Festival day 4

Saturday, November 11th: In some provinces of the Netherlands it’s the eleventh of the eleventh, but InScience’s Saturday was Immersive Day: many virtual reality, games, and robots. Below is a report of the highlights.

Immersive Day & talks

For many people, virtual reality is still a fairly unknown concept. At InScience, the general public got the chance to get acquainted with the new medium. At the Synthon Hall, projects were presented to interact with the public. In one corner, through VR, people could experience what the world of a schizophrenic patient looks like. In another corner, many laughed while visitors walked over a narrow board in a virtual world. A gentleman looked while his wife tried, but she did not dare to take a step. “Not surprising,” he said, “she is also scared to stand on an escalator.”

There was a lot of praise for Moving Stories, Moving Games by Anouk Tuijnman. She told about how games could be used in mental health care for youth. Often there are certain methods that can be used in mental obstacles, but it is very boring to do these exercises regularly. Games can help. Not only do they make it more fun, but the context also causes patients to be motivated to continue or try again. Tuijnman’s own game is intended for classical use. It focuses on the fact that young people often find it difficult to ask for help when they feel depressed, which only worsens the problem. Her game aims to teach the students what depression is and how they can recognize it so that they are able to help others and become less stigmatized.

The Farthest

Carsten Dominik, Professor of Astronomy at the UvA, has always been fascinated by the Voyager. “The mission of Voyager is so unique: you can only discover the universe once.” And that’s what Voyager is doing. The space probe has now left our solar system and is now literally moving between the stars. Until the battery runs out, Voyager will continue to send messages to the earth. Then the trip will continue without communication.

Although the chance that the spacecraft will ever be discovered is really small, it has a message on board. On a golden LP within the Voyager, there are songs from Bach to Chuck Berry. Dominik notes that this is a very warm welcome. “Should we submit a probe to the universe again, this would probably include much more objective data.’But this is not very surprising”, he added.“The scientists from the seventies were probably hippies.”