The Augmented Materiality Lab (AMLab) brings together scientists and artists with a maker mindset, interested in the technological continuum going from matter/object-centric research on one side, to human/society-centric research on the other.
Central to this is the process of growing agency into matter and “introspective” capacity into everyday objects. Technology exploiting this substance can become more than a tool at the service of humans, but a way to extend our bodies and selves and ultimately reconnect us with the physical world. Augmented Materiality is real augmented reality: it does not overlays the digital over the real or augment our senses, but makes objects capable of producing this information and expressing it naturally.
In this sense, Augmented Materiality extends the Internet of Things both downwards (programmable matter) and upwards (augmentation of bodies and minds), striving to open a communication channel accross different levels of organizational complexity. Augmented Materiality is prosthetics for reality.
With this mission, the AML naturally engages in interdisciplinary research: from Smart Materials, Programmable Matter and the Internet of Things to Robotics, Responsive Architectures and Smart Cities; from Human-Computer Interfaces and Prosthetics, to research on Devices that Alter Perception (DAP) through Augmented or Virtual Reality. These subjects are explored both in a traditional academic way, but also in a speculative manner.
