PLAY CULTURE AND AI

The PLAY, CULTURE AND AI SECTION

The Play, Culture, and AI Section researches and teaches digital media from social, cultural, creative and technological perspectives, with a special focus on games, artificial intelligence, and social media.

The Play, Culture, and AI Section hosts a group of interdisciplinary researchers across the fields of computer science, design research, the humanities, and social sciences. The Section’s faculty contributes with research-based teaching to most ITU undergraduate and graduate programs, and engages in multidisciplinary research initiatives with members of other departments.

The PCAI Section is home to the Center for Digital Play, a world-leading research environment that studies play and its role in shaping technology and culture in digital societies, from Machine Learning to Games.

Head of Sections: Hans-Joachim Backe

Research Centres and Groups

Center for Digital Play

Center for Digital Play houses a multi-disciplinary research group with backgrounds in the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences and Computer Science. The group performs basic and applied research, approaching games from a variety of perspectives including theoretical analysis, design, ethnographic and qualitative approaches, AI, user (cognitive and affective) modeling and player experience. The Center was formally established in 2003, building on ongoing work in the area at the ITU since its founding in 1999.

Games Research Group

The Games Research Group at IT University started in 1999. Since 2003, the Center for Computer Games Research houses a multi-disciplinary research group with backgrounds in the humanities, social sciences, the arts, and computer science. The group performs basic and applied research, approaching games from a variety of perspectives including theoretical analysis, design, ethnographic and qualitative approaches, AI, machine learning, cognitive and affective user modeling, and player experience.

Members of the group are involved in editorial boards of the most respected journals in the fields of game studies, game culture, game AI and affective modeling and IEEE Task Forces focusing on games.

The Creative AI Lab

The Creative AI Lab explores how to make machines more adaptive and creative. We combine approaches from computational evolution, deep learning, and crowdsourcing to investigate the potential of more creative forms of AI in robotics, video games, design, and art. Our group tries to answer questions such as: can we make machines that design, create and surprise us? Can we create machines that learn from and work together with humans to solve tasks that neither humans nor machines can solve by themselves?

MAD

MAD is an interdisciplinary research group focusing on experience design and practice-based research in domains such as cultural heritage, art and the creative and cultural industries. Creative practice is central to our research. We believe that groundbreaking technologies can be developed by paying attention to human interests that go beyond the purely rational to also include phenomena like play, affect and aesthetics.