Keynote Speaker

‘Digital Wellness’ is a term associated to how high-tech giants such as Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, (and many others) are turning their attention on health as the next industry to transform towards the fifth stage of the sector: Health 5.0. Such transformation aligns with advances from 5G to 6G as reported in volume three of Brooks’ Springer books on ‘Technologies for Inclusive Wellbeing’ (2014, 2017, 2021). These volumes associate with his other eight transdisciplinary books covering design, innovation, creativity, learning, games, art, technology, interactivity, and more. In this keynote Brooks will overview his over three decades body of transdisciplinary/interdisciplinary/crossdisciplinary research titled ‘SoundScapes’, which relates directly to Health 4.0 and 5.0 keywords in how digitization and personalization are targeted. In concluding he will share progress on his working towards ‘Probably the best (re)habilitation complex in the world’.

 

Bio

Dr. Anthony (aka Tony) Brooks is Associate Professor and senior researcher at Aalborg University, Denmark. He is referred to as a third culture thinker and a world leading pioneer in applying digital media in (re)habilitation where his research has been referred to as unique having being awarded international and national awards. The research has been responsible for gaining numerous large-scale external funding resulting in international and national projects as well as establishing an industry start-up company, a commercial product, and a family of patents on his ‘communication method and apparatus’. A focus of his research is Virtual Interactive Space (VIS) around which his many decades of research have developed the modular SoundScapes ’system’ (method and apparatus). His PhD on this subject was from the University of Sunderland, UK.

Brooks’ over three decades body of work has been presented globally and he has been responsible for over 240 publications, including eleven books – covering topics relating to healthcare (re)habilitation, design, interactivity, sensor technologies, games, computer-generated environments, learning, creative expression, play, innovation, human-computer-interaction, alternative realities, artificial intelligence, art and technology and more. He has been invited speaker at – the United Nations headquarters in New York, USA, as well as many more including Xerox headquarters, Grenoble, France. He has also been steering person, organizing chair and co-chair of numerous international conferences.

Under Aalborg University, he was a founder of the Medialogy education wherein he was also section leader, study board member, lecturer and supervisor. Aligned, his proactive recruiting of international students led to the education growing to be the largest number of student intake numbers across three university campuses and in 2004, Brooks originated, established, and led the ‘SensoramaLab” Virtual Reality Complex (including Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, HCI, Games, and Playful Learning).

Amongst Brooks’ numerous credits are that he has been a coordination board member of the European Network for Intelligent Information Interfaces (i3net – established 1996) and since 2004 has been active working for the European Commission and other international funding organizations as evaluator, rapporteur, and expert reviewer of project applications. He was also an active member of the Global Education Team (GET) presenting around the world.

Brooks’ interactive art was first featured at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London in 1979; he was first ’artist in residence’ at the Centre for Advanced Visualisation and Interactivity (CAVI), Aarhus University in Denmark, and his various works have been featured at major (and not-so-major) events around the world.

Brooks has been plenary keynote speaker at over twenty international events and he is Danish representative for UNESCO’s International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Technical committee (WG14) on “Entertainment Computing” – specifically under work groups WG14.7 “Art and Entertainment”; WG14.8 “Serious Games”, and WG 14.9 “Game Accessibility”. Under the European Alliance for Innovation (EAI) he has steered the International Conference ArtsIT [Arts & Technology, Interactivity and Game Creation] since 2009 (see http://artsit.org ).

Brooks now has a vision of what he refers to as “Probably the best (re)habilitation complex in the world” posited being located at networked future smart cities around the globe where secured learning and sharing of experiences can emerge across cultures and languges and where advanced technologies are implemented toward improving wellbeing and quality-of-life potentials for people of determination and others. This vision will be presented to close Brooks’ talk.

Brooks’ university profile is at – https://vbn.aau.dk/da/persons/103302