Introduction

The worldwide emergence of increasingly complex challenges requires creative solutions that draw on multiple disciplines. This includes interactions with technology, the perceptually accessible world, and collective versus individual knowledge and processes. The Off The Lip 2018 event will draw on experiences and outcomes from multiple disciplinary initiatives, to explore the value and impact of innovative and interdisciplinary collaborations.

This event is connected with two-day grant “ writeshop ” centred around multiple disciplinary endeavours (broadly) or interdisciplinarity as a topic or as a method/practise, and Cognitive Innovation.

Symposium (19 June 2018)

For the symposium, we are welcoming submissions in the format of presentations, posters, interactions, films, performances, or demonstrations. We encourage contributions from previous successful interdisciplinary initiatives (discussing the benefits, challenges, and impact of such programmes) and welcome submissions in the following areas:

• Interdisciplinary research on Cognitive Innovation and its related sub-themes, which include but are not limited to creativity, multistable perception, embodied cognition, computational aesthetics, counterfactual thinking, technologies of intimacy, cognitive flexibility and openness, the decisive moment and insight, etc.
• Practices in building interdisciplinary environments
• Cross-disciplinary endeavours: art-science-humanities-technology collaborations

To submit a proposal for 15-minute presentations, interventions, or demonstrations,please send a 200-word abstract to [email protected] by 10th of May 2018.

Keynote speaker

Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi is a Professor at the Institute of Psychology (Psycholinguistics Lab) at the Polish Academy of Sciences and at the Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw where she heads Human Interactivity and Language Lab. In her research she uses an ecological-psychology approach to how action and co-action shapes cognition with a semiotic approach to explore types of signification and with dynamical systems methods for studying communication and coordination.

Dr Sophia Lycouris is interested in interdisciplinary research methodologies, including approaches informed by creative practice. She is also an artist working with movement/dance, choreography, improvisation, and performance for over twenty years, who gradually developed a dialogue with new technologies. Between 2007 and 2011, she was a Director of the Graduate Research School of the Edinburgh College of Art and developed innovative models of doctoral provision facilitating the integration between creative practice and academic approaches.

Angelo Cangelosi is a Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Cognition, and the Director of the Centre for Robotics and Neural Systems at Plymouth University (UK). His research expertise is in language grounding and embodiment in humanoid robots, developmental robotics, human-robot interaction, and on the application of neuromorphic systems for robot learning. He is currently the coordinator of the EU H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Industrial Doctorate “APRIL: Applications of Personal Robotics through Interaction and Learning” (2016-2019).

Background

This will be the 4th Off The Lip event organised by CogNovo, an interdisciplinary doctoral training programme at Plymouth University. CogNovo brought together 25 research fellows (alongside principal investigators and industry partners) from a variety of disciplines. It aimed to develop a novel approach to interdisciplinary research training and to motivate much-needed insights into processes of creativity and Cognitive Innovation. To date, the project has generated several high impact publications, long-lasting collaborations, original approaches to formulating research questions, and novel methodologies. We invite you to read last years publication or browse previous event pages of Off the Lip 2015, Off the Lip 2016, and Off the Lip 2017.

Conference Location

The Off The Lip 2018 symposium will run as part of the Cognition Institute conference and the Off The Lip 2018 writeshop will run on the two days that follow. Both events will be held at Plymouth University; Portland Square and Roland Levinsky Buildings, respectively. The address is Plymouth University, Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon, PL4 8AA, UK.