HSE University Takes Part in VK Fest
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How can ‘Polina’ help you steer a yacht? Should we demonise plastic? Why does game development have nine circles of hell? What happens when we move our eyes while reading? Answers to all these questions could be found in the ‘Intellect’ space organised by HSE University at VK FEST, where it was the only university to take part in the festival in Moscow.
VK FEST is a popular urban open-air festival held on July 23–24, 2022 in three cities at once: Moscow, St Petersburg and Sochi. Visitors listened to music by famous artists, took part in various events and competitions, and attended the pavilions in the expo zone. HSE University organised the ‘Intellect’ space in Moscow’s Gorky Park, and was the only university to take part in the festival in the Russian capital.
Lectures, master classes, and presentations of student and staff projects took place at HSE University’s pavilion in Gorky Park. One of them was the Shukhov Lab for experimental urban design, which presented a mobile plastic-recycling point where guests could turn ordinary bottle caps into unique keychains with the HSE University logo. ‘We demonstrate the principles of a closed economy in action,’ says Anton Artemchuk, Head of Shukhov Lab. ‘This economy does not use new resources, but reuses all the resources we already have—ideally indefinitely.’
The plastic is sorted, then crushed into granules. These are melted and sent to the device for casting into aluminium moulds, where the heated plastic is formed into key chains. ‘Thus, at least some of these bottles won’t end up going straight to the landfill, but will be reused. And the life cycle of a keychain is much longer than that of a bottle cap, which is good,’ says Anton Artemchuk.
One of the lectures was also dedicated to sustainable design. Maria Stepanova, Head of Product and Industrial Design at the HSE Art and Design School, spoke about the efficiency of plastic recycling, its types, and how well-known companies implement this technology in their production. ‘There are quite a lot of types of plastic in the world. It is very useful, cool, has different properties, and it should never be demonised. Our medicine would not exist without plastic,’ says Maria Stepanova.
Visitors to the HSE University pavilion played virtual games and became yacht captains with the help of the VR simulator ‘Polina’, which was named after the developer’s classmate. ‘Our task was to create a simulator for yachtsmen. We took a TV stand, designed and attached a shelf to hold the system unit, and added a box with electronics inside. The electronics read the data from encoders, sends it to the computer, which, depending on the data, moves the yacht, which is reflected in the VR glasses. Then, the computer sends information about the yacht’s movement to the microcontroller in order to create a reverse force in the steering wheel,’ says Alisher Yuldashov, one of the developers of the simulator and 4th-year student of the Information Science and Computation Technology programme.
The HSE University Center for Language and Brain gave visitors a chance to take a series of small tests. ‘I use three tests: RAVLT, TMT, and TIGER. Two of them evaluate short-term memory, attention and cognitive skills, and the results of the third one are necessary for further development of the test,’ comments Vasilisa Stepanova, graduate of the Fundamental and Computational Linguistics programme.
In the lecture ‘How Not to Develop Indie Games (The 9 Circles of Game Development Hell)’ Nikita Kuznetsov, Chief Technical Officer at Bear Head Studio, and Egor Torzhkov, Art Director at Bear Head Studio, told the audience about video games and the main problems in visual development. ‘At the beginning of every project, you create an idea,’ says Egor Torzhkov. ‘You have an idea and you want to develop it somehow, maybe make money from it, sell it, make some kind of “dream game”. But the problem is that this does not happen—that you have an idea, do something, and get the result. Game development is not that easy. It's not playing games. It is a very complicated process.’
Olga Buivolova, Junior Research Fellow at the HSE University Center for Language and Brain, talked about what psycho- and neuro-linguists study, how language is organised in the brains of left- and right-handed people, and what the movement of our eyes says about us when we read. Vasily Vyalkov, student of the Applied Mathematics and Information Science programme, shared how to successfully combine study, work and startups.
Guests of the Intellect space could also attend a live recording of the podcast ‘Everything is OK’, in which Irina Makarova, Director of the HSE University Centre for Psychological Counselling, spoke about the importance of maintaining your emotional health, and Olga Buivolova spoke about speech, human mentality, and how people are affected by what they are talking about.
For Darina Ryabova, a 3rd-year student of the Information Science and Computation Technology programme, participation in VK FEST is a great opportunity to meet new people and have great time: ‘It features various student projects, and is an interactive space where you can have fun, answer various questions, take part in quizzes and win prizes.’
Visitors to the HSE University pavilion enjoyed the opportunity to listen to lectures and win prizes.
Vladimir Grigoriev
‘My mood is great. We won a lot of stuff, visited the HSE University pavilion, and took a Russian language test—there were 25 questions, and I answered 20 correctly and set a record. Everything is very cool and the people are nice.’
Klim Koldunov
‘We took a Russian language test. There were 25 questions and they were extremely difficult. Considering the fact that we passed the Unified State Exam three months ago and did not prepare for anything else, we did very well: 18 out of 25 answers were correct. We got prizes, and I really liked everything. We’re smiling, which means that everything is going well.’
Dima Antsibor
‘Alina and I played an interesting game. The students are great—they’re trying to do something new. We also took part in a quiz. It was a lot of fun, had a cool format, and we won prizes.’
HSE University’s festival summer is not over—MIEM and Shukhov Lab will present their developments at the Geek Picnic 2022 international science and technology festival on July 30 in Moscow.