Laboratories

R&D Laboratory

AXES

PUBLICATIONS

Living Lab

Team

Mission

SAT’s public research center aims to be a place for the production of technological and methodological commons that can be easily transferred to practical settings.

Our methodology consists in bringing out transferable technologies and methodologies from experiments in use. Through technological innovation, we aim above all for innovation in practice, centered around the processes of creating collective experiences.

In an ongoing dialogue with artists and drawing on research-creation methodologies, we develop an open, accessible and interoperable technological toolbox for the creation of collective experiences in technological arts.

The research center also aims to act as an open innovation hub, helping to structure the digital creation ecosystem through federating initiatives linking the artistic and academic communities and the creative and cultural industries, in the spirit of the living laboratory.

Its approach is based on a continuum going from exploration to technology and knowledge transfer, through several stages: exploration, validation, maturation, transfer.

AXES

SAT’s research center is developing several research projects, as part of its mission to support experimentation in creating collective experiences, and its vision of developing open, interoperable and accessible technologies.

Oriented towards the creation of collective experiences, each of these projects addresses one or more of the center’s research axes: intersensory immersion, co-creation and collective interaction.

Each project is carried out in partnership with players in the digital creation ecosystem, involving artists, researchers, academic laboratories and creative studios. The modalities of these collaborations are reinvented specifically for each project, to stay as close as possible to the interests of practice environments and research partners.

Intersensory immersion

SAT is renowned for its pioneering role in collective audiovisual immersion, thanks in particular to its 360° dome, the Satosphere. To take collective immersion even further, the research center has been exploring its different uses and technologies for several years, with the aim of extending immersion to senses other than sight and hearing, and making it more embodied by involving the body and space. To this end, several research initiatives are being conducted in parallel:

Haptic devices: with the development of an operational prototype of a haptic floor, creators can now involve the bodies of performers or spectators in unprecedented ways.
Distributed dynamic scenographies: using the Puara physical computing device, which enables the management of various interconnected and distributed devices, we aim to facilitate the realization of dynamic scenographies or spatialized interaction devices.
Spatialization models for scenophony and intersensory immersion: we are conducting research to facilitate the implementation of collective immersion experiences in unconventional broadcasting contexts and for intermedia spatial control needs, often solicited for the design of immersive installations or live performances.

Collective interaction

Although interactivity is now at the heart of our daily experience of the world, it is often confined to enabling interaction between a person and a computer system. Within the SAT research center, and as part of our interest in collective experiences, we are exploring various aspects of collective interaction. The aim of this research is to create experiences in which groups of people can interact collectively with a reactive system or environment, or even interact with each other in new ways.

From a technical point of view, we are exploring various gesture capture modalities, and in particular computer vision systems based on non-contact, markerless capture: volumetric cameras, skeleton detection by AI models, LIDARs, etc. We are also working on data fusion strategies to aggregate these different techniques and modalities (as well as others, such as on-board sensors) and thus adapt to a diversity of creative situations and artistic production constraints.

Co-creation

Since its foundation, SAT has been interested in the use of telecommunications technologies to create remote collective experiences: this concern led to the development of the telepresence solution Scenic, which is now installed in 24 cultural venues in Quebec, and continues to develop in Canada and internationally. Beyond the creation of telepresence shows, the research center is also exploring the opportunities opened up by these technologies for collaborating remotely, in a more convivial and human way. Indeed, since the pandemic, it has become commonplace for all of us to collaborate remotely thanks to videoconferencing technologies. However, most of this collaboration takes place through screens, and we want to draw on our experience of telepresence, and in particular its scenographic aspects, to optimize the spatial and embodied aspects of remote co-creation.

In addition, more and more artistic approaches are using the means of AI for digital creation, and in particular generative processes based on machine-learning algorithms (machine-learning). These processes are embedded in creative processes, as well as in the thinking and decision-making they underpin, and thus involve a form of co-creation between humans and machines. From this perspective, we aim to question the specific needs of contemporary digital creation to which AI could respond, in order to bring to light new research and development trajectories and help structure the emergence and development of AI commons for digital creation.

THEMES

Sound immersion

Scénophonie

The Scénophonie project, which focuses on the issue of sound immersion, aims to develop a set of methodologically flexible and technically modular, portable and robust solutions to the challenges of immersive installations with collective interaction, complementing existing industrial tools and solutions, such as surround sound for cinema or music. SAT’s research and development work focuses on enhancing current sound spatialization tools and enabling scenophonic exploration of both physical and virtual spaces. This effort complements research into sound manipulation (sound spatialization) within heterogeneous spatialization systems. This work will be based on the technological, practical and theoretical orientations, which are presented in our dossier on sound immersion.

Intersensory immersion

IoT Immersion

The IoT intermedia project, funded by the MEIE, aims to create a toolbox for digital creators. This toolbox facilitates the artistic exploration and deployment of immersive experiences by integrating embedded systems that are interoperable and transferable from one use case to another. The toolbox facilitates the interconnection of various sensors and actuators, while extracting relevant data to effectively orchestrate physical and digital elements in spatialized environments. Designed to be self-contained and ready to use, this solution makes these technologies accessible and usable in real-life contexts.

Collective interaction

The Interaction Collective project aims to make the creation of innovative collective interaction experiences more accessible. Collective interaction covers any form of gestural interaction between humans in the physical world. The main focus of the research is on how behaviors between groups of people can be applied to a digital experience. For example, contemporary dancers performing a carefully choreographed piece, or a museum audience discovering an interactive installation based on the capture of their movements. The approach of this project is based on non-intrusive capture technologies, i.e. not requiring the wearing of specific equipment right on the body.

Telepresence

Remote co-creation

Scenic connects venues in real time for events such as shows, conferences and collaborative workshops, offering a unique immersive experience. The remote co-creation project aims to extend the uses of our Scenic immersive telepresence technology: the sustainable connection of business and networking environments via the creation of short- and long-term telepresence portals. The aim of the project is to create immersive scenographies transforming collaboration between creative studios distributed over the territory, by applying all the best practices in immersive telepresence.

Telepresence

Hybridization of spaces

The Hybridation des espaces project, funded by the Ministère de l’Économie, de l’Innovation et de l’Énergie (MEIE), aims to explore technologies for transcending the limits of the physical world by connecting in situ performances, inventing more sustainable modes of artistic dissemination, and fostering connections between distant audiences. Carried out in collaboration with Moment Factory, this year-long research project explored, through concrete uses with artists, the possibilities offered by connected spaces and enriched multi-site augmented experiences. The project culminated in the public presentation of two hybrid performance prototypes – between two venues – as part of MUTEK Forum 2024. The first prototype aimed to strengthen the emotional connection between a performer and his remote audience. The second aimed to develop a device facilitating collaborative performance by reducing the technical constraints of remote performance, notably latency.

Artificial intelligence

ArtIA - Creative AI practices and imaginaries component

The “practices and imaginaries of creative AI” component of the ArtIA project, funded by the Quebec Ministry of Culture and Communication, and conducted in partnership with Sporobole, Projet Collectif and the Metacreation lab, aims to prefigure the development of a platform of AI commons for digital creation relying on an open toolbox. This collaboration brings together our approaches through a participative, experimental and iterative “living lab” approach, and around a common theme that aims to fuel digital creativity, support the artistic community and democratize relevant, open tools. To bring this project to fruition, we are mobilizing numerous partners from the cultural, private (creative studios and others) and scientific (engineering, human and social sciences and research-creation) worlds. The aim of the first part of this year-long project is to carry out a consultation with these players, whether institutions, academics or artists, in order to identify the needs of our ecosystems as accurately as possible, and then to draw up a coordinated initiative for the development of sustainable, ethical solutions geared primarily to the interests of artists.

DISCOVER OUR PAST WORKS

PROJECTS ARCHIVE

2025. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies.

Scenophony: An undisciplinary approach to the design of immersive sound storytelling

David Ledoux, Eduardo A. L. Meneses, and Pía Baltazar

2024. Proceedings of the 21st Sound and Music Computing Conference (SMC2024).

libremidi: a cross-platform library for real-time MIDI 1 and 2

Jean-Michaël Celerier

2023. New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME'23).

The Puara Framework: Hiding complexity and modularity for reproducibility and usability in NIMEs

Eduardo A. L. Meneses, Thomas Piquet, Jason Noble, Marcelo M. Wanderley

2023. International Symposium on Electronic Art.

Immersive environments, video tracking and collective interactivity on smartphone : a generic "dispositif"

Dominique Cunin, Emmanuel Durand, Michał Seta

2023. Audio Mostly.

Audiodice: an open hardware design of a distributed dodecahedron loudspeaker orchestra

Nicolas Bouillot, Thomas Piquet, Pierre Gilbert

2022. Taylor & Francis

The Effects of Interactivity on Learners' Experience in a Visually Immersive Display Context.

Salame, Y.; Léger, P.; Charland, P.; Merveilleux Du Vignaux, M.; Durand, E.; Bouillot, N.; Pardoen, M.; Deslandes-Martineau, M.; and Sénécal, S.

2022. Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts

Two datasets of room impulse responses for navigation in 6~degrees of freedom: a symphonic concert hall and a former planetarium.

Piquet, T.; Teyssier, H.; Ouellet-Delorme, É.; Duée, R.; and Bouillot, N. In 25th International Conference on Digital Audio Effects DAFx20, pages pp. 169-176,

2021. Computers in the Schools, Interdisciplinary Journal of Practice, Theory, and Applied Research

Riding through history: The effects of interactivity in learners' experience in a visually immersive display context (submitted).

Salame, Y.; Vignaux, M. M. D.; Charland, P.; Durand, E.; Bouillot, N.; Léger, P.; and Pardoen, M.

2021. 18th Sound and Music Computing Conference

Building Navigable Listening Experiences Based on Spatial Soundfield Capture

Zack Settel, Jean-Yves Munch, Gabriel Downs, Nicolas Bouillot

2021. 18th Sound and Music Computing Conference

Live Ray Tracing and Auralization of 3D Audio Scenes with vaRays

Émile Ouellet-Delorme, Harish Venkatesan, Emmanuel Durand, Nicolas Bouillot

2021. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction

An exploratory study on the impact of collective immersion on learning and learning experience

M. Merveilleux Du Vignaux, P-M.Léger, P. Charland, Y. Salame, E. Durand, N. Bouillot, M. Pardoen, S. Sénécal

All of our publications can be consulted in BibTex format.

See all our publications

Innovation team

The Innovation Department team brings together a wide range of expertise in a variety of roles:

Directors are responsible for the funding and direction of the department’s research and development activities;
Services and project managers are responsible for project execution and guidance;
Researchers carry out systematic investigations to identify and solve problems, as well as monitoring, observing and modeling R&D processes to make them more sustainable and generic;
Developers are responsible for implementing and maintaining the features and functional aspects of our technologies;
Integrators act as the link between practitioners and the team, integrating our technologies into real-life creative projects at various stages ranging from exploration to production.

The department’s organization strives to be as cross-functional as possible, including at least one member of each of these profiles in each project and promoting feedback between their various expertise and skills.