About
Lily Díaz is an artist and Professor of New Media, who has a transdisciplinary background in anthropology (BA, Brandeis University), computer arts (MFA, School of Visual Arts, NY) and new media and design (DA, Aalto University). Significant research projects include the ‘Raisio Archeology Archive’ created as part of the Illuminating History Through the Eyes of Media project funded by the Academy of Finland; the ‘Digital Facsimile of the Map of Mexico 1550’ project that received First Prize in the 2004 Nabi Digital Storytelling International Competition of Intangible Heritage organised by Art Center Nabi in South Korea and UNESCO; the ‘Interactive 3D Installation of the Pavilion of Finland at the 1900 World Fair in Paris‘ developed as part of the TEKES funded Hands On project; and the ‘Interactive 3D Reconstruction of Vrouw Maria‘, that was awarded a Special Mention of the Jury in the 2015 Europa Nostra digital cultural heritage competition research category.
Her latest research projects include the ‘Beyond Matter, Cultural Heritage on the Verge of Virtual Reality‘, a large-scale Creative Europe project coordinated by the Audio Visual Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe/ZKM, and the ‘Social cohesion, Participation, and Inclusion through Cultural Engagement, SPICE‘, an EU Horizon 2020 project dedicated to developing tools for Citizen Curation of cultural heritage.
She has written over 100 publications in areas related to art, design, the ‘new’ media and heritage. Ubiquitous Computing, Complexity and Culture an anthology published by Routledge in 2015 and Adaptation and Convergence of Media published by Aalto ARTS Books in 2019 are among her latest results as an author.
Research
‘New Spaces, new excursions’
The human notion of space exploration is changing. Partly due to the emergence of new technologies such as extended reality (XR) our focus now turns inward seeking to probe the ephemeral, hybrid (physical and virtual spaces) created via language in our minds and imagination. The project I will be working on during my research leave makes use of semantic technologies related to content analysis and structuring of information. The data was gathered as part of collaboration work done in two research projects realised during the years 2020 – 2023.
The first corpus comprises a series of ethnographic interviews and recorded sessions during the monthly meetings of the SPICE project case studies during the period of one year. The data in the second corpus gathers responses from the audience workshops realised at Aalto University and at the Center for Audio Visual Media, ZKM Karlsruhe in response to the Immaterial Display and the two exhibition reconstructions – Les Immatériaux and Iconoclash – realised in virtual reality as part of the work in the project.
