Wivi Lönn MR
2025 [NEXR Pilot]
A mobile, location based AR experience that anchors cultural memory to a real site, using curated content and a clear narrative flow. The aim was to take a co-created platform idea and test a realistic, low-threshold slice of it in practice: a mobile, location-based AR experience that anchors cultural memory to a real site, using curated content and a clear narrative flow.
The pilot was created in collaboration with Vapriikki, which helped ground the concept in existing heritage materials and an already established public-facing tour, making it possible to move from abstract scenarios to an implementable prototype.
Created by Ruchira Prageeth Amarasinghe, Cláudia Mendes, Janset Shawash, and Mattia Thibault.
Paper – Included in the NEXR Cookbook
MixAR Molkky
2025 [NEXR PoC]
MiXR Mölkky is an interactive, Wizard of Oz, low-fi prototype serving as proof of concept for a Mixed Reality variant of the popular Finnish outdoor game Mölkky. We decided to design an AR augmentation for Mölkky, a traditional Finnish game that is played outdoor and with wooden pieces. The MiXR Mölkky game variant does not alter the rules of the game in any way, rather, it allows the players to temporally modify the values of the pins. In turn, players can deploy different “powers” which affect the value of the pins for an entire round. In addition to adding an AR point counter, an MR overlay is used to modify the appearance of the numbers on the pins.
Created by Mattia Thibault.
Included in the NEXR Cookbook
Who Killed Helene Pumpulivaara?
2025 [NEXR PoC]
Heritage environments often lack the interpretive tools needed to communicate social histories in ways that feel alive, embodied, and emotionally resonant. A growing number of institutions are turning to XR for this purpose, yet the actual production of immersive heritage content remains slow, resource-heavy, and dependent on skills that many creative organisations do not have.
Who Killed Helene Pumpulivaara? addresses this bottleneck by exploring how AI-assisted workflows can accelerate and diversify the production of immersive heritage narratives, while still maintaining interpretive accuracy and aesthetic coherence. Developed as a fictional mystery inspired by Tampere’s Finlayson Factory and its industrial labour history, the project functions as a test bed for end-to-end AI support: from concept and visual ideation to scriptwriting, character creation, environmental modelling, audio production, and rapid iteration.
Created by Janset Shawash.
Paper – Included in the NEXR Cookbook
Battle of Tampere AR
2024 [NEXR Pilot]
The Battle of Tampere AR project is set against the context of the 1918 Finnish Civil War, focusing on the pivotal Battle of Tampere and its aftermath at Näsilinna Palace. This historical castle was a key stronghold during the conflict and suffered heavy damage during the battle. Although the castle has since been restored, no visible evidence of the battle remains. Many artefacts from the site, such as weapons and personal items, are preserved
by the Museum Centre Vapriikki but are no longer publicly displayed following the closure of the Tampere
1918 exhibition. As a result, visitors to the site encounter little material connection to its wartime past.To address this, the project uses mobile augmented reality (MAR) to reintroduce historical content onto the
present-day site.
Created by Ruchira Prageeth Amarasinghe, under the supervision of Mattia Thibault.
Included in the NEXR Cookbook
Heuri-stick
2024 [Playful Sensing]
The HeuriStick is an extension to a walking stick that allows the beholder to easily make photos and videos while walking. It is meant to facilitate rapid and unobtrusive documentation of spontaneous events that take place during a hike. By pressing a button located at the back of the device, users can take photos and make videos.
It is part of Ferran Altarriba Bertran’s Wild Probes set.
Ideated by Mattia Thibault and realised by Ferran Altarriba Bertran.
Sensor Hunt and Pathmaker
2023 [Playful Sensing]
Two “sylvan games” making use of sensors and played in the forest, were designed building on the existing literature on urban games, to introduce the idea of “sylvan games”. These games focus on deepening the relations between players and natural spaces.
Sensor Hunt (SH) focused on wayfinding and using a heat sensor. Players were provided with approximative coordinates to a nearby woodland location where a slightly personified temperature sensor called “Sauron” (because of the red eye on its display) was “hidden”.Participants had to find it and record the temperature it displayed. The player that would record the highest temperature in the 3 days would win. This entailed that participants might revisit the sensor to increase their winning chances.
Pathmaker (PM) focused on pathmaking and GPS. Players were instructed to download a free app called “My Track” which uses GPS to record their path on a map. The goal of the game was to use it to produce a word or a drawing by walking in the forest. There were no winning conditions.
Created by Mattia Thibault and Elpida Bampouni in collaboration with the project UNITE.
Gamifeen GO
2023 [Conference Game]
An Augmented Reality Conference Game designed as sequel of Etsijä’s Hunt for GamiFIN 2023. In the conference participants were instructed to use an AR application to look for “gamifeens”: little magic creatures mimicring gamification strategies. The players could find them by scanning different objects at the conference venue, including posters, roll-ups, wall paintings, the programme and more. Players were issued “diplomas” according to the number of gamifeens identified.
Created by Mattia Thibault, Oğuz “Oz” Buruk, and Nikoletta Zampeta Legaki.
Sensational Buoys
2021 [Playful Sensing]
A series of actual and speculative citizens sensing devices dedicated to urban waters, initiated in a workshop for the 2020 Media Architecture Biennale (Amsterdam). The online workshop Sensational Buoys aimed to explore the intersection between citizen sensing, toyification and monitoring urban waters. The workshop wass dedicated to the design and realisation of “Sensational Buoys”: small floating devices equipped with simple sensors and having a playful appearance. The buoys are playful devices to sense and visualize data about urban waters and are intended to raise awareness about the importance of monitoring our environment.
Created by Artur Cordeiro Vasconcelos and Mattia Thibault.
The Internet of Bananas
2021 [Playful Sensing]
A design-led exploration of citizen sensing as well as an exercise in “useful futility”. The project mixed critical design and satire to explore social justice attitudes towards data collection and electronic literacy. In the IoB a number of participants from around the world collaboratively created and set up a small IoT network by programming and interconnecting a set of sensor kits with which they monitored the colour, surface temperature and humidity of a network of bananas for the duration of one week. The main goal of the creation of such network was to be a platform for reflection, discussion and exchange on themes related to data production and collection.
The IoT was present in Africa, South Amrica, Europe and the Near East.
Created by Artur Cordeiro Vasconcelos and Mattia Thibault.
Etsijä’s Hunt
2021 [Conference Game]
An Alternate-Reality Discord and Zoom-based Conference Game created for the GamiFIN2021 conference. The game is a sequel of Etsijä’s Call, and involved several fictional caracter appearing in the conference Discord channel and attending online sessions on Zoom and interacting with participants and involving them in their quests.
Created by Mattia Thibault, Oğuz “Oz” Buruk, and Nikoletta Zampeta Legaki.
Etsijä’s Call
2020 [Conference Game]
An Alternate-Reality Discord-based Conference Game designed for GamiFIN2020. The main objective of the game Etsija’s Call was to create an alternative and fun way for participants to interact with the conference and to facilitate the engagement with the different parts of the event. The first planned version of the game was meant to be a location-based game: however, the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions to travel the conference to be moved online. The game, therefore, acquired a new dimension: not only to help the participants to engage with the virtual spaces of the conference (zoom meeting, the conference website, the conference discord channel) but also to compensate, in part, the lack of physical interaction and socialisation.
Created by Mattia Thibault, Oğuz “Oz” Buruk and Nikoletta Zampeta Legaki.
Jurassic Tampere
2019 [Urban Gamification]
Jurassic Tampere is an urban toyification activity that was carried out in Tampere, Finland in December 2019 in order to test some of assumptions regarding urban toyification. During the activity, a group of nine participants walked around the Tampere city center for three hours positioning in the public spaces 420 small rubber dinosaurs, taking pictures of the toys and observing the reactions of passersby.
The main idea was that positioning toys in the city makes the environment look different: the objects around are rescaled by the toys and new meanings can arise from their interpretations and interactions.
Created by Mattia Thibault.
ROOK
2019 [Playful Sensing]
Rook is playful data visualization device aiming at the dissemination of air quality data.The Rook unit accesses the database of the Hollandse Luchten(henceforthHL) project, which collects dataon air quality in Nord-Hollandvia a network of sensor kits distributed to the local population anddisplays it in an interactive way using lights and mist.The eerie and mysterious effect of the coloredmist aims at a playful and enticing effect on its users, while, at the same time, spreadingawareness on one of the key sustainability issues of the region.People caninteract freely with the machine so to explore its working and the data it conveys.
Created by Artur Cordeiro Vasconcelos and Mattia Thibault in partnership with Waag, and with the collaboration of Yuri Alexsander, Mar Escarrabill, Luis Rodil Fernandez and Jéssyca Rios.
InterReality 