The RIS3CAT Media Community, coordinated by the Eurecat technology centre, has held its second general meeting to share progress in the projects they are undertaking to drive and bring about change in the cultural and creative industries and also position Catalonia as an international showpiece.

The RIS3CAT Media Community brings together 34 companies and R&D players and is running eight technology innovation projects with an overall investment standing at €13.6 million. They range from new experiences in museums and innovations in learning processes to original solutions in streaming music and content recommendation. They also include immersive and interactive experiences and developing new entrepreneurship and business incubation formats.

Eight cutting-edge R&D projects

The PICAE (Intelligent Publication of Audiovisual and Editorial Content) project examines innovative audiovisual and editorial content recommendation models. It has a twofold objective: to enhance the user experience based on their profile and environment and thus their satisfaction and loyalty while also enhancing the digital consumption index of that content by identifying the products required by these new forms of consumption and how they should be produced, distributed and promoted to meet the needs of this emerging market.

The ViVIM (Computer Vision for Multi-Platform Immersive Video) project is creating a new audiovisual format based on omnidirectional video. This new format will offer end-users a consistent audiovisual experience across virtual reality devices, tablets and traditional TV sets rather than dividing their attention between them. The new content will integrate and enhance traditional television and the increasingly common second screen in the shape of tablets and mobile phones.

Meanwhile, the MIRONINS project is developing an augmented and interactive reality platform to build a new digital environment at the Joan Miró Foundation where the ‘Mironins’, small drops of paint which live inside Miró’s paintings, encourage children to discover the world of art and expand their artistic abilities while having fun.

The nanoMOOCs project will incorporate gamification tools and content customisation in a single online learning platform based on open programming to encourage students to follow a learning pathway and enable automated assessment of their skills.

The IDENTI@RT project is developing a distributed and decentralised platform that will allow artists, creators and designers to record their work in digital format, thereby ensuring its originality, integrity and their rights securely and effectively while maintaining a record of the transactions associated with it.

The Engagement project is developing technologies which encourage the public to interact with the content exhibited in museums, further enriched by analysing the data generated by their visits to provide new interpretations and experiences.

The EDvidence project seeks to enable the development of new teaching initiatives for businesses and/or institutions by promoting a management system designed to enhance the innovation and organisational processes of educational and cultural actors.

The ZINKCAT project is drawing up new protocols that enable designers and marketing agencies to lay the conceptual foundations for creating connected designs and enhancing the user experience.

Jointly funded by Catalan Trade & Investment, the RIS3CAT Media Community is one of the 13 RIS3CAT Communities accredited by Catalan Trade & Investment. In the 2014-2020 period this strategy had a total budget coming to €53 million, aid managed by Catalan Trade & Investment and part of which comes from the European Union’s European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). An RIS3CAT Community is a public-private sector association made up of various organisations (businesses, technology centres, universities and other R&D system actors) for the purpose of rolling out transformative technology projects with a high impact on the Catalan economy.

The members of the RIS3CAT Media Community are: ARA – Edició d’Empresa Periòdica, Barcelona Design Centre (BCD), BMAT Licensing, Connociam Consulting, Cornelius Films, the Catalan Broadcasting Corporation (CCMA), Creactivitat, the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Computer Vision Centre (CVC), Enciclopèdia Catalana, Ediciones Don Bosco (EDEBÉ), Eurecat, Antoni Tàpies Foundation, Joan Miró Foundation, Internet i Innovació Digital a Catalunya (i2CAT), Grup Include 3, Indissoluble, Konodrac, Lavinia Next, Lead to Change, Mobile Media Content (MMC), National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC), Nextret, Grupo Ormo, Penguin Random House, Peninsula, Rebold, Seidor, Soft For You, the University of Barcelona (UB), the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), Visyon and Wildbytes.