Opening Keynote

Eye Movement for Multimodal and Ubiquitous Interaction

Ubiquitous computing aspires to support human activity seamlessly with interactive technologies. This involves the proliferation of digital devices of different form and function in our environments, and the appropriation of diverse sensing modalities to observe activity, capture context, and provide natural interfaces to users. Among the many ways in which human activity can be observed, eye tracking has received only limited attention in ubiquitous computing. However, eye movement is a compelling source of information, as the eyes are where the action is; I will thus argue that eye movement can be leveraged in novel and advanced ways for multimodal and ubiquitous interaction. Eye tracking has a long history and its use for human-computer interaction predates the ubiquitous computing era. While the technology has been maturing and become affordable for widespread use, there has not been much innovation in the use of eye gaze for interaction. For over 25 years, gaze pointing has remained the prevailing usage paradigm, although it overloads the sensory role of the eyes with a control function. In this talk I will present work that explores new ways of using eye movement for interaction. I will discuss gaze and touch: how hands and eyes can naturally work together; gaze and motion: how the natural gaze-following of moving stimuli enables new types of interface; and gaze and games: how gaze can be social and fun.

Hans Gellersen is Professor of Interactive Systems at Lancaster University. Hans' research interest is in sensors and devices for ubiquitous computing and human-computer interaction. He has worked on systems that blend physical and digital interaction, methods that infer context and human activity, and techniques for spontaneous interaction across devices. In recent work he is focussing on eye movement as a source of context information and modality for interaction. Hans was involved in the foundation of the UbiComp conference series, and serves as Associate Editor of ACM TOCHI and the Journal on Personal and Ubiquitous Computing (PUC). Hans has held his chair position at Lancaster since 2001. Previously he was affiliated with the University of Karlsruhe in Germany, where he received his PhD in Computer Science in 1996.

Closing Keynote

How ubiquitous and pervasive do computer systems have to become before we really start to care about the users?

In 1994 the Ars Electronica Festival was dedicated to "Intelligent Ambiences" and one of the pioneers of what we call nowadays ubiquitous and mobile computing, Rich Gold from the famous Xerox Parc Laboratories titled his lecture for the festivals symposium: "How smart does our bed have to be before we are afraid to sleep in it?". A wonderful and forward thinking title, considering that this was more than 20 years ago. A time where most of the concepts for such a future of computing were still speculative and many of them sounded as funny as this title. But now it's here or at least almost here. We are doing great in the technological developments towards it but when it comes to the social and cultural challenges, it seems we didn't learn much in the last two decades. So how ubiquitous and mobile can our digital world become at all, if we always just look at the technology behind it? What, if people really get afraid of these systems which we are preparing and implementing right now. And what can we do to get it right?

Gerfried Stocker is artistic and managing director of Ars Electronica since 1995. In this period the Linz based Ars Electronica has evolved from the early festival of Art, Technology and Society into a new type of institution which is engaged in artistic production and education as well as in research and development for the industry.