STEMarts Lab will be presenting the Avatar Scientist station as part of the Space Messengers installation at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz Austria. For those attending, below is the schedule of the scientists that will appear.
How it works
This interactive Mixed Reality (MR) station bridges the real and virtual worlds to create a lively human interaction. An astrophysicist is beamed in from their home location and appears as an avatar on our large scale projection screen. Audience members come up to a ring light and webcam in front of the projection screen and ask them a question about the universe. The astrophysicist can see and interact with the audience member in the physical space at the event. A sound system broadcasts the conversation so spectators can experience the exchange. Participants are always surprised to find out its a real person and not just a cartoon character or AI robot and have fun having a deep conversation about dark matter with an Avatar. This popular station has been highly successful at encouraging participants to ask questions about the universe that they always wanted to know but were afraid to ask. We recruit scientists from around the world. STEMarts Youth Ambassadors set up and run the Avatar tech station and facilitate the exchange between the Avatar scientist and the participants at the event.
See a recording of the Avatar Scientist Station at the Planetario Lunaria Noche de las Estrellas event in Guadalajara, Mexico, December 2023.
Our guest Avatar scientists:
Dr. Andrea Albert is an astrophysicist at Los Alamos National Lab and specializes in searching for gamma rays from dark matter interactions in space. She received her PhD from The Ohio State University in 2013. See her innovative series of Youtube Avatar snippets created through this collaboration.
Dr. Steven Goldfarb is an experimental particle physicist working for the University of Melbourne on the ATLAS Experiment at CERN. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, coordinates University of Michigan undergraduate research programs at CERN, serves as an ATLAS Diversity & Inclusion Contact, and fronts the world renowned Canettes Blues Band.
Prof. Claudia-Elisabeth Wulz is a particle physicist of the Vienna Institute of High Energy Physics. She works at the CMS Experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. She just finished her term as its Collaboration Board Chair of the experiment, and holds lectures at TU Wien on astroparticle physics.
Avatar Scientist Tech Designer:
Dylan Zanow with LANL Astrophysicist/Avatar, Dr. Andrea Albert.
STEMarts Ambassadors:
The Avatar Scientist station at Ars Electronica will be led by STEMarts Coordinators from Portugal, Diogo Duarte and Maria Matos, along with six youth ambassadors and their teacher, Ana Carvalho, from Escola Secundaria Sebastiao e Silva in Oeiras, Portugal. All have been collaborating on the Space Messengers project since 2021.
Ars Electronica Avatar Station
Schedule
September 6, 2023
10:00-2:00
Prof. Claudia Wultz, Vienna Institute of High Energy Physics
2:00-7:00 pm
Dr. Andrea Albert, Los Alamos Lab Astrophysicist
September 7, 2023
10:00-2:00
TBA
2:00-6:00 pm
Dr. Andrea Albert, Los Alamos Lab Astrophysicist
6:00-7:00 pm
Dr. Steven Goldfarb, CERN physicist
September 8, 2023
10:00-2:00 pm
Dr. Steven Goldfarb, CERN physicist
2:00-7:00
Dr. Andrea Albert, Los Alamos Lab Astrophysicist
September 9, 2023
10:00-2:00 pm
Dr. Steven Goldfarb, CERN physicist
2:00-7:00pm
TBA
September 10, 2023
10:00-2:00 pm
Dr. Steven Goldfarb, CERN physicist
2:00-7:00pm
TBA
