Culture

As a consequence of the Institute’s general intellectual habitude and the multi-pronged characteristics of the technologies cultivated here, a persistently searching openness is a driving force towards other areas in research and culture. In the selection of new colleagues, cultural predisposition is a criterion beyond having a proven aptitude in the given thematic area itself.

The technical achievements have turned us first of all into the direction of fine arts. The Institute was the initiator and sponsor of the first exhibition of digital technics in Hungary, and the campaign for an aesthetic design of internet homepages as well as the establishment of the C3 centre, an atelier for digital arts. The hardware and software infrastructure of the Institute provided the learning and testing tools for receiving guest visitors in this field for shorter or even longer duration which has partly contributed to the general adoption of digital arts. The net based periodical “The Night Watch” was edited and distributed in the same framework.  We had and still have a relevant role in the continuous renewal of pedagogy through digital arts.

The Institute has contributed to laying down the societal and philosophic basement of information technology, clarifying the ontological and epistemological questions raised by the computerised world. Linked strongly to this activity, the problems dealt with by both the theoretical and experimental research of the technical and human aspects of the human-machine interfaces have become for us ever more relevant. Among these issues, computer linguistics and sensor based digital pattern recognition have been the outstanding examples.