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From January 24 to 26, the University of Aveiro (UA) hosted its 8th local edition of the Global Game Jam (GGJ). Held in hundreds of countries worldwide, this event challenges participants to create games in just 48 hours, based on a theme provided by the global organizers. The local event was organized by the Department of Communication and Art (DECA) and the Department of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics (DETI). Professors, researchers and students from both departments and the Masters in Digital Game Development at the University of Aveiro participated in the organization of the event.

This year, more than 40 participants from different parts of the country worked in teams to develop 8 unique games, which were showcased at the end of the event. For more details and to explore the games created, visit: https://globalgamejam.org/jam-sites/2025/ggj-2025-universidade-de-aveiro.

Check out some moments from the development marathon at:

https://www.instagram.com/mdjd.ua.pt

On December 20th 2024, the students in Multimedia and Communication Technologies, Pedro Loyola, Pedro Henriques, Isis Coutinho and Júlia Köche had their final project entitled ‘Viral Passion: Until Immunity Do Us Apart’ awarded Best Animated Movie in the Art Film Awards Festival. This project was supervised by Liliana Costa and Hélder Caixinha, with the participation of the INIAV researchers Margarida Duarte and Teresa Nogueira.

 The animation ‘Viral Passion: Until Immunity Do Us Apart’, by Pedro Loyola, Pedro Henriques, Isis Coutinho and Júlia Köche, which was awarded Best Animated Movie in the Art Film Awards Festival, follows the journey of Victor, a virus that invades a young woman’s body, facing natural barriers like nasal hairs and mucus. In search of an ideal host cell, Victor deceives a naive cell, triggering a battle with the NK cells, the body’s natural defenders. This microscopic adventure reveals the surprising resilience of the human body in an intense, internal war.

The animation was part of the student’s final project from in 1st cycle degree in Multimedia and Communication Technologies – PLAYMUTATION DOC: Development of an animated documentary to foster youngsters’ awareness of pathogens, and it can be watched here (https://playmutation.web.ua.pt/)

The Art Film Awards is an annual event that awards, supports, and promotes filmmakers. The results from Autumn 2024 can be consulted on the following page: https://artfilmawards.com/autumn-2024

The DigiMedia researcher, Joaquim Santos, took part in a round table discussion in the Escola Superior de Saúde do Porto, to talk about technologies in health, in the scope of the II Jornadas de Ciência e Inovação em Terapia da Fala, on 13 and 14 December 2024.

This topic is part of Joaquim’s PhD thesis “Semi-Autonomous And Secure Tangible Media Interfaces: Framework And Prototype For Home Use By Children With Speech Sound Disorders” (2023).

The ‘Data Defenders’ game, developed under the Yo-media project, was presented at Aveiro TechDay by project members Ana Paços, Laura Martins, Frederico Proença, Liliana Costa, Maria Antunes, and Oksana Tymoshchuk. This game aims to promote media literacy among young people during crises, such as political, military, or health-related adversity times. The game has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from both young people and their parents.

The University of Aveiro (UA) was present at the Aveiro TechWeek event, with a permanent display and highlighted at the fair, showing the best of the research produced by the UA in the area of ​​video games.

The exhibition organized by the direction of the Master’s in Digital Game Development, in partnership with the rectory of the UA, featured a display of dozens of academic works by master’s students, the demonstration of numerous research projects of several research units and departments at the UA, as well as functional Virtual Reality prototypes that could be explored by the public present at the fair.

The TechWeek, dedicated to the theme Videogames, was held in the two pavilions of the Aveiro exhibition park, from 4th to 6th October. The Gaming TechWeek had the participation of various stakeholders in gaming culture, from streamers, players and many curious people, with several lectures and sports tournaments held.

The Master’s Degree in Digital Game Development is an advanced training offer that results from a joint venture between the Department of Communication and Art and the Department of Electronics, Telecommunications and IT, with teachers and researchers from DigiMedia, IEETA and IT.

The ‘Play with Music’ game, which enables children with motor difficulties to learn and play Music using only their eyes, was showcased successfully at Aveiro TechWeek. This innovative game comprises two sections: one offering structured music lessons and another providing a more playful approach. Children interact with the game using an EyeTracker.

‘Play with Music’ was developed as part of Lucius Filho’s master’s thesis in game design, supervised by Oksana Tymoshchuk, Rita Oliveira, and Davys Moreno, in collaboration with the Aveiro Conservatory of Music.

Carla Leite, a DigiMedia PhD student, was invited to give the talk “A vida académica são dois dias, e a vida profissional são três”, at the PCI – Creative Science Park, in Ílhavo. The event is organized by the Geek Girls Portugal, and takes place on 24th October.

Free registration here.

More information on social networks here:

FB: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/hFSkrXbSGW3NWB5u/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/p/DA3uno0BVA7/?igsh=aW0yanM1NzNtbncw

The Impact Plan, a tool to support the anticipation of impact of projects designed by Digimedia’s member Catarina Lelis, is one of the activities that is part of the Inner Development Goals Conference (IDG2024), made available on their Story & Collaboration Garden. This is a feature available on the conference’s website, which is taking place on 16-18 October, in Stockholm, Sweden. At the Story & Collaboration Garden, registered participants can search for projects, resources and ideas connected to the IDG framework.

The 16th International Conference on Education Technology and Computers (ICETC 2024) and The 15th International Conference on Distance Learning and Education (ICDLE 2024) took place from 18th to 21th of September, 2024 and gathered a global audience of researchers, educators, and practitioners from various sectors of education technology and computer science. The conference provided a valuable platform for sharing ideas, research insights, and best practices in the field of education technology.

Raquel Magalhães Cabral, a DigiMedia PhD student, presented the “SUNRISE App: A Tool to Validate the Characteristics of an Infocommunicational Model Capable of Potentiating Social and Emotional Education for High School Students.” Co-authored by professors and master students, prof. Dr. Oscar Mealha (from Digimedia), prof. Dr. Vania Carlos (from DEP/UA), prof. Dr. Cristina Mercader (from Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona) and the master students: Bruna Riba, João Neves and Tiago Paralta (Porto University), this research paper explored the potential of technology to enhance social and emotional education.

During the conference, Raquel Magalhães Cabral’s presentation was recognized as the best oral presentation of the session about “The Diverse Applications of Digital Tools and Platforms in Education”. It was evaluated based on criteria such as applicability, originality, significance, visual aids, English delivery, and timeliness. This recognition highlights the quality and impact of her research and her ability to effectively communicate her findings to a diverse audience.

Representing DigiMedia, the post-doctoral researcher Ana Velhinho,  won a fellowship from Freepik to attend between the 2nd and 7th of September a Summer School in Málaga (Spain), dedicated to the sustainability and etics of AI in Digital Humanities, relevant to the research within the ongoing project Polariscope, a Platform for the Co-creation and Visualization of Collective Memories.

The 8th Digital Art History Summer School (DAHSS 2024) occurred at the Polo de Contenidos Digitales of Fundación Telefónica. This year’s theme was “Sustainability and Politics of AI”, with sessions organized around four tracks, led by the four speakers of this edition:

  • “Track A: Visual AI for Visual Culture. New tools/old critique”, by Leonardo Impett (University of Cambridge), focused on applications of AI and computer vision, looking at how we might use generative image systems like Midjourney and DALL·E for visual culture and art history studies;
  • “Track B: Art on the Web: Creating Cultural Heritage Knowledge Networks”, by Edward Anderson (Rijksmuseum), focused on standardized models and vocabularies of the Semantic Web (e.g., OWL-Web Ontology Language; RDF-Resource Description Framework) for enhancing the accessibility and richness of cultural heritage data and fostering collaboration;
  • “Track C: Cartographies of Humanities”, by Iacopo Neri (University of Zurich and Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia) focused on spatial analytics of geodata and cartography, working with open-source software and creative coding for mapping ecological and social dynamics at various scales;
  • Track D: The Archive Makes the Image”, by Eryk Salvaggio (independent researcher and artist, former fellow of the Flickr Foundation), focused on how to read images made by artificial intelligence systems and how AI training datasets and heritage archives and collections shape those generated images, based on a critique of the algorithmic curation and production of synthetic content.

The event was organized by Nuria Rodríguez-Ortega, Professor of the University of Málaga and founder of the iArtHIs_Lab research group, and Bárbara Romero Ferrón, a researcher at this lab and the CulturePlex Lab (Western University). DAHSS 2024 had 24 participants from several countries and institutions, consolidating a network of researchers to strengthen ongoing projects and foster upcoming ones.

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