ESOF 2008 - 3rd Day

Again I get up at 7:30 - and am alone in the breakfast room. Understandable - who would want to get up so early on a Sunday morning? But I am interested in the session "Are the arts the language of the brain?". Interesting talks, but they do not answer the question. That is a general "theme" of this ESOF conference: the titles are quite provocative and thought-provoking, but then the panels to not really live up to those ambitious titles, and instead of giving an answer to the question, they talk either about the problems and question itself or just about their own work which has some remote link to the question. Nevertheless, the talks are interesting. Overall, there are several main themes in this conference: Brain imaging, energy, environment, and health as main research topics. Europe as a Knowledge Society in the policy topic. A lot of sessions deal with how Europe can be made more competitive, and the EU is always compared to the US. An interesting demo from the realm of Mixed Reality: a music synthesizer which is assembled form tangible objects. Developed and demonstrated by the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) in Barcelona.