Go back 
Pia Tikka
Filmmaker and researcherPia Tikka, PhD, is a filmmaker and researcher, creative director of Crucible Studio and founder of the NeuroCine research project at Aalto University, Finland. She directed feature films including Daughters of Yemanjá (1996) and Sand Bride (1998), and developed biosensor-based interactive media formats. She is the author of Enactive Cinema: Simulatorium Eisensteinense (2008) and creator of Obsession (2005), which received the Möbius Prix Nordic award for interactive storytelling. Her current research explores the role of the brain and body in creative imagination, storytelling and interactive media, including the development of virtual characters for generative narrative systems.
Includes facial close-ups of avatar characters and audio scenarios of challenging medical cases, such as breaking bad news and emergency situations. The medical student sits face-to-face with a screen-based virtual patient, which responds to the student’s biofeedback in real time. In scenarios the student hears herself talking as a junior doctor and is connected to the avatar with sensors and camera feedback. The avatar’s face reflects this input, forming a mirror-like loop between the student’s facial expression and other biofeedback data. The developed audio scenarios will represent the non-linear and polyphonic characteristics of actual medical practice, balancing between professional desensitization and maintenance of necessary emphatic capacities. They stimulate the students’ imagination and tolerance for silence and ambiguity when facing.
