TEI 2025: 19th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interactions

Theme

Our theme for TEI'25 is sustainable TEI. The theme echoes our pressing concerns about how human activity speeds up and our questioning of how to transition to more sustainable ways of living, working, and doing research.

First and foremost, for many the word sustainability likely evokes climate change and the exhaustion of the world's resources. Scientific conferences, such as TEI, contribute to climate change; directly, especially by encouraging travel, but also indirectly, for example, when promoting new techniques or technologies that may be wasteful of energy or resources. At the same time, conferences remain important events enabling researchers to discover each other's work which remains (at least for now) difficult to achieve in virtual formats, particularly for work having physical components, as is typical at TEI.

The theme also echoes how our scientific and design practices can be sustained in the long term, by being open and reproducible and building solid bases on past work. We will attract and draw attention to meaningful work targeting long-term impact.

The theme also echoes caring for oneself and others, including fellow researchers, students as well as end-users of our systems. In an era going faster every year, we want TEI’25 to be a bubble where attendees can communicate about the deep meaning of their research and their long-term career perspectives.

The conference organization itself will engage in an approach to minimize its environmental impact. First, TEI'25 will be a hybrid conference. For those traveling within Europe, we share resources for sustainable ways of traveling. The city of Bordeaux has also put together resources for a sustainable stay within the larger Bordeaux area. Concerning the research presented at the conference, TEI has a history of producing numerous objects, which may be difficult to reuse or recycle. In the past, sustainability conflicted with usability when specific tangible objects made interaction easier or wider accessible. The theme of sustainability has been gaining prominence at the TEI conference each year. Our collective responsibility as the TEI community is to embrace sustainability and demonstrate that this issue is paramount to us.

We will seek to attract and draw attention to work that addresses sustainability, with the aim of making a significant contribution to the sustainability discourse. This will be reflected in the conference's choice of keynote speakers, the call for scientific contributions, the curatorial brief for the art track and exhibition, and the student design challenge.

About Bordeaux

Bordeaux is situated in the south west of France, between the charming Atlantic west coast and the natural region Landes de Gascogne. The architecture of Bordeaux is worldly known for its 18 century style and has been recognized by the UNESCO as a gem of humanity's heritage. Bordeaux also plays an important part in the French gastronomy especially with its exceptional wines. You can visit many vineyard around Bordeaux. Bordeaux's wine long history also resulted in a traditional pastry: the cannelé. More infos about what to do in and around Bordeaux can be found on the tourism office's website: https://www.bordeaux-tourism.co.uk