Immersive Lab – Art, Research and Advertising

AP University College in Antwerp offers students of creative technology and media a learning and experimentation environment: the Immersive Lab.

This modular space functions as a laboratory platform, especially for the development of audiovisual installations, immersive storytelling, and interactive spatial experiences. The space is designed to encourage experimentation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the development of new presentation formats.

A next-generation media environment, the immersive laboratory is like a continuously evolving organism whose progression requires multidisciplinary expertise, creative innovation, ongoing development work, and technical maintenance. The Immersive Lab is primarily intended for students and researchers in audiovisual media, digital art, and storytelling. The Immersive Lab’s research group consists of three expert teams working together interdisciplinarily: a creative team, a technology team, and a user research team. These teams are led by a Creative Lead (Jeroen Cluckers), a Technology Lead (Lowie Spriet), and an Immersive User Research Lead (Dr. Laura Herrewijn). They are supported by a Lab Manager (Nick Claeskens) and a Research Coordinator (Dr. Silvia Van Aken).

In virtual production environments, experts from different fields and professional languages come together. The development of practices and operational cultures requires coordination and takes time. During my visit, the facilities, technologies, and broad projects were presented by Lab Manager Nick Claeskens. Research and education are conducted in collaboration with companies such as Toyota and Microsoft. For Toyota, students had designed and generated advertisements utilizing AI tools. On the other hand, innovative art projects have resulted in, for example, a media artwork packed into a suitcase, ingeniously using a physical gate as a portal into a virtual world to enhance the immersive experience.

Technical wizard and designer Keerthanan ‘Keeth’ Vignarajah is involved in many initiatives. A point-cloud-scanned virtual model of Antwerp Central Railway Station serves as a breathtakingly beautiful virtual event space for a media work simulating the sea level rise caused by climate change. To create a virtual twin, a 3D Full-Body Scanning rig has been built in the lab within a dome-shaped frame. Sometimes, new innovations and experiments can lead to unexpected events. The simultaneous firing of over a hundred newly installed cameras, intended to transfer an eager visitor into a virtual twin, caused a power surge, which tripped a circuit breaker, cutting electricity in a wide part of the building. Such things happen when you’re being creative.

Nick and Keerth present the laboratory and its development projects with inspiring enthusiasm. Everything radiates a desire to experiment, to grow, and to innovate. Many solutions, and combinations of technologies and platforms, don’t have ready-made answers — they must be built from scratch. Such was the case in a project that needed a timecode system to synchronize live-action material (from a cam-tracked chroma studio), virtual twins, and 3D backgrounds on the Unreal Engine platform. Keerth has innovated and coded the timecode system herself, utilizing AI. Nick, in turn, often acts as a kind of interpreter and coordinator between creators, researchers, and clients from different operational environments.

The Immersive Lab is a platform for learning and research. Students get to design, test, and present their projects in authentic media environments, where they can experiment with new narrative solutions and interaction forms. The space aims to promote new forms of audiovisual storytelling and to support students' abilities to operate in the rapidly evolving media and cultural industries.

The atmosphere in the Immersive Lab is so inspiring that a spark ignited within me — a wish to work in the lab myself one day. An experimental art and game project combining haptic suits and digital twins, for example, could form a potential research and test environment. Time will tell whether my dream of working at the Immersive Lab in Antwerp, Belgium, will one day come true.

The excursion was part of the Cutting Edges EU project’s series of visits aimed at strengthening expertise and networks.

The author of the article, Marko Luukkonen, is a Senior Lecturer specializing in Film department, a specialist, and a member of the Film and Media Research Group at the Arts Academy of Turku University of Applied Sciences (TUAS), Finland. His interests lie in the methods and meanings of image-creation.

Further information about the Immersive Lab: Immersive Lab | AP Hogeschool
and about the experts:
Keerthanan Vignarajah: Keerthanan Vignarajah | AP Hogeschool
Nick Claeskens: Nick Claeskens | AP Hogeschool