Design research: Évokâ. Finding our common identity
Apr 30, 2023 — 7:00 AM - 3:00 PMSTCC - niveau Garden, halls 3 & 4
STCC - niveau Garden, halls 3 & 4
Description
The EPFL+ECAL Lab is excited to present the first prototype of a project under development. It addresses a major societal issue: at a time when social networks have shattered the notion of territory, how can the social, cultural and economic dynamics of a region or a country be preserved? Asking this question also brings us back to the expression of our need for a link, a collective identity.
In the midst of a renovation, the Cantonal and University Library of Fribourg has signed a research partnership with EPFL+ECAL Lab to take up the following challenge: imagine how archives can bring citizens together around a collective identity.
This experimental version of Évokâ, presented at the end of 2022 in Fribourg and in several villages, allows two users to interact with thousands of documents. At first, the interaction brings out individual memories. Then, the two paths come together around a final image, which evokes a collective identity.
Observation by experimental psychology methods identifies great public interest in this issue but also the difficulties to be overcome. Artificial intelligence, for example, essential to managing large quantities of documents, struggles to associate documents from a time when it did not exist. Trained with international images, it does poorly when trying to recognize personalities or objects typical of a particular region.
The second version of this project is currently being developed and will be presented in September 2023 in Fribourg. This research should provide essential knowledge to recreate the links between citizens, based on their shared history.
