the metaverse enhances new exhibition formats. “Museums have evolved over time, and digital tools have ended up influencing how information is conveyed to the public. Our project shows that digital tools can help in the dissemination of cultural collections through metaverse exhibitions, ensuring that information reaches the general population,” he commented.

On June 2Mondays, also at 1:30 PM, the lecture “New Media, Art and Narrative” will present the work of visual effects, cinema and art in the metaverse. The guests are Matteo Moriconi, organizer of VFX Rio; Affonso Beato, from ABC Cinema Courses; and Bernardo Alevato, from PUC-Rio. Then, on June 29th, at the same time, Heron Werner, from Dasa, and Jorge Lopes, from IMPA, will discuss “Medicine in the Metaverse” .