Keynote Speaker

Anton Nijholt
Imagineering Institute, Iskandar, Malaysia & University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
Title: Digital Humor Generation in Smart Environments and Playable Cities

Abstract:
we investigate the possible role of humor in smart environments or, from an opposite perspective, how smart digital technology, its sensors, and actuators can help to introduce humorous situations and humorous interactions in digitally enhanced physical worlds. We discuss intended, accidental, spontaneous, scripted, and staged humor. We can learn from existing humor theories and what they have to say about verbal humor. However, we have to make the transition from verbal humor to humor as it can appear in videogames, augmented and virtual reality and smart real-world environments. Rather than looking at words and prosody we have to see how sensors and actuators can play a role in humor composition, whether planned, spontaneous or accidental. Humans are becoming nodes in the Internet of Things. Their wearables consisting of sensors and actuators make them 'controllable' as well and therefore they can as well be considered as components that help to introduce humorous situations. In this context we discuss the generation of different kinds of humor in various situations. We will certainly give examples of how digital technology can lead to accidental and non-intended humorous events, but the majority of our observations is on the intended creation of humorous situations, in smart environments and in particular in playable cities.

Short Biography:
Anton Nijholt received his PhD in computer science from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He held positions at various universities before being appointed full professor at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. His main research interests are human-computer interaction with a focus on entertainment computing, affect, humor and brain-computer interfacing. He wrote and edited various books, most recently on playful interfaces and brain-computer interaction. A new book on ‘Playable Cities’ will appear in 2016. Nijholt acted as program chair and general chair of many large international conferences, including ACE (Advances in Computer Entertainment), ICMI (International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces), ICEC (International Conference on Computer Entertainment), ACII (Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction), CASA (Computer Animation and Social Agents), INTETAIN (Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment), FG (Faces & Gestures), and IVA (Intelligent Virtual Agents). Recent invited and keynote talks are on humor engineering in smart environments and playable cities and on the future of brain-computer interaction. Nijholt is chief editor of the specialty section Human-Media Interaction of Frontiers in ICT and Frontiers in Psychology. He is co-editor of the Springer Series Gaming Media and Social Effects. Since 2016 he is Research Fellow at the Imagineering Institute in Malaysia, where he continues his investigations in playfulness and humor in smart environments and playable cities and in brain-computer interfacing.