Return on the Pint of Science 2023 events

Our language is more unique than rare in the animal world. Like so many aspects of our behavior, we can best understand how it evolved by looking at how other species – more or less like us – communicate. Our language is not only spoken, but we often use gestures to understand each other. Just think of how much we gesture on the phone when the other person cannot even see us! We know that even great apes communicate with each other using gestures. But how similar are they to ours? How well could we understand what they are saying to each other?

We humans simply can’t help but exchange ideas! So it’s no wonder that there are over 7000 different languages in the world, all with different structures and sounds. But what about the rest of the animal kingdom? From singing birds and whales, to calling chimpanzees, squeaking white-tufted marmosets or warning meerkats; here, too, there is a lively communication.

We dived into the future of theater with researchers specializing in AI Lonneke van der Plas et Vincent Jung from the IDIAP institute, and stage director Christophe Burgess, creator of the RGB project, a theater piece in augmented reality. Together, they presented their unprecedented collaborations that merge artificial intelligence, virtual reality and human creativity to push the boundaries of artistic expression.

A full immersion in the present and the future of the neuroscience of language. Do animal talk to each other? Do they have a language? Can computers read our brains? What are the applications of the reading of brain activity related to speech? We had presentations and an activity to explore together questions on language and the brain. Kinkini Bhadra talked about the future of communication, while Théophane Piette talked about the similarities between animal communication and human language.