SignON had a strong presence at the START event in TCD on the 29th of September 2023. START is part of European Researchers’ Night, a Europe-wide public engagement event, which displays the diversity of research and its impact on citizens’ daily lives in fun, inspiring ways. In 2023, there were more than 50 events across 25 countries around Europe.
This free event, held in Trinity College Dublin, and hosted in partnership with the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland and the ADAPT Centre, the SFI Research Centre for AI-Driven Digital Content Technology, invited visitors to take an up-close look at the fascinating research that is shaping our world, explore solutions to society’s biggest problems, and learn about cutting-edge thinking through debates, interactive workshops, screenings and much more.
For this event a demo application was developed and primarily demonstrated by Ruth Holmes to show real time fingerspelling in ISL to users. Rachel Moiselle, Ellen Rushe, Irene Murtagh and Aoife Brady also assisted in demonstration and SignON’s participation in the event.
We also presented a screening of That is the Question, a short film created as part of SignON with funding from Science Foundation Ireland. Coordinated by Dr Shaun O’Boyle and Dr Elizabeth Mathews in collaboration with Alvean Jones and Lianne Quigley, That is the Question is a Shakespeare performance in Irish Sign Language “for people and machines”. It asks how an artificial intelligence might perceive sign language, and features performances from Lianne Quigley and Alvean Jones. Watch the video here: https://signon-project.eu/publications/video-series/ .