Programme
8th-12th June 2026

“AI is going to radically change creative work”, we hear all around us. But what is that creativity that needs to be disrupted? In this talk Felienne Hermans, professor of computer science education at VU Amsterdam, will examine technology's worldview, one of control and dominance, of measurements and data, and examine how that worldview shapes their understanding of the world and of their software systems.
This keynote by Felienne Hermans asks: What type of knowledge do we lose if we adopt AI? What perspectives might be lost? And what does that mean for the future of work?

Felienne Hermans is a professor of Computer Science Education at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She also works as a high-school CS teacher one day a week at Open Schoolgemeenschap Bijlmer.
Felienne is the creator of the Hedy programming language, a gradual and multi-lingual programming language designed for teaching and author of the book "The Programmer's Brain" a book that helps programmers understand how their brain works and how to use it more effectively. In 2021, Felienne was awarded the Dutch Prize for ICT research. 
She writes for Dutch newspaper Volkskrant every month and writes a weekly newsletter on computer science, AI and many other things.

Visions have always driven my design. In this talk, I will trace the evolution of my design visions over the past three decades — from Tangible Bits to Radical Atoms — since joining the MIT Media Lab in 1995. I will then introduce my latest, and perhaps final, vision: TeleAbsence, which moves beyond Telepresence.
Tangible Bits and Radical Atoms aim to create seamless interfaces between humans, digital information, and the physical environment by giving dynamic physical form to digital computation. Tangible Bits make bits directly manipulable and perceptible, while Radical Atoms imagine a future in which atoms themselves “dance,” changing shape and properties computationally.
My journey began at NTT Human Interface Laboratories in the early 1990s, where I designed seamless telepresence media such as ClearBoard. At the MIT Media Lab, this vision evolved into Tangible Telepresence, merging with the Radical Atoms vision. Now, in the concluding chapter of this exploration, TeleAbsence envisions illusory communication media that embody the presence of absence, inviting reflection on how technology mediates not only connection, but also separation, memory, and loneliness.
I will conclude by sharing three guiding principles that have shaped my vision-driven research:

• be artistic and analytic
• be poetic and pragmatic
• be romantic and realistic

I will close with this message: “Life has an endpoint, but the future is never-ending. Technology soon becomes obsolete, but true vision is everlasting. What legacy will you leave for those living in 2200?”

Hiroshi Ishii is a Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab. He was named Associate Director at the Media Lab in May 2008. He is the director of the Tangible Media Group that he founded in 1995 to pursue new visions of Human Computer Interaction (HCI): "Tangible Bits” and "Radical Atoms”. Ishii and his team have presented their visions at a variety of scientific, design and artistic venues (including ACM SIGCHI, SIGGRAPH, Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, Milan Design Week, Cannes Lions Festival, Aspen Ideas Festival, Industrial Design Society of America, AIGA, Ars Electronica, Centre Pompidou, Victoria and Albert Museum and NTT ICC) emphasizing that the development of vision requires the rigors of both scientific and artistic review. In 2006 Ishii was elected to the CHI Academy by ACM SIGCHI, and received the SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award in 2019.
Prior to joining the MIT Media Lab from 1988-1994, Ishii led a CSCW research group at NTT Human Interface Laboratories Japan, where he and his team invented the TeamWorkStation and the ClearBoard.
Institutional website: www.media.mit.edu/people/ishii/overview

Recommender systems (RSs) are personalised AI tools routinely used by online platforms to promote algorithmically selected news, posts, music, travels and videos. GenAI is impacting on their implementation and even more how users interacts with them. However, RSs core computational component remains a machine learning (ML) algorithm exploiting users' behaviour data and textual information (reviews and item description) to identify and promote choices that users should made, to achieve a desired platform goal (e.g., revenues growth or user engagement). After having briefly discussed RSs values and risks, I will focus on the goal of making RSs more trustworthy, for multiple stakeholders, by adopting proper evaluation methods, which is also a mandatory request of the European legislation (Digital Service Act). A new type of user/system interaction simulation method will be therefore discussed: compared to more classical train/test standard ML evaluation approaches it enables to better estimate the potential longitudinal and multidimensional effect (positive and negative) of an RS on the decision made by its users while being influenced by the RS. The application of this evaluation approach will be exemplified in a particular case: sustainable tourism management, namely, how to tame over tourism and respect local communities.

Francesco is senior professor in Computer Science of Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (UNIBZ), Italy. He is member of the UNIBZ Competence Center on Sustainability and member of the Steering Committee of the Digital Humanism Initiative, TUW, Vienna. His current research interests focus on the usage of Artificial Intelligence techniques, such as Recommender Systems and intelligent agents, in supporting human collaboration with AI, and ultimately improving users' decision making processes and wellbeing. He is interested in building systems that can help groups and individuals to make more rational and fair decisions in complex and context dependent scenarios, such as, news and tourism. He is the author of more than 250, highly cited, refereed publications. He coedited the Recommender Systems Handbook, a reference publication, and served as president of the steering committee of the ACM conference on RSs.

Interactive systems have long been dominated by visual paradigms, shaping how we design, evaluate, and experience technology. Yet human perception is inherently multisensory, grounded in the integration of sound, touch, movement, and internal and external bodily signals. In this talk, I argue for a shift from visual interfaces to multisensory experiences, drawing on research in sonic interaction design, virtual reality, and hearing science. Through examples ranging from immersive environments to clinical applications, I show how sound and other sensory modalities can expand interaction beyond the visual, enabling richer, more inclusive experiences. I conclude by outlining a design perspective centered on human diversity, where multisensory systems adapt to different perceptual abilities and contexts, opening new directions for interactive creativity and accessibility.

Stefania Serafin recently joined the Department of Engineering Technology at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), where she continues her work in sound, XR, and multisensory interaction. She also holds an affiliation with the Copenhagen Hearing and Balance Center, part of Rigshospitalet, strengthening the connection between immersive technologies and clinical applications in hearing and balance. Until 2025 she was Professor of Sonic Interaction Design at Aalborg University, where she played a leading role in advancing research and education at the intersection of sound, music, and interactive technologies. Together with Rolf Nordahl, she led the Multi-Sensory Experience Lab, pioneering research in immersive and multisensory experiences. She served as President of the Sound and Music Computing Association (2014-2024) and Project Leader of the Nordic Sound and Music Computing Network, supported by Nordforsk (2018-2024). Her work has received several recognitions, including the Danish Sound Prize (2021) and the Ridderkorset (Knight’s Cross) in 2025 for her contributions to science, culture, and society through sound and multisensory innovation.