SMARTlab information kit_24aug10

http://www.SMARTlab.uk.com 1

The SMARTlab Digital Media Institute for Site-Specific

Media, Performance, Art, Design and Sustainable

Technology Innovation


The aim of the SMARTlab is to work across sectors and disciplines to instigate and support

positive cultural change. SMARTlab insists upon an ethical and socially responsible

community collaboration model, which informs and enriches the academic domain by

encouraging teams of artists and cultural sector creatives to work closely across disciplinary

boundaries to invent new models and tools for learning. This model, over 17 years, has made

real impact by helping to change the academy from within by enabling many more women,

artists, open source advocates, ‘non-standard’ learners and people with disabilities to gain the

highest level of 'credit' for their practical work and scholarship, to the point that, once they

have gained their own PhDs, they can help to shape new models of inclusive, applied

practice-based research so that it can transform the university sector from within.

The SMARTlab Practice-based PhD Programme has graduated over 30 PhDs who have

gone on to lead major institutions and labs worldwide (see the Index of graduates, attached).

The programme currently supports a cohort of 35 international PhD candidates in the fields of

Design, New Media and Performance, Digital Media, ICT4d, Assistive Technologies for

People with Disabilities and the Elderly, Technology Futures, Wearables and SMART

Textiles, Performance Technologies, Assistive Tech and Innovations, Technology Enhanced

Learning for Health and Well Being, Digital Inclusion, Haptic and HCI integrated studies, and

‘Meaningful Games’ or Mobile Games for Learning.

The SMARTlab Mission is to bring together teams of designers, artists, scholars,

technologists and policy makers to share a commitment to creative technology innovation for

real social change.

In our knowledge exchange PLAYroom and linked studios in the London Docklands, and at

sister sites world wide, we provide a world-class research and incubation space for academic

staff, practice-based PhD students and interdisciplinary teams of artists and technologists,

scholars and education experts, community workers and industry representatives, working

together to create and test the efficacy of new media and informatics tools designed for a

‘universal design’ ethos.

Together, we make new media tools, games, software applications, live and telematic

performances that demonstrate our model of social inclusion through the sharing of

intellectual, creative and innovative capital.

About the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute

The SMARTlab Digital Media Institute (for site specific media, performing and digital arts)

brings designers, media artists, performers, technologists, scholars, business and e-

commerce specialists, engineers, medical experts, and policy makers to sites around the

world where their combined skills can make a real difference for communities, both locally

and globally.

The SMARTlab, was founded in 1993, and has operated - with a number of partners, from a

number of bases internationally - since 1991. In 2005 we took up a new home base in

bespoke studios at the University of East London in the heart of the Docklands. This space


offers an ideal setting for creative exchange, both nationally and globally, and provides a

base for our major collaborations with the 2012 Olympic and Paralympics Games.

The SMARTlab has spread its wings to fill those new purpose built studios, including the

MAGIC (Multimedia & Games Innovation Centre) PLAYroom, incubation and training spaces

with linked fabrication, simulation, and product design facilities. We also work closely with the

MATRIX studios funded by SONY: our main partner institute, providing a high-definition

multistream film/video production / performance facility all on site.

For the past 17 years, the

SMARTlab has gained

recognition as one of the

world’s leading Practice-based

PhD Programmes, and is

viewed as an incubator for the

next generation of talent and

high-level scholarship in the

‘ArtSci’ domain.

We are currently located in the

heart of the Olympic and

Thames Gateway

Regeneration Area for East London, SMARTlab occupies the central corridor of the largest

and most productive Knowledge Transfer unit (the Knowledge Dock), providing a scholarly

and creative community base for cross-sector development within and beyond the university

sector. Since making the move to UEL. The SMARTlab has run major national and

international seminars, events and knowledge cafés, as well as a range of interactive think-

tanks, club nights and blue-sky labs. Regular formal lecture programmes and community

outreach projects are in process. Local and international organisations are invited to contact

us to collaborate and participate.

www.smartlab.uk.com

www.uel.ac.uk/smartlab


Activities

The SMARTlab is a Digital Media & Creative Technology Innovation Centre with three distinct

threads of activity:

A practice-based PhD programme and research centre for designers, artists and

technologists working in artistic domains, who have long encountered difficulties in placing

their work in relation to the academy: in finding appropriate ways to 'measure' artistic practice

in 'research exercises', in identifying appropriately flexible and experimental forms for artistic

research processes and outcomes, and in competing for academic funding;

A suite of community outreach and digital inclusion projects around e-inclusion and design for

ability, assistive technology, IT for women and girls, and educational inclusivity;

A knowledge transfer centre and Gamelab/PLAYroom that operates as a space where local

communities can join forces with UEL academics, artists, technologists and game designers

to make and test games and interactive tools.

The SMARTlab holds a 'universal design' concept at heart: by designing for the segments of

society whose interests and needs are least served by 'off the shelf' technologies - e.g.

women, young people at risk, and people with (extreme) disabilities - we aim to create

socially inclusive, sustainable projects and products of use to ALL.

The SMARTlab team holds a strong collaborative ethos in its work and includes live artists,

performers, dance and movement specialists, visual artists, filmmakers, photographers,

sculptors, textile experts, fashion designers, poets/writers, composers/ musicians, sound

artists, VR engineers, programmers, game and interface designers, and e-business

specialists who design for sustainable development, social change and community well-

being.

Ethos

SMARTlab's ethos is simple: every project is

intimately grounded in a community, culture or

research environment. The team spends the time

to get to the know the local people, issues,

concerns and needs before involving the larger

group of experts, which may include artists,

computer scientists, medical and social care

professionals, educators, and scholars. The

larger, integrated cohort then develops new

technology tools with real social impact, whether

for individuals, for groups, or for wider

international aims.


The SMARTlab selects projects and teams on the basis of ethical concerns, social

engagement and the ability to work effectively in interdisciplinary groups, as well as for the

originality and potential impact of the research, in basic and applied terms.

In every context, the aim is to effect knowledge transfer within the team, between the teams

and local communities, and in broader academic and industry relations. SMARTlab Communities

The SMARTlab works in communities. The three primary target groups are women, children

& young people, and people with disabilities.

Nationally and internationally the SMARTlab works off-site but in situ: in women’s shelters,

schools, hospitals, rehabilitation centres, and also travels to meet and ideate with its partners

in universities, industry think-tank settings and retreats.

Locally we operate out of a main UK site at our

current ‘home’ studio and ‘PLAYroom’ at UEL,

with sister sites in operation (and accessible via

telematic stream) in New York, Atlanta, Ohio, Los

Angeles, Seattle, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver,

Dublin, Amsterdam, Fes, Marrakech, Alibag,

Mumbai, Dubai and Cairo.

The SMARTlab is acknowledged for its community

work and this is reflected in its funding. Support

comes from a variety of sources from research grants to charity and foundation grants and

industry / CSR funding.

SMARTlab operates alongside an independent charity known as ‘SafetyNET’

(http://www.safespaces.net) recognised as a best practice model for community

engagement in creative technology innovation by the US government and by partners at the

U.N., World Bank, Microsoft, the BBC, NESTA, the Carl Sagan Trust, The Wellcome Trust,

The Gulbenkian Trust, LEGO Europe, and many other past and present partners.


The Method

Projects are designed to meet the needs of those

communities or social groups least represented or

supported by ‘off the shelf’ technology tools for

education, communication, skills training and/or

artistic and social empowerment.

The MAGIC PLAYroom

MAGIC is a creative space. It sits at the heart of SMARTlab, a research

centre whose mission is to produce scholarship that becomes an

international point of reference for the digital media field.

MAGIC, which has been funded by the Higher Education Innovation Fund

(HEIF2), will apply this research to 'real world' problems. Working with

colleagues here in UEL's Knowledge Dock, we plan to develop MAGIC

into a dynamic interface between UEL, business and the wider

community.

MAGIC aims to:

act as an intellectual hub, offering researchers a 'third' space where they can interact with

each other, with the private sector, and with policy makers, to explore the shape of our digital

future, provide an innovative way of connecting with communities, using the new generation

of pervasive, cheap or free, 'citizens' technologies that are an increasingly powerful tool for

social change, and enable experimentation with new business models, as a maturing field

reaches its commercial potential and creates fresh opportunities for economic and social

development.

Digital Media Expertise

Our Technical Arts/Design Interaction team are highly experienced and equipped to deliver a

range of creative digital media solutions including edutainment, training and multimedia

projects using different multimedia technologies (DVD, CD, web, interactive 3D space).

Our resident artists, technologists and PhD students offer a range of specialized, unique and

innovative expertise including:

• Visualization, simulation and interactive 3D modelling

• 3D interactive entertainment, stereoscopy & games


The SMARTlab team product presentations using new technologies include:

• High-end HD film, video production and editing

• Bespoke visual presentations for offline and online

• Graphics and website (web 2.0) design and management

• Concept and brand design with full design package

• On-line systems & internet presentations

• 2D/3D designs and animations

• Touch screen interfaces

Clients we have worked with:

• BGCA/Microsoft Clubtech

• Knowledge Dock, UEL

• Celebrating Enterprise, European Union Social Funds Equal

• Urban Buzz

• NESTA

• BBC

• LEGO Europe

• The European Commission

• Microsoft Community Affairs

• Nokia


SMARTlab Research Team and Staff

The SMARTlab team operates across genres,

disciplinary and cultural boundaries. It aims to create

ethically and socially responsible media, art works, and

to inform the next generation of designers, artist-made

technology tools. The team holds a 'universal design'

concept at heart: designing for the segments of society

whose interests and needs are least served by 'off the

shelf' technologies. The aim is to create projects that

will stimulate further development and new market.

The SMARTlab team includes designers, live artists,

performers, dance and movement specialists, visual

artists, filmmakers, photographers, sculptors, textile

experts, fashion designers, poets/writers,

composers/musicians, sound artists, VR engineers,

programmers, game designers, interface designers,

urban planners, architects, policy analysts, and specialists in e-business. All the work is

collaborative and enables sustainable development, social change and community well-being.

About SMARTlab

The SMARTlab's cohort of trans-disciplinary medical and well being experts, assistive

technology mentors and practitioners, artists, technologist and business colleagues bring an

impressive resume of credentials in Experience Design, live and virtual; we have worked with

Disney special effects leaders such as Rhythm and Hues and Pixar, on major theme park

developments and hospital & other site-based art and media installations, and have

presented major interactive exhibits at all the major international graphics and design

conferences (Siggraph, MILIA, IBC, BAFTA et al). We also have considerable experience in

the advertising sector, and team members have worked with Yahoo, Saatchi & Saatchi,

Unilever, OldNavy/Gap, Lego, et al. In addition, we are renowned for our large scale

performance events, which bring dance, theatre and music with interactive media together

with olfactory (scent and taste experiences), robotic and other display forms for major

audiences at the U.N., World Summit et al. We were commissioned to design experiences for

the Omniglobe major exhibit ‘Plays well with Others’ (pictured above) in 2004. We were

commissioned to write, design and perform the Special Olympics pre-Show in Dublin 2003,

and are at work on interactive live/media presentations for the 2012 games and Paralympics.

Our recent showcase at the Science Museum London also had rave reviews.

See

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2006/12/20/ecnchair20.xml


Creative Industries and Knowledge Transfer Experience SMARTlab approaches experience design in an innovative format framed by improvisation,

test, and iteration of models for learning, sales, interactive arts, gaming and leisure. We see

Experience Design as a metaconcept that provides direction, vocabulary, and technique that

can enable multiple disciplines to work together in a unified manner- As Karl Long writes in

the “Experience Curve” http://blog.experiencecurve.com:

“Borrowing from the design strategies of successful theme parks, Experience Design

emerged in 2001 as a recognised design method for manufacturers and retailers in need of

generating excitement about their brands or in-store experience. Experience marketing is

meant to immerse the customer in a customized/custom built environment programmed to

educate and energise their enthusiasm about the brand.

The advent of online shopping has significantly affected the retail industries perception of the

in-store experience. No longer a necessity to go to the store retailers and product

manufacturers have to now rethink the promotion paradigm and pull bodies into stores to

protect their capital investment in brick and mortar and to rationalize their place and identity

on the street. Manufacturers have designed retail style outlets that are actually there not to

sell but to promote the brand. In New York City Samsung, Sony, Nokia and Adidas followed

the successful example of Apple by bringing their brand and its identity to the street making

their shops fun places to hang out in and to try the new products.”

User-centred Experience Design can be used to engage communities and to:

• build sustainable competitive advantages

• differentiate brands in a crowded world

• build brand equity and perceived value

• drive brand awareness

• create excitement and momentum

SMARTlab has been working with local government and development agencies in East

London since 2005 to provide strategic vision and skills/experience training as neighborhoods

of East London prepare for major transformation with the arrival of the Olympic and

Paralympic Games in 2012. In this we will build further on our existing track record of event

and experience design and management: We have, for instance, led major workshops for the

European Commission and Media Programmes in Creative Arts and Experience Labs, with

events ranging from day workshops to full week retreats that take ideas from concept to 2d.3d

prototype stage, and that encourage ‘emotional intelligence’ and experience cues recognition,

as well as standard ‘pitch strategies’.

By means of example the SMARTlab could provide the following Knowledge Exchange

experience sessions for industry:

- “Discovering the Message”, Experience Thinktanks taking clients through an engaging

process of discovering what they want their messages to say, and the best ways to deliver

specific messages.


- Delivery System: development and iterative testing of bespoke systems for delivery of

selected brand messages across the sector.

- Proof of Concepts workshops and open Pitch sessions.

- Competitions and Awards (with BAFTA et al)

- “Training the Trainers for Experience Design”: extended workshops and short courses.

We aim to collaborate closely with the LDA on the Games Academy, and with BAFTA et al on

a new set of awards for interactive experience design achieved through Meaningful Games

and Mobile Games for Learning.

The attached illustrations provide samples of our highly acclaimed Experience Design

concepts. Many more appear on our websites.

The SMARTlab’s current main UK site is based at the University of East London Docklands

Campus, and hosts a formidable team of recognised industry professionals including health

and Assistive Technology Exerts/Designers/ Artists/Technologists/Programmers/Architects

and Engineers. Many of our team started their careers in the commercial sector and have a

wealth of expertise in Experience Design for the Health, Retail, Entertainment and Hospitality

industries. The SMARTlab team is available for consultation to help you explore, focus and

create the right message and delivery approach for your clients and customers. We can host

creative brainstorming sessions at our MAGIClab located at the SMARTlab UEL Docklands

campus, or can visit your site for creative focus sessions with your team.

Our Sites: We have established centres over the years at the BBC Open University, KMI (Knowledge

Media Institute), University of Surrey Technology Studios, and Central Saint Martins College

of Art & Design Innovation Centre. When UEL built us a building in 2005 we moved there to

set up the MAGIC lab. SMARTclubs (bringing creative technology solutions to disadvantaged

young people and their communities) have been tested by over 5.4 million of the least

economically advantaged young people in America, and a new set of SMARTclubs is being

developed now for the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and African) region.

Other SMARTlab sister sites and SMART-futures Centres and experience/teaching units

have been set up in Dublin (with at Trinity College and UCD in partnership with the Science

Gallery and Central Remedial clinic), New York (in association with NYU, Columbia,

Eyebeam Studios and the Montefiore Children’s Hospital), Seattle (with the University of

Washington and Microsoft), Singapore (with NTU and the KK Hospital for Women and

Children and IDA), Brazil (with the British Council and Interdatica Centre in Sal Paulo), and at

the ThreeWays Special School and Stephen Hawking School for Special Children, in

England, in partnership with the Department for Children, Families and Schools and Becta.

New centres and projects are underway in these places.

In the UK, we are working with the CCA and Wellcome Trust to extend our work on setting up

a new set of sensory studios for healing and education, with plans to install new centre at for

the Great Ormond Street School and Evelina Children’s Hospital in future. We are also


working with CBBC Hospital, in partnership with the Football Foundation and CBBC. We are

also in initial talks for further expansion and distribution of our projects from a central London

hub to the more distanced and diverse areas of the UK, with many more invitations pending

and new set of linked rural studies in development for testing of project ideas throughout the

Scottish Highlands and Islands.

In the Middle East, in addition to Doha we have pending invitations to set up SMART-futures

Centres in Cairo (for Ritsec), Dubai (for the Dubai Women’s College and Microsoft), Abu

Dhabi (for the Khalifa fund) and expressions of interest from other countries. We can set up

small flexible and portable projects for hospital and home settings, as well as large scale

sensory environments, research and user testing labs for permanent residency: all sizes,

scales and purposes of design for ability, health and well being can be accommodated.


The People

SMARTlab Senior Management

Professor Lizbeth Goodman- SMARTlab Founder and Director (UK and International)

Lizbeth founded SMARTlab 17 years ago while at the BBC-Open

University. She has led the lab's developments through 4 universities,

many large scale funded projects, multiple international sister site

development, and the establishment of what is now known as one of the

world's most successful practice-based PhD programmes.

She has supervised 32 PhDs to successful completion and has examined for many other PhD

programmes around the world. As a researcher, she brings her experience of creating

ground-up technology solutions for special learning needs and for lifelong learning in

disadvantaged communities worldwide, with an emphasis on creative innovation strategies for

social entrepreneurship and leadership models that support learning for all.

Lizbeth is also Director of Research for Futurelab Education (chaired by Lord Puttnam), and

Honourary International Research Director for RITSEC in Cairo: the base for inclusive

educational projects for women in the Middle East). For the past four years she has held the

Microsoft Community Affairs Senior Research Fellowship in Innovative Technology Solutions

for Communities at Risk. She is best known as an advocate of community-based ethical

learning and teaching models using interactive tools and games to inspire and engage

learners of all ages.

Originally trained in Drama/Performance, Literature, and Philosophy, and active for many

years as researcher, professional performer and TV-radio-convergent media presenter, she

has published widely in the areas of performance technologies, e-learning, connected

learning, embodied learning, social networking for community engagement, social

entrepreneurship models in ICT, and games for learning. In this regard, she co-developed

several groundbreaking teaching and learning tools and games with significant worldwide

take up, which have led to the foundation of several charities for women and children at risk.

She has written and edited 13 books and many peer-reviewed articles and broadcasts.

She won the Lifetime Achievement Award for volunteer service to women and children in

education and technology in 2003. She was named Best Woman in the Public Sector and

Academia and Outstanding Woman of Achievement in Technology by Blackberry/RIM in

2008. She was nominated and commended by the Times Higher Awards in 2007 for

outstanding service to students with disabilities. She often serves as a lead evaluator, judge

and mentor for international organisations encouraging excellence in educational and social

engagement, including currently for the British Prime Minister1s SHINE Awards, the

Wellcome Trust, the European Commission Future Emerging Technologies & SaferInternet

Plus Programmes, the Genius Award, the Canadian Fund for Innovation, Creative Capital,

Microsoft Partners in Learning, NESTA, the British Council, and the Strategic Forum for

Research in Education.


Huw Williams- Chief Technology Officer and Co-Convenor of the Future Emerging

Technologies Research Cluster

Huw is SMARTlab’s CTO (Chief Technical Officer), and was also recently

appointed to head IT initiatives for LOCOG, the London Organising

Committee of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. He has been

with SMARTlab since the beginning, offering 17 years of experience in

leading innovations and broadcast/audience development. His

experience in managing large teams of engineers, medical and health

experts, broadcasters and scholars in co-creation of major learning and communications

projects makes him the ideal CTO for SMART-futures projects. Huw is responsible for

creative technology innovation in terms of our technological vision and interoperability and

scalability of tools and platforms.

Previously, he was Head of Research and Innovation for the BBC, responsible for the BBC

technology innovation function across broadcast and new media technology. He was

responsible for developing innovation initiatives to capture and develop ideas and to improve

partnerships though establishing collaborations with major external organisations such as

NHK in Japan, UK universities and other research establishments. Projects at BBC Research

included leading the technology teams behind the Freesat service to develop a new

broadcast service (including Set top box specification), display systems beyond High

Definition and open source compression systems as well as the BBC Backstage developer

network. Previous roles at the BBC included Head of Technology for Television and BBC

News (looking at High Definition issues) and as Head of New Media development for BBC

Radio and Music, he set up the technical and design teams that developed the BBC Radio

websites. Before joining the BBC, he founded a number of new media companies developing

interactive TV software, and worked as a consultant for a range of clients.

Dr Mick Donegan, Deputy Director Academic & Principal Researcher

Mick Donegan is the Deputy Academic Director (Principal Researcher,

Multimodal Interfaces and Assistive Tech), and the head of a new

research group on Interfaces for Assistive Technology & Creativity at the

SMARTlab. He is a teacher and an Assistive Technology specialist who

has extensive experience in assessing, teaching, training, and supporting

people with complex communication difficulties. Prior to joining

SMARTlab, he worked at The ACE Centre, Oxford, following his time as IT Coordinator and

Deputy Head Teacher at Wilson Stuart Special School, one of the largest schools for

physically disabled children in the UK. He has founded a charity, SpecialEffect, that uses

technology to enhance access to games and creative self-expression for people with a wide

range of disabilities.

He is a leader in two major research projects: COGAIN, a European Network of Excellence

(www.cogain.org). Mick is Co-coordinator of the Workpackage relating to ‘User

Requirements’. Mick has recently set up a Charity dedicated specifically to developing

assistive technology for enhanced access to computer games and self-expression in areas

such as music, art and sculpture. http://gameon.onestopcms.co.uk (Under development)


Mick’s particular technology and disability-related interests/passions include Speech

Recognition, Access to Video Games and Leisure Software, Eye Controlled Technology and

Remote Support Technology - areas in which he has specialised over an extended period of

time. He has been involved in several highly regarded and influential projects, such as the

DfES/Becta sponsored Speech Recognition Project (completed 2000), Telenet (completed

2002) which examined the use of remote support technology for people with severe

disabilities and ‘DECO’ (completed 2006) a joint project with the Physics Department of

Cambridge University to make ‘Dasher’ ‘eye control friendly’. He has published widely and

won many awards for his work. In 2006 he was awarded a PhD for a longitudinal study

investigating the conditions for success in using assistive technology for people with physical

disabilities in mainstream education.

Verity Slater: SMARTlab Deputy Director Development

Verity Slater recently joined SMARTlab on a part-time basis building on

her consultancy support for new projects and partnerships for Futurelab.

In her previous post at Arts Council England, she led a programme of

strategic partnerships, interventions and projects to support artistic and

sector development in visual arts, media and creative industries. Prior to

this, Verity managed the Sciart programme at the Wellcome Trust: a

national funding scheme offering support for collaborative projects involving artists and

scientists. Verity has a continuing interest in creative trans-disciplinary practices involving

science, technology and media; working as an editor, advisor and reviewer on a range of

cross-sector programmes. She studied Fine Art as a first degree before completing a Masters

degree in Arts Policy and Management at the University of London. She brings to SMARTlab

an in-depth knowledge of the contemporary arts sector and of the science research sector in

the UK and beyond, as well as vast experience of partnership working with individual

practitioners and agencies including artist-led initiatives and higher education institutions.

She is highly experienced in negotiating the funding context in the UK and beyond, including

public, private and sponsorship models. She is widely known as an instigator, advocate and

influencer; supporting creative practice in the broadest cultural contexts.


SMARTlab Core Support Team

Babak Davarpanah Varnosefadarani

Babak Davarpanah Varnosefadarani is our Community and Social

Networking Manager and an international consultant with many years of

experience working for World Bank, UNDP, and other agencies in Middle

East, Central Asia and China, as well communities in London docklands.

As an economist / urban and regional planner (Architectural Association)

he has evaluated the socio/economic impact of local environmental

initiatives and has developed national urban upgrading programmes. His prime focus is to

help develop sustainable local economic development strategies through participatory

planning and partnership, with particular interest in main streaming cross cutting issues such

as gender, minority rights and information and communication technologies. He has taught

English business communication in Paris and China, and alternative urban planning in UK

and abroad. His current research focus is bridging knowledge and digital gaps, through

innovatory interdisciplinary community based activities.

Anna Sophia Schenk

Anna Sophia is Research Coordinator at SMARTlab. Born in Germany,

Anna Sophia has spent the last ten years of her life in the UK, Italy, The

Netherlands and India developing a strong interest in any issues related to

arts, media, development and human rights, and coordinating a series of

training and research activities in the NGO and university sectors. Anna

Sophia holds a Master's degree in International Cooperation and

Development from the Institute for Advanced Study in Pavia after which she has set out in the

Middle East and assisted a youth organisation in their strategic planning and project

development. After working in Italy as a project coordinator for a university research centre

engaged in issues of human rights and human development, she is now supporting the


development of research applications at the national and EU level and administering the

SMARTlab PhD programme.

Rachel Lasebikan

Rachel, our Funding, PR & Events Coordinator, has over 12 years of

experience working in creative business development and specialises in

the study and application of creative innovation through design, business

application, industry and consumer insight. She holds an MA in Design

Studies from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London and a

degree in Fashion from Southampton University. Rachel has worked on the

development of a variety of innovation projects including Brand, Corporate Relations and

Legacy development for the African Broadcast Network, created the first African fair-trade

clothing concession for the Top Shop flagship store, and supplied African trend resources for

the WGSN international trend agency. Rachel started her career in PR and product

development. She has spent the last six years researching and developing the viability of

creating international and sustainable African products and brands through social enterprise

and development, exploring the exciting developing African fashion and television industry,

growing African Diaspora and the implementation of more positive African stories in global

society.

Anita McKeown

Anita McKeown’s role at SMARTlab is within Project Development –

Partnership and Participation. She is an interdisciplinary artist, producer

and researcher working in the public domain, exploring the potential of

open-source software to transform space to place. In 2004 she won

the prestigious Bravo Award, the only non U.S. citizen to do so for a digital

public art project in Memphis, TN, and her work continues to be exhibited

and performed nationally and internationally. In 2008, she was elected by invitation to the

Royal Society of Arts. She is Co-founder and Creative Director of Arts Services Un-

incorporated (ASU) a not-for-profit community arts organisation established in 2006, and

based in South East London. Since 1998 she has worked for a number of organisations

within the arts e.g. Lewisham Youth theatre, Razor Edge Theatre Company, Music in Prisons,

Heart N Soul Theatre Company, utilising her extensive experience of project development

and management.

Stanislava Mislanova

Stanislava currently works for SMARTlab in the role

of Administrator, Finance and Creative Project

Assistant as well as PA to the Director. Her

background, aside from Hotel Management and

Childcare, is in Anthropology. After training in

ethnographic research and fieldwork, she executed

her own research projects focussing on expressive

mechanism of dance and music, as well as studying


life in homeless shelters as part of her dissertation. Stanislava has been leading Samba

dancing and costume making workshops for undergraduates on campus, as well as local

schools groups from East London. Her interest and experience within creative arts and her

studies for a diploma in design has recently opened up new opportunities within the current

and future creative developments at SMARTlab, in collaboration with the lab projects and

MAGICbox.

SMARTlab Core Technical Team

Toby Borland

Toby is our MAGICbox Researcher/Manager and has worked with

SMARTlab as an artist-technologist dedicated to the real world

applications of technology, since 2005. He joined the team in an official

capacity, to run one of our main London studios, in February 2007 as

MAGICbox Manager. He was born on 27th February 1971 in Bray, Ireland,

left home at 15 and hitch-hiked to India at 17, working as street performer.

Toby returned to Dublin at 20 and returned to school to study mechanical and design

engineering, at Trinity College Dublin. He graduated at 25 and worked mainly as a sculptor

with stints in electronics and programming until 29. He left to travel around South and Central

America for a year, and returned in 2001. For the past few years he has been working part-

time in facilitating sculpture projects within addiction rehabilitation centres, part-time

developing mini-foundry techniques, and part-time developing Computer Aided Manufacturing

interfaces in relation to artistic/sculpture projects. Toby is currently finishing an

implementation of an analemmic equatorial sundial. He now finds himself in the uncharted

territory somewhere between art and engineering. He has a cantankerous old Z650

motorcycle and no television.

Clilly Castiglia

Clilly Castiglia, SMARTlab's Director of Operations, was the Senior Vice

President and Cofounder of Technology Developers LLC in New York

City. Her role was to oversee the Design and Production of new

technology and experience based projects. For clients such as Yahoo, Old

NAVY/GAP, Unilever, Papalote Children’s Museum. Prior to starting this

company she was the Director of Operations at The NYU Centre for

Advanced Technology/NYU Media Research Lab. There she managed the development of

technologies in the areas of collaborative tools and environments, new interfaces and input

methods for wireless and handheld devices, Tangible media, High-end Graphics and Real-

time animation.

Taey Kim

Taey manages digital media & the interactive brand production team at

SMARTlab, ensuring SMARTlab produces value, community and

recognition in brand identity. She leads on developing core websites, and

drives a focus on creative communication strategies. She is an experienced


digital media & Web creator, specializing in interactive multimedia design within social

networking and engineering aspects currently. Taey started her SMARTlab career as an

intern when we were based at Central Saint Martins in 2003 and has worked with us through

2 MAs and now into her final year of the PhD. She is as an award winning digital storyteller

(Best Contents in International Digital Arts Festival, 2000, Korea), as a hypertext writer, and

developed her skills in the MA Interactive Multimedia programme (University of the Arts

London) to enhance computer languages within multimedia platforms. She has been working

as a digital PR and web 2.0 strategy consultant in creative media. Taey is also digital media

artist / digital culture researcher who is using narrative visual elements within multimedia

based installations. Her subject matter stems from questions surrounding the definition of

global transformation within a far-east Asian identity and the construction of the nomadic

subject. She has been invited to show her work at a number of exhibitions and screenings

internationally. She has been nominated for best creative player in the Blackberry Women &

Technology Awards (2008, UK) and won at the Europrix Multimedia Awards (2008, Austria).

Celine Llewellyn-Jones

Learning Technologist and Online Learning Coordinator/Virtual World

Developer for SMARTlab, and Associate Researcher in Mobile Learning for

Futurelab

Celine is a highly experienced Learning Technologist, playing a key role in

all our online learning models for MAs and PhDs. She is a renowned expert

on how people move and learn through virtual worlds and mobile games.

Celine has 7 years experience as a Learning Technologist, working in the business and

academic sector with a specific interest in games for learning, locative experiences and virtual

worlds. As a freelancer she has taught children, young adults and adults and designed

analogue and locative outdoor games and experiences. She works part-time as a Learning

Technologist at London Metropolitan University. She has a background in fine and electronic

arts and comes from a family of instructors, from which she has inherited a passion for

engaging and inspiring instruction. Her dream is to deliver learning experiences that help

students love learning and engage them in ways she could only have dreamt of being

engaged when she was a student herself.

Jana Riedel

As a Digital Artist and Filmmaker, Jana contributes her skills in media arts

and digital editing technologies, as well as her talent as a film-maker and

documentary artist to the team. Jana is responsible for the creation of the

visual content of many of SMARTlab’s projects. She has also been actively

involved in taking technology applications to artists and students, helping

people of many different levels of ability to integrate those technologies into

their working practices and lives, and has done the technical project management for several

core SMARTlab projects since joining the team in 2003.


Vanessa Wiegand

Vanessa is SMARTlab’s Video Producer and Technology Manager. With

her team, she produces our video and media projects for presentations

and research applications. She co-ordinates all technical set-ups at live

performances on-site and off-site and she manages our hardware and

software resources.

She holds an MA in Film and Photography and a degree in Media Design. Vanessa has a

vast experience in traditional and digital media from offset printing and analogue photography

to 3D animation, design and filmmaking. She is an enthusiastic photographer, cameraperson

and jewellery maker. She transforms her own thirst for knowledge into advising researchers,

students and her own team and into lecturing. Her passion is in researching media in an

anthropological context. She speaks several languages and continues eagerly to study them.

SMARTlab Core Academic Team: SMARTlab Faculty and Post-Doctoral Researchers: Professor Lizbeth Goodman, Dr Mick Donegan, Huw Williams (as above/Senior

Management)

+

Senior Faculty

Dr Sara Diamond

Sara is currently President of the Ontario College of Art & Design

(Canada’s largest Art & Design college). She took her PhD from

SMARTlab in 2009, and has long worked with us as an associate senior

faculty member advising on all aspects of knowledge transfer across

sectors and on new media design. Previous to joining OCAD she was

founder/Director of the Banff New Media Institute, Canada. She is an

award winning documentary film maker and new media developer, and holds many

prestigious grants and funded projects.

Dr Sher Doruff

Sher Doruff is Adjunct Faculty member at SMARTlab/University of East

London. She is also currently a Research Fellow with the ARTI Lectoraat

and teaches/mentors in the Masters of Choreography programme of the

Amsterdam School for the Arts. Her doctoral research and dissertation,

“The Translocal Event and the Polyrhythmic Diagram,” mapped

collaborative, creative processes in networked performance practice. She

continues to develop an ontology of the diagrammatic as an artistic research technique of

image/word relations and has published numerous papers in academic and artistic contexts.

She completed her PhD with SMARTlab at Central Saint Martins in 2005.


Dr Brian Duffy

Brian is Associate Principal Researcher at SMARTlab, and also senior

engineer at SAP. He leads the Haptics and Robotics for Human

Communications Group for SMARTlab. He has been actively involved in

research in many international academic and non-academic institutions

throughout Europe in the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence and haptics

for over 14 years. Currently, Brian is a Research Engineer at the Institut

Eurecom, Sophia Antipolis, and France. Previously, Brian conducted postdoctoral research at

University College Dublin (UCD), directed the Anthropos Group at Media Lab Europe, and

research for GMD, Germany and INSA de Lyon, France. Brian has a Masters of Engineering

Science, a Bachelor of Science in Production Engineering, is a member of the IEEE, a

Chartered Engineer, and holds the Eur.Ing qualification.

Dr Leslie Hill, PhD Programme co-Convenor

Dr Leslie Hill is Principal Researcher in Performance Technologies at

UEL’s SMARTlab and Co-convener of the PhD programme. She holds a

doctorate in Theatre Film & Television Studies from the University of

Glasgow. Hill works as an artist and academic across performance,

installation, film and publication with a special interest in socially engaged

work and sci-art collaborations. She has produced over 40 projects in a

range of media including live performance, installation, publication and film and has won

numerous awards, grants and commissions. Her work has been shown widely internationally

at venues such as Sydney Opera House and the British Council Showcase at the Edinburgh

Festival. (www.placelessness.com). Hill’s most recent book Performance and Place, Palgrave

MacMillan (2006) is widely taught on courses in the UK and USA. Hill is a NESTA Dream

Time Fellow.

Dr Susan Kozel

Susan Kozel works at the convergence of performance and digital

technologies. In her role as Principal Researcher at the SMARTlab she

focuses on motion capture, wearables, and mobile social computing. With

a PhD in philosophy and a professional practice as a

dancer/choreographer working with responsive computer systems, her

research integrates phenomenological methodologies with physical

improvisation.

She is the director of Mesh PerformancePractices http://www.meshperformance.org and has

performed and published widely. Her sole authored book Closer: performance, technologies,

philosophy (2007) was published by The MIT Press and her second book has the working title

Social Choreographies: Corporeal Narratives with Mobile Media. Current projects include

Intuition in Creative Processes with the University of Art and Design in Helsinki; the Designing

Difference initiative, which applies methodologies from performance and philosophy to the

design of expressive mobile platforms for bodies of mixed abilities; and a series of

performances called Technologies of Inner Spaces.


Dr Jacquelyn Ford Morie

Dr Jacquelyn Ford Morie has been at the forefront of immersive world

technology since 1990. She focuses on affective and meaningful

implementations of virtual environments, and received her PhD in this

topic from UEL’s SMARTlab in 2008. She was an early adopter of the

online 3D world, Second Life and as a resident of that virtual world has

been an innovative creator of content and functionality. Morie produced

one of Second Life1s first international art showcase, The New West, in 2006. She next

created the artwork, Remembrance and Remains in Second Life, that features a small Iraqi

Village, populated by autonomous villagers, to show the more human face of that war-torn

country. Within her role at UEL's SMARTlab, she investigates online world topics such as

space, identity, and play, writing papers that have been accepted and delivered at

conferences worldwide.

Faculty and Post-Doctoral Fellows

Dr Ryya Bread

Dr Ryya. Bread is SMARTlab‘s Research Methodologies Convenor for the

PhD. She was awarded a Doctoral Studentship from Falmouth College of

Art (1997-2001); having a background in Fine Art (BA), and an MA (with

distinction) in the History of Modern Art & Design. PhD research focused

on an emerging embodied ‘methodology,’ the aim being to initiate,

develop and represent a dialogue between linguistic and artistic practices.

Rooted in a feminist discourse on Subjectivity; the thesis argued for, and enacted, a positive

framing of individual embodied experience through the identity text of the

researcher/practitioner, in this case, ‘RyyA. Bread©’. As well as the written word, the final

submission included sculpture, photography, video and live performance. After seven years of

further experience organizing exhibitions for commercial art galleries, and working closely

with other artists, the recent introduction to SMARTlab marks a return to active research

within and well beyond the scope of an academic context. She lives in Falmouth, where she

is also taking up a part-time post as Curatorial Manager of the new Sustainable Art Gallery on

the Lizard.

Dr Deveril, Post-Doc Fellow

Deveril has been a supervising SMARTlab PhDs since 2007 and in that

time has completed a number of short films, acted as technical director

on the annual Smash! project in North Devon, been involved in a joint

exhibition at Novas Gallery in London, completed a chapter in the book

Decentring Dance (Lansdale 2008), extended his writing practice into

feature film scripts, become a father, and thought about the future of

cinema and interactive narratives.


Dr Chris Hales, Post-Doc Fellow

Post Doctoral Research Fellow in Interactive Film. Chris is an

internationally renowned specialist in ‘interactive moving image’, as

practitioner, educator and researcher. His PhD “Rethinking the Interactive

Movie”, which developed the concept of ‘movie as interface’, was

successfully completed in October 2006 at SMARTlab. His cdroms have

been selected at numerous film/multimedia festivals, and his touch-screen

installation (showing a dozen or more of his interactive films) was presented in Seoul,

Helsinki, Warsaw, Nagoya, San Francisco and Sydney (amongst other places) and was

included in the landmark 2003 ‘Future Cinema’ exhibition curated by the ZKM. In summer

2008 he exhibited a retrospective of most of his films in a 9-room exhibition as part of the

Prague Triennale of Contemporary Art. He publishes frequently in the area of ‘interactive

moving image’, has taught almost 100 short workshop courses on this subject in numerous

institutions in Europe, and is a regular speaker at international events. He gives live

performances of interactive cinema to group audiences, either solo or as 'Cause and Effect'

(with Teijo Pellinen). Through SMARTlab, he obtained AHRB funding for a research project in

Prague to rediscover the "Kinoautomat" from 1967 - the world's first interactive movie.

Dr Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Post-Doc Fellow

Dr Esther MacCallum-Stewart is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at

SMARTlab. Her work explores the relationships between players, digital

games and the narratives they create as a result of these experiences.

She has written within Games Studies on the role of gender, warfare,

protest and role-playing, and the ways in which players interpret these

varied aspects of the game play experience. Esther is Vice President of

the Digital Games Research Association and sub-editor for Games Studies and the Virtual

Worlds and Games Journal.

Will Pearson

Will is an expert in communications for the blind and partially sighted. He

works as a Researcher for both SMARTlab and Futurelab, and is

conducting his Phd at SMARTlab, studying mobile texts stimulating the

auditory imagination. He is currently a researcher and artist/programmer,

working with a range of open source development tools such as

Processing and openFrameworks, and working with clients such as the

Arts Council. In the past Will has worked for NESTA, where he was a core member of the

CEP Technology Working Group. He has a long-standing commitment to inclusive design (for

which he was made a Fellow of the RSA in October 2005). Will has his own creative business

supporting a number of musicians and illustrators. He has also worked as a consultant for

Pixel Lab (www.pixel-lab.co.uk), the UK’s premier consultancy supporting the videogaming

sector, working on the London Games Festival Fringe programme as a project manager.


Associate Researchers & SMARTlab long term Adjunct Faculty

Dr Rachel Armstrong (MD) is a medical doctor who chooses to work at

the cross section of art and science, to enable health and well being

projects to reach the widest population worldwide. She has been working

with SMARTlab since 2007. Known as writer, multimedia producer,

television presenter, arts collaborator and general medical practitioner

specializing in non-Darwinian techniques of evolution and the challenges

of the extra-terrestrial environment.

Camille Baker

Camille Baker is a Researcher with SMARTlab, leading on our BBC project

on Games for Thought/Somatics and Movement Studies. She is also a

Senior Lecturer at Brunel University, where she teaches Interactive Media.

Also a PhD Candidate with the SMARTlab, her work overall focussed on

Networked Performance Media. Her research interests include: mobile

devices, video art, live cinema, performance and interactive media,

responsive environments, media art installation, telematics, new media curating and

networked communities. Her background ranges from music composition, singing and

performance, to Executive Director/Curator of The Escape Artists Society in Vancouver,

Canada, and Lead Curator, Conference Director and Co-Performance Art Curator for New

Forms Festival in Vancouver, to editor-in-chief of an online pop-culture relationship support

magazine - Tales of Slacker Bonding (2000-2003), to new media and web design

/development, to documentary and online video and animation, to media art instructor, to

visual arts curating, to sculpture and modern dance performance.

Erin Beneteau

Erin is a speech language pathologist who has practiced in the field of

Augmentative Alternative Communication since first entering graduate

school in 1996. She has practiced in a variety of settings in the US, New

Zealand, and Ireland. She currently works for Tobii Technology, as a

trainer in using eye control and other forms of assistive technology. Her

previous research has involved: cultural and linguistic diversity, AAC

practices, and assistive technology access methods.

Professor Haim Bresheeth

Haim is the Research and Knowledge Exchange Leader and Director of

Matrix East Research Lab (SONY film studio) at the University of East

London, and a close collaborator on several major SMARTlab projects.

As a practitioner, Haim is best known as a filmmaker, photographer and

a film studies scholar whose professional career spans his years helping

to form what is now the London College of Communications, since early

2002. His books include the best-selling Introduction to the Holocaust (with Stuart Hood, 2

reprints since 1997), the first version of which was titled Holocaust for Beginners (1993) and

was reprinted many times.


James Brosnan

James is the SMARTlab’s Associate Research Fellow in Assistive

Technology Innovation. He has worked with us on the Trust Project,

StreetscalledHome, Guinevere’s Globe, Fellicean, and a number of major

externally funded projects since 2003. As a writer and researcher with

Cerebral Palsy, James has pioneered the use of a full generation of

communication and mobility technologies for people with severe physical

disabilities, and is currently co-authoring a book on Almost Too Late Technologies with

Professor Goodman.

Lucas Capelli

Lucas Capelli is an architect and sustainable design expert running major

projects at the IAAC (Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia) in

Barcelona. He has worked to date on several major projects in ‘fab

housing’ with SMARTlab and is currently engaged in setting up a sister

site and set of SMARTlab programmes for Barcelona, to kick off in 2011.

He will also begin his practice-based PhD with SMARTlab UK in the

Autumn of 2010. He is the author of Self-Sufficient Housing, the SELF-FAB house, and the

SELF-SUFFICIENT CITY (the last one is about to be lunched next May 2010) and the creator

and lead of the Advanced Architecture Contest. He is also the director of CORRETGER5 an

architecture and art gallery focused on interactive art.

www.iaac.net

www.advancedarchitecturecontest.org

www.corretger5.com

Steve Cooney

Steve has been a professional musician for forty years, firstly in Australia

where he was born and then for the last thirty years in Ireland, where he

is respected as a specialist in Gaelic music. He has accompanied many

of the finest international singers and and instrumentalists in diverse

genres, and his style of accompaniment of Irish music has been widely

copied. He has played on or produced more than 100 CD¹s, both

commercial and educational, and for the last number of years has accompanied Sinéad

O¹Connor. He underwent Aboriginal initiation in the Northern Territory of Australia in the

1970¹s and this remains his guiding philosophy. He has invented a unique geometric method

of simplifying and explaining music theory which he has tested for twenty years. This is the

subject of his PhD at SMARTlab, and he believes it can be a new international best-practice

model for early learning of music.


Dr Neil Datta

Dr Neil Datta is a graduate in English literature and now a theoretical

computer scientist specialising in the mathematical semantics of

programming languages. His NESTA fellowship with SMARTlab supports

the preliminary stages of his long-term project to explore the relationship

of certain aspects of poetry with mathematics and computing.

Professor Daria Dorosh

Dr Daria is an artist and senior researcher with SMARTlab and fashion

design professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.

She is a practicing artist and has had sixteen one-person shows since

1974. She was a founding member of A.I.R. Gallery in 1972, the first

artist-run art gallery in the United States established to showcase the

work of women artists. Fashion is a rich repository of social, historic, and

personal information which she integrates into her art theory and practice. She brings her

synthesis of art and fashion to the MAGIC Playroom where she is exploring the whole

garment knitting technology by Shima Seiki, digital fabric printing, and new ways of engaging

the public in designing their own surfaces and fashions. She took her PhD from SMARTlab in

2008.

Ron Edwards

Ron Edwards is the Co-founder and CEO of Ambient Performance, a UK

based firm specializing in 3D mobile and virtual world applications.

Ambient is the European distributor and service provider for Forterra

Systems OLIVE virtual world platform. Ron is a pioneer and thought

leader in helping organizations apply emerging technologies for better

communication, collaboration and training with over 17 years experience.

He is especially excited about the nascent metaverse and is developing projects in the core

metaverse areas of mobile augmented reality, virtual worlds, mirror worlds and mobile

lifelogging for a variety of clients in industry, government, consumer brands and education.

Ron is from Seattle, lives in London, is a SMARTlab PhD student at University of East

London researching collaboration in the mobile metaverse and blogs @

http://ambientperformance.com/connection.

Prof Mary Flanagan

Mary is Associate Professor at SMARTlab, and took her PhD in 2005. She

is also the newly appointed Endowed Chair of Media Arts at Dartmouth

University. She investigates everyday technologies through critical writing,

artwork, and activist design projects. Her work has been exhibited

internationally at museums, festivals, and galleries, including: the

Guggenheim, The Whitney Museum of American Art, SIGGRAPH, The

Banff Centre, The Moving Image Centre, New Zealand, Central Fine Arts Gallery NY, Artists


Space NY, the University of Arizona, University of Colorado-Boulder, and venues in Brazil,

France, UK, Canada, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Australia. Her essays on digital art,

cyberculture, and gaming have appeared in periodicals such as Art Journal, Wide Angle,

Intelligent Agent, Convergence, and Culture Machine, as well as several books. She is the

creator of "The Adventures of Josie True," the first web-based adventure game for girls, and

is implementing innovations in pedagogical and values-based game design. Mary Flanagan

holds MFA and MA degrees from the University of Iowa, a BA in Film from the University of

Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a Ph.D. in Computational Media focusing on activist game design

from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, UK.

Dr Gina Joue

Gina holds a PhD in Science and an Msc in Cognitive Science and Natural Language, and is

currently studying to become a Medical Doctor. She works with SMARTlab in the areas of

crossover between health and human communications. She has experience of industry work

for SAP as an IMS Development Manager, and with the Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity

College Dublin as a Research Fellow.

Celine Llewellyn-Jones

Celine is a Researcher and Learning Technologist at SMARTlab and

London Metropolitan University, an Associate Researcher for Futurelab

and a freelance mobile and location-based game and experience designer.

She has an MA in Fine Art, an MA in Electronic Arts, an HEA teaching

and learning accreditation and is currently working towards a PhD

investigating the role of digitally augmented bodies in learning.

Dr Vesna Milanovic

Dr Vesna Milanovic is a Dancer, Choreographer, Scientist, Scholar and

Researcher in practice/theory of Dance and Performance, as well as in

Interdisciplinary projects, Human Movement and Technology. Currently

she works part time as a Research Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University,

MERI and beginning her formal work with the SMARTlab at UEL as a PhD

supervisor and project collaborator. She received her MA in Dance

Studies from the University of Surrey and her Practice-based Ph.D. from the SMARTlab, in

association with the School of Social Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies, University of East

London.

Dr Katherine Milton

Dr Katherine Milton is the founding director of The Aesthetic

Technologies Lab of Ohio University’s College of Fine Arts – a research

and development facility devoted to assisting working artists in integrating

emerging technologies into fine arts practice. She has been studying


online communities for more than a decade, teaching online since 1996, and has published

on the subjects of leadership online, creative collaborations, and distance education. Her

most recent book focuses on best practices in New Media Tools Design. She claims a variety

of online worlds as her digital outposts, including Norrath (65 Necromancer / EverQuest) and

Azeroth (+60 NightElf Hunter / World of Warcraft.) Her experience in Digital Arts and Culture

is broad and diverse, and includes work as a creative practitioner, a critical theorist, and an

arts administrator. She has worked in print, cd-rom, dvd and web- based delivery platforms

for both k-12 and higher education audiences and served as a consultant and workshop

leader to international agencies such as The British Council Morocco (for her work co-

directing the early stages of the Moroccan Safetynet and Cybercafe Projects with Professor

Goodman for SMARTlab) and with the European Commission (as a collaborator on the

SMARTlab RADICAL project: Research Agendas Developed in Creative Arts Labs).

Dr Gayil Nalls

Dr Gayil Nalls is an interdisciplinary artist, theorist, writer, curator,

filmmaker, and academic who works in the arenas of professional art

practice, science, and academia. Her research has resulted in several

major publications and awards as well as in the creation of many major

sculptural and art exhibitions worldwide. UNESCO made her a Good Will

Ambassador for her work on the World Sensorium Project (distributed as a

scent sculpture for peace at Times Square – New York- at the Millennium Celebrations),

which led in turn to the major practice-based research for her SMARTlab PhD, focusing on

the emergent field of Neuroaesthetics, exploring the connection between botanical scents and

human olfcatory memory. Her unique knowledge of the botanical scent process and of the

role of neuroaesthetics in communications is of tremendous importance to the field of

disability studies.

Prof Dominic Palmer-Brown

Currently Dean, Faculty of Computing, London Metropolitan University His

research covers neural computing methods for data mining, processing

language, and modelling interaction such as in virtual learning

environments. He has supervised 12 PhDs to completion and was the

neural network specialist on a 5 year UN/NERC/DoE funded crops data

analysis project involving 15 countries, 1995-2000. He has also received

funding from JISC, BT Research Labs, KTP and EPSRC Case Studentships. He was Editor

of the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Elsevier Science London in 2001-2, and has

published about 80 papers overall, with some best paper commendations at international

conferences. Invited keynotes have included presentations at the European Simulation

Multiconference, 2003; The 10th Int. Conference on Engineering Applications of Neural

Networks, 2007; The WSEAS Int. Conference on Neural Networks, Sofia, 2008; and the

forthcoming 5th IFIP Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications and Innovations, 2009.

Publications include articles in many journals such as IEEE Transactions in Neural Networks,

Neurocomputing, Connection Science, Ecological Modelling and Information Sciences. He is

currently guest editor for a special issue of the journal Neurocomputing.


Dr Allan Parsons

Allan Parsons lives and works in London, where he studied design and

philosophy. He is an academic liaison librarian at the University of

Westminster. He has been an occasional lecturer on the Creative

Practice for Narrative Environments course at Central Saint Martins

College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London. As well as

tutoring postgraduate research students, he has worked in recent years

on the delivery of information skills, information literacy and research skills programmes at

such institutions as Royal Holloway, University of London and the University of Westminster.

Prior to that, he spent many years working as a consultant for the Organisation for Economic

Co-operation and Development (OECD) on its International Futures Programme, researching

and writing about long-term socio-economic and environmental futures. He has also worked

on government-funded, human-technology interaction (HTI) related, research projects with

universities, such as Imperial College, Brunel University and University of the Arts, and large

corporations, such as Arup and British Telecom.

Dr Alexander Pasko

Professor, National Centre for Computer Animation, Bournemouth

University, UK Alexander Pasko graduated from Moscow Engineering

Physics Institute (MEPhI) in Russia in 1983 and received a PhD degree

in 1988. He was a senior researcher at MEPhI from 1988 to 1992; an

assistant professor at the University of Aizu, Japan (from 1993 to 2000);

associate and full professor at the Faculty of Computer and Information

Sciences of the Hosei University in Tokyo, Japan (from 2000 to 2007).

Dr Celia Pearce

Celia Pearce is Associate Professor at SMARTlab, where she took her

PhD in 2005. She is now Director of the Georgia Tech Gamelab, and

Assistant Professor in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture

at Georgia Tech. She has also worked as a researcher and teacher at

University of Southern California and University of California Irvine. She

has over 20 years experience designing interactive games, installations

and attractions, and is the author of the Interactive Book: A Guide to the Interactive

Revolution (MacMillan 1997).

Will Pearson

Will is an expert in communications for the blind and partially sighted. He

works as a Researcher for both SMARTlab and Futurelab, and is

conducting his PhD at SMARTlab, studying mobile texts stimulating the

auditory imagination. He is currently a researcher and artist/programmer,

working with a range of open source development tools such as

Processing and openFrameworks, and working with clients such as the

Arts Council. In the past Will has worked for NESTA, where he was a core member of the


CEP Technology Working Group. He has a long-standing commitment to inclusive design (for

which he was made a Fellow of the RSA in October 2005). Will has his own creative business

supporting a number of musicians and illustrators. He has also worked as a consultant for

Pixel Lab (www.pixel-lab.co.uk), the UK’s premier consultancy supporting the videogaming

sector, working on the London Games Festival Fringe programme as a project manager.

Dr Marc Price

Dr Marc Price is Senior Engineer/Researcher at BBC R&D, where he

specializes in screen systems for audience empowerment. He is the Co-

PI of the BBC MINDtouch research project with SMARTlab.

Robbie Perry

Robbie Perry is a musician – best known from his band Dead Can Dance-

and music facilitator who creates musical instruments from recycled

materials and technology for use in live and theatrical performances and

the facilitation of creative workshops with children of varying ability

including Down’s Syndrome, Autism and Asperger’s. He Lives in Co

Cavan, Ireland where he is currently working on his PhD for SMARTlab.

The subject of his PhD is how the use of suitably designed musical instruments and

interfaces can aid in the creativity and expression of children with various disabilities by

helping to overcome the physical difficulties and techniques needed that conventional

instruments may present themselves with.

Dr Nithin Rai

Dr Nithin Rai a biophysicist who has steadily shifted from drug

discovery to the maritime sector. He is Director and co-founder of Octoply

Ltd, a health care company developing a novel type of passenger service

on the Thames. At this start-up phase the company is developing a

safety management system that centres around the 3D virtual modelling

of the working environment.

Perparim Rama

Perparim Rama runs 4M architectural studios and has co-designed and

built some of the most impressive community architecture and sustainable

design centres worldwide. He is Adjunct Faculty at SMARTlab, where he

co-supervises PhDs in the area of 3d Generative Architecture &

SMARTbuilding design. He has a degree in Architecture from South Bank

University, a Postgraduate Degree in Architecture from University of East

London and a Masters degree (with Distinction) in Architecture/Computing and Design from

Centre for Evolutionary Computing in Architecture - University of East London.


Dr Genaro Rebolledo-Mendez

Dr Genaro Rebolledo-Mendez is currently a full time researcher in

Technology EnhancedLearning at the Facultad de Informática (Faculty of

Informatics) Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico. He is currently leader of

the Educational Technology Group which focuses on the design,

development and evaluation of technology with educational purposes. Dr

Rebolledo-Mendez carried out PhD studies at the IDEAS Lab, University

of Sussex. His PhD project was entitled "Modelling the Learners Motivational State in a

Vygotskyaninspired ITS" where he investigated the effectiveness of motivational scaffolding in

learning technology. He also holds a BSc in Informatics (Universidad Veracruzana) and MSc

in Human-Centred Computer Systems (University of Sussex). He has also worked as a

Learning Technology Advisor at the University of East London where he currently

cosupervises two PhD students at the SMARTlab. He is currently a visiting research fellow at

various institutes including the IDEASLab (University of Sussex), the Serious Games Institute

(Coventry University) as well as at SMARTlab (University of East London.

Jeremi Sudol

Jeremi Sudol is a computer vision specialist and co-creator of a new

mobile phone that can ‘see for the blind’. He has designed interaction

system, sensors and switches for the SMARTlab TRUST and MINDtouch

projects for the past seven years. He is interested in developing

technologies that celebrate the human spirit, and has been involved in a

variety of projects in active technologies, experimental human-user

interfaces, performing and visual arts, and artificial intelligence. His PhD in progress is based

at UCLA.

Dr Jean-Baptiste Thiebaut

Graduated in both music composition and computer science before

starting a PhD with the Interaction, Media and Communication group at

Queen Mary, University of London. He develops his own programs to

compose music and to study composers practices and is currently

working in collaboration with SMARTlab on a number of creative

technology and performance projects.

Dr Jeb Weisman

Dr Jeb Weisman is Chief Information Officer and of The Center for

Community Health Technology for the Children’s Health Fund, He serves

as the Director of Information Systems and Technology for Community

Pediatric Programs at Montefiore Medical Center and Director of Strategic

Technologies for the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the

Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. Dr. Weisman has

overseen the conceptualization, design, and development of three generations of pediatric

and family health primary care electronic health record and allied technology systems to


support pediatric and family healthcare and has received the Davies Community Health

Organization Award. He holds a Ph.D. in anthropology and has served as Assistant Clinical

professor of Socio-medical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia

University, senior research fellow at the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute, University of East

London, and Associate Researcher at The Center for Advanced Technology, New York

University.

Turlif Vilbrandt

Since first touching a keyboard, over 20 years ago, Turlif has been

inseparable from digital processes, programming and technology. He has

a long history working with and developing, various Web technologies,

3D Computer Graphics and Digital Materialization (the accurate and

complete representation of any real or imagined object digitally and/or

the creation of real, tangible, usable instances of these digital objects).He

established one of the first companies to develop and holistically apply function based Solid

Modeling to real world applications using personal computers. Offering this unique technology

and approach has taken Turlif and his company across the globe. His ideas and technology

have been applied to diverse applications over the years, from environmental down hole

drilling to ancient temple reconstructions. In addition to helping create and develop the

emerging field of Digital Materialization, Turlif has made contributions in the areas of digital

historical preservation, virtualized (transparent) learning (educational 3D sims/games), Web

based Content Management Systems, and decentralized, free/open developmental, social,

and legal frameworks. He is the architect, author and co-developer of a variety of software

applications and frameworks. During the last 4 years, in rural Japan and Norway, Turlif

founded and helped establish digital community centers dedicated to IT education and

personalized micro-manufacturing.

He is also an active participant of the Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS)

community. In spite of Turlif’s life long infatuation with technology, he believes that the

traditionally pure pursuit of “technology for technology’s sake” is a flawed approach. Turlif

maintains that human and environmental issues will have to be a factor in the future of

technology innovation for successful economic and social development to occur (particularly

in this age of personal digital empowerment). He is developing his own FLOSS licensing to

help address, in part, this issue. Turlif currently sits on the board of directors of several

international organizations including a newly formed non-profit in Japan dedicated to Digital

Materialisation. Turlif came to SMARTlab from the now defunct MIT FabLab Norway where

he was Director of Technology.

Aejaz Zahid

Aejaz Zahid is a biomedical engineer with expertise in Assistive

Technology development and an accomplished DJ/electronic music

producer. Having studied Music & Media Technologies at Trinity College

Dublin, he is currently investigating the use of Assistive Technology in

Music and is involved in the development of new computer based musical

interfaces for composition and live performance that exploit emerging


technologies such as Eye Gaze and Brain Controlled Interaction. He is one of SMARTlab’s 18

NESTA funded Research Fellows.

Associate Artist/Fellows

Di Mainstone, Fashion designer (Wearable technology using sensors)

Trained in fashion design at Central Saint Martins College of Art, London,

Di Mainstone creates interactive couture garments that playfully explore

human behaviour. Investigating the landscapes between wearable

architectures, ad-hoc performance and shared experience, Di has

collaborated with a range of international institutions. These include,

Banff New Media Institute, XS Labs Montreal, V2_, Institute for the

Unstable Media in Rotterdam, Eyebeam in New York City and most recently Queen Mary,

University of London. Di has guest lectured at The Royal College of Art, Central Saint Martins

College of Art, NYU, Parsons, Pratt, Willem de Kooning, Emily Carr and Concordia University.

Exhibitions include: SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles, Future Fashion Event in Pisa, Seamless in

Boston, Social Fabrics in Dallas, Re(A)ctor 3 in Liverpool, IMachine in Germany, 5 Days Off

in Amsterdam, Berkeley Art Museum in San Francisco and Kinetica in London.

Stephen Manthorp

Stephen Manthorp is an interactive media producer, working in the field of video games and

digital arts. He used his Fellowship to explore the social and commercial potential of media

technologies.

Tara Mooney

Fashion designer and expert on SMART textiles and conductive fabrics.

Tara designed our SafetyNET garment lines (featured at Siggraph) for two

years running, and has spent the past few years developing new safety

garments and interactive fashion methods and models. She is currently

co-curating an exhibition on fashion and sustainability for the Centre for

Contemporary Art and the Natural World, Exeter, to be opened June

2010, and undertaking an MA in ‘Fashion and the environment’ at the London College of

Fashion. Her work can be viewed here: http://www.sustainable-fashion.com/?page_id=2

Dr Jonathan Milo Taylor

Jonathan Milo Taylor is a London-based musician, artist, academic and

writer whose interests include site responsive installation, interactive

robotics, sound art, multimedia environments, improvisation and

performance. His work has been shown internationally 8 and he

maintains a commitment to interpersonal, intercultural and intermedial

exchange as productive of original and context-specific creative

outcomes. His work has been shown in England (Serpentine Gallery, Bargehouse Gallery,

Whitechapel Gallery, Tate Gallery, 291 Gallery, Sonic Arts Network, Birkbeck College,


University of St. Andrews), Denmark (ICMC 2007, Copenhagen Graduate School), Norway

(OpenForm Festival 2007), Germany (Factory Berlin, Kunstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral, Bad

Ems (residency)), Morocco, Serbia, Bulgaria, Russia, (Tula Centre for Contemporary Art,

/Moscow Book Arts Fair), Greece (Athens Bienniale 2007), Canada (University of Regina),

South Korea (KAIST, Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) and Mexico

(Prisma Forum, Oaxaca and Mexico City). His PhD project "ImMApp: An Immersive Database

of Sound Art" involves a critical mapping of historical and contemporary sound art.

SMARTlab current PhD students- shortlist:

Camille Baker - Embodied Transference/Transcendence-Performance/Locative Media

Project (BBC sponsored)

Camille Baker is conducting research, funded through our BBC project on

Games for Thought/Somatics and Movement Studies. She joins the team

in this official capacity in Feb. 2006. Also a PhD Candidate with the

SMARTlab, her work overall focused on Networked Performance Media.

Her research interests include: mobile devices, video art, live cinema,

performance and interactive media, responsive environments, media art

installation, telematics, new media curating and networked communities. Baker’s background

ranges from music composition, singing and performance, to Executive Director/Curator of

The Escape Artists Society in Vancouver, Canada, and Lead Curator, Conference Director

and Co-Performance Art Curator for New Forms Festival in Vancouver, to editor-in-chief of an

online pop-culture relationship support magazine – Tales of Slacker Bonding (2000-2003), to

new media and web design /development, to documentary and online video and animation, to

media art instructor, to visual arts curating, to sculpture and modern dance performance. For

more details, papers and articles go to her web portfolio at: http://www.swampgirl67.net/

Erin Beneteau - Eye Control Assistive Technology: Effective Assessment

Erin is a speech language pathologist who has practice din the field of

Augmentative Alternative Communication since first entering graduate

school in 1996. She has practiced in a variety of settings in the US, New

Zealand, and Ireland. She currently works for Tobii Technology, as a

trainer in using eye control and other forms of assistive technology. Her

previous research has involved: cultural and linguistic diversity, AAC

practices, and assistive technology access methods.

Katiushka Borges - Exploring Intimacy, language and behaviour via Neuro-Linguistic

Programming (NLP) and interactive game formats, to enhance

communication in relationships. (Multiplatform: interactive TV/publication).

Katiushka Borges is a communications specialist, focusing on verbal

(tonality – effective use of keywords), non-verbal language (gestures-body

language), and analysis of behavioural patterns towards building trust.

She holds an MA in Interactive Multimedia from The London College of

Communication where she successfully developed an interactive game to develop intimacy,


using visual, auditory, kinesthetic and auditory visual representational systems that enhanced

communication in relationships. She brings a broad range of knowledge and expertise from

TV, Radio, Journalism and Advertising industries; and most recently, from the corporate

environment where she has worked with the Business Intelligence Unit (oil industry) and for a

big IT and Management Consultancy, where she currently advises and trains on developing

relationships at senior level through the creation of her own method of producing strategic

personality profiles. She is a published author, executive coach, internationally certified

Master Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner and Neuro- Hypnotic Repatterning Trainer.

Toby Borland - Emergent behaviour in consumer-driven rapid manufacture

Toby Borland has worked with SMARTlab as an artist-technologist

dedicated to the real world applications of technology, since 2005. He

joined the team in an official capacity at our London base in February

2007, as MAGICbox Manager. For several years he worked part-time in

facilitating sculpture projects within addiction rehabilitation centres, part-

time developing mini-foundry techniques, and part-time developing

Computer Aided Manufacturing interfaces in relation to artistic/sculpture projects. He is

currently finishing an implementation of an analemmic equatorial sundial. He now finds

himself in the uncharted territory somewhere between art and engineering. He has a

cantankerous old Z650 motorcycle and no television.

Bobby Byrne - Disability, Dance and the Judson Dance Theatre: Alternate Virtuosities

Bobby Byrne came late to dance via a background in martial arts.

Essentially a dilettante, his formal training amount to only one year, Bobby

has drifted slowly into dance as a profession through working with Dublin

based integrated dance company Counterbalance over the previous 13

years. He is currently working on a Thesis under the aegis of SMARTlab,

investigating the relevance of the Judson dance theatre to models of

integrated dance practice through constructing vocabularies based upon the bodies’

affordances.

Clilly Castiglia - Manufacturing Private and Public Memories

Clilly Castiglia was the Senior Vice President and Cofounder of

Technology Developers LLC in New York City. Her role was to oversee

the Design and Production of new technology and experience based

projects for clients such as Yahoo, Old NAVY/GAP, Unilever, Papalote

Children’s Museum. Prior to that she was the Director of Operations at

The NYU Centre for Advanced Technology/NYU Media Research Lab.

There she managed the development of technologies in collaborative tools and environments,

new interfaces and input methods for wireless and handheld devices, tangible media, high-

end graphics and real-time animation.


Steve Cooney - Solar Notation of Melody and Rhythm, and Solar Calculation of Pentatonic

Modes, Diatonic Modes and Harmony: developing a model of effective teaching practice

Steve has been a professional musician for forty years, firstly in Australia

where he was born and then for the last thirty years in Ireland, where he is

respected as a specialist in Gaelic music. He has accompanied many of

the finest international singers and and instrumentalists in diverse genres,

and his style of accompaniment of Irish music has been widely copied. He

has played on or produced more than 100 CD¹s, both commercial and

educational, and for the last number of years has accompanied Sinéad O¹Connor. He

underwent Aboriginal initiation in the Northern Territory of Australia in the 1970¹s and this

remains his guiding philosophy. He has invented a unique geometric method of simplifying

and explaining music theory which he has tested for twenty years. This is the subject of his

PhD at SMARTlab, and he believes it can be a new international best-practice model for early

learning of music.

Bruce Damer - The EvoGrid

Bruce Damer wears many hats, one as a pioneer of the virtual worlds

medium, having helped to develop early "avatar" virtual spaces and

communities, another as an expert on the history of computing, in his 9

Digibarn Computer Museum in Northern California, and yet another as a

designer and simulation team leader for NASA, modeling current and

future space missions. In 1996 he established Biota.org, a non-profit

organization which created a series of interdisciplinary conferences, one held at the famous

Burgess Shale fossil site in Canada, and another hosted in Cambridge UK by Richard

Dawkins and Douglas Adams. Biota.org blends the worlds of computer science, paleontology,

speculative fiction and the arts, to create new perspectives on life's origins and future. Bruce

is currently working toward his PhD through the SMARTlab at the University of East London

on another outgrowth of Biota.org and virtual worlds: the EvoGrid. More on Bruce’s work and

organizations at http://www.damer.com

Denise Doyle - Towards a Poetics of Technology Mediated Narrative Forms: Wandering

Fictions v.3.0

An aspect of Denise Doyle’s PhD research is investigating the potential of

emerging technologies to extend creative practice, and in particular the

use of virtual worlds as a new platform, or new realm, for practice based

research. In particular, her interest lies in the experience of our

imagination when space is experienced as mediated through technology.

Definitions of what we mean by, and experience as real or actual,

imagined or physical, are questioned in these new spaces such as those experienced on the

Second Life platform, developed and launched by Linden Labs in 2003. Through early texts

written by Gaston Bachelard on theories of the material and dynamic imagination found in

Water and Dreams (1942) and Air and Dreams (1943), and later, to those of Katherine Hayles

in How we became Post-human (1999) and Elizabeth Grosz in Architecture from the Outside

(2001), Denise aims to contribute a new theory of the imagination in light of the existence of


mediated spaces in virtual worlds.

David Dunkley-Gyimah - The Outernet

David Dunkley Gyimah is the recipient of International awards in video

journalism and media (broadcast/new media) design with more than 20

years in the media working for the BBC, Channel 4 News and ABC News

in front and behind the camera. Described by Apple as “a one man

hurricane”, he has lectured worldwide in media culture convergence. An

applied chemistry grad with a post grad in journalism and further studies

in International Relations at the LSE, David is interested in exploring new instincts in evolving

media, news and art and is an artist-in-residence at the South Bank. David is currently a

senior lecturer at the University of Westminster, a director of the Broadcast Journalism

Training Council, and a 2009 juror for the prestigious RTS. He publishes viewmagazine.tv

and is an avid blogger and twitter @viewmagazine. David is researching The Aesthetics of

Video journalism and the Outernet at SMARTlab. David Dunkley Gyimah has been chosen as

an artist in residence at the South Bank Centre where he'll be producing a number of cross

platform pieces for the web and outernet as well as collaborating with various artists he’s just

returned from Beirut and is due to travel to south Africa as heading up an international team

looking at advancing video story techniques Pieces he's working on so far include

conversations – how leaders lead and a video blog based on chaos theory. You can see

examples of David’s work on his site www.viewmagazine.tv

Ron Edwards - Mobile Virtual Worlds

Ron Edwards is the Co-founder and CEO of Ambient Performance, a UK

based firm specializing in 3D mobile and virtual world applications.

Ambient is the European distributor and service provider for Forterra

Systems OLIVE virtual world platform. Ron is a pioneer and thought

leader in helping organizations apply emerging technologies for better

communication, collaboration and training with over 17 years experience.

He is especially excited about the nascent metaverse and is developing projects in the core

metaverse areas of mobile augmented reality, virtual worlds, mirror worlds and mobile

lifelogging for a variety of clients in industry, government, consumer brands and education.

Ron is from Seattle, lives in London, is a SMARTlab PhD student at University of East

London, researching collaboration in the mobile metaverse and blogs @

http://ambientperformance.com/connection.

Zann Gill - INNOVATION NETWORKS: problem-mapping, decision support & collaborative

problem-solving

Zann Gill (M. Arch. Harvard) started her career as a researcher for

Buckminster Fuller. Early interest in Fuller's concepts for "World Game" to

achieve environmental sustainability and 'design science' sparked her

focus on cross-disciplinary innovation. Her entry to the international

competition Kawasaki: Information City of the 21st Century, sponsored by

the Japan Association for Planning Administration and Mainichi


Newspapers, with cooperation of ten ministries and three agencies of the Japanese

government, tied with Matsushita Corp. for first place and won the Award of the Mayor of

Kawasaki. She proposed a networked system of sixteen initiatives - a framework comprised

of diverse interlinked components for urban innovation as a complex adaptive system. More

recently at NASA she developed program plans for an Institute for Advanced Space Concepts

(IASC), a think tank BEACON and NASA University. She founded DESYN lab

(http://desyn.com) to apply her method to "raise collaborative IQ" (http://www.desyn.com/c-

iq.html and http://www.zanngill.com/3ciq.html) and is currently working with Australia's ICT

Center of Excellence (NICTA) on a - smart systems - eco-cities - initiative. More at

http://zanngill.com.

Halina Gottlieb - Designing IT-Artifacts for an Enhanced Museum Experience

Halina Gottlieb is an art historian and multimedia producer. As project

manager she has taken part in the development of several prototypes

pertaining to the interpretation of objects at art galleries. Furthermore she

has assisted as concept developer for exhibitions at several museums in

Sweden. She is also curator for the Interactive Salon, a show room for

technologies that promote and preserve cultural heritage. In 2002, Halina

founded the conference/award forum Nordic Digital Excellence in Museums and Heritage

Sites (NODEM). At the University College of Film, Radio, Television and Theatre in

Stockholm she organized and was head lecturer of a course entitled Exhibitions & New

Media. Halina is currently a board member of the Executive Committee at EPOCH. In 2006

she became director of Digital Cultural Heritage Centre of Expertise at The Interactive

Institute in Stockholm. From 2006 she is a PhD candidate at UEL (London) on the topic of

Designing Digital Cultural Heritage.

Ian Grant - Expressivity and the Mechanical, Digital and Virtual Object in Games, Art and

Performance

Ian Grant is Head of School, Art and Design (Acting) at Thames Valley

University, as well as a prolific computer programmer and a digital

creative working across performance, puppetry, installations and real-

time computer graphics. He programmes web, iphone and mac software

specialising in graphics and media applications. You can read his blog at

daisyrust.com. His latest work involves making systems to expressively

control virtual and mechanical objects in ways akin to traditions from world puppetry. Prior to

managing a School of Art and Design, Ian was a senior lecturer in Digital Arts at TVU, and

lecturer in Modern Drama Studies at Brunel University, UK. He has a secret ambition to play

piano and sing jazz vocals in bars, which, in recent times, he has fulfilled at the Old Vic

Theatre, London. Research and Teaching Interests History of Computer Art; Virtual Reality;

Real-Time 3D Graphics and Processing; Applied Visual Effects; Digital Puppetry and

Animation; Live and Digital Performance; Narrative and Games; Creative Social Networks;

Web Design and Development; Applied Creative Technologies (in Community Settings);

Futurology, Internet and Digital Culture; e- Learning and Virtual Learning Environments;

Problem Based Learning; Critical Theory; Improvisation; Applied Theatre in the Community,

including: Education, Prison and Health Settings; Documenting Performance;


Wanda Gregory The Future of Chick Lit: a study of girls, games, virtual worlds and learning

environments

Wanda Gregory has worked in the kids entertainment industry for the past

15 years. She started out in traditional media working at The Seattle

Times where she created and launched their first freestanding publication

for high school students called the Mirror. She moved into interactive

media first at Sierra Online as an associate producer on their edutainment

titles and then as Senior Director of Online Media for both Wizards of the

Coast and Hasbro Inc toy and game properties. Later Wanda joined the Xbox Live team as

group product manager for Xbox.com. She then decided to work on a girl property so joined

Hidden City Games as executive producer interactive entertainment. Most recently she was

the Vice President/Executive Producer for Flowplay overseeing the development of an MMO

for tweens/teens.

Wanda is a lecturer in Science and Technology at the University of Washington Bothell

campus where she teaches classes on game design, online communities, interactive media,

virtual worlds and games for girls on both Seattle and Bothell campuses. She is also an

Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Tasmania, Australia where she teaches

classes in conjunction with the HitLab on game design. Wanda is a graduate of the University

of Washington where she received her BA in English Literature, MBA and MA in

Communications. She is currently working on her PhD at the SMARTlab at UEL in London.

Naser Karmani - Telematic Video En Scene: Live Video & Live Bodies Performance in

Reflexive Structure

Educated up to high school in Kuwait. In 1990 he finished his bachelor

degree in chemical engineering from Tuskygee University – Alabama,

USA. He obtained his Master degree in independent cinema in 2003 from

Solent Southampton University, UK. Artistic Experience: He obtained

experience as actor with most of Kuwait Theater groups and participated

in several festivals. He also playwrights and directs theatre, TV and video

works. He won the 2008 “State of Kuwait Art Encouragement Prize” as best theatre director

for his performance “The Censored Laundry” which obtain the best theatre performance in

Kuwait Theatre Festival. PhD with SMARTlab: Welcomed aboard in February 2009. His

practice-based research looks to present a practical video performance with a critical written

thesis which investigate the elements and characteristics of new video forms that co-perform

with live body performance; and to explore the visual language of these new hybrid forms of

moving image practices.


Jim Keravala - The Evolution and Effect of Upcoming Human Computer Interactive

Technologies

Jim is a satellite engineer and computer design expert who runs a

successful Silicone Graphics company to develop and promote his new

design interface, FLAI.

Taey Kim - Virtual Nomads: translation on the transit

Taey is an digital media artist / digital culture researcher who is using

narrative visual elements within multimedia based installations. She has

been invited to show her work at a number of exhibitions and screenings

internationally. She has been nominated for best creative player in the

Blackberry Women & Technology Awards (2008, UK) and won at the

Europrix Multimedia Awards (2008, Austria). Taey started as an award

winning digital storyteller (Best Contents in International Digital Arts Festival, 2000, Korea), as

a hypertext writer, and developed her skills in the MA Interactive Multimedia programme

(University of Arts London) to develop computer languages within multimedia platforms. Her

research builds on the analysis of dialogue as a social research method and the critical

analysis of literature and visual art-works, demonstrating the interconnection between

artworks and artist’s lives.

Petra Klusmeyer - Sound Arts in the Expanded Field

Petra Klusmeyer, digital media and sound artist, is currently a Teaching

Researcher of Sound Studies at the University of the Arts, Bremen. She

has completed a Master of Fine Arts in Time Arts at The School of the Art

Institute of Chicago in 1999. Her work creates an architecture of sound

and image associations. Sonic glitches and fragments are reorganized

into a sounding detritus of culture. As post-graduate student with

SMARTlab, University of East London, she conducts research in the area of Sound Arts in the

Expanded Field. Her work has been internationally performed and exhibited such as in 2008

Not Berlin and Not Shanghai, Guangxi Arts Institute Nanning, China; 2006, Dislocate,

Trampoline, Tokyo; 2006 Terra Cognita, Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen; 2002, Creation

in Movement, Canard Galeria Central, Mexico City; 2002, Music in Me, GAK Bremen; 2001,

x-tract: Chicago Sounds, Podewil Berlin; 1999, Groove, Pit &Wave, ZKM Karlsruhe. She has

been the recipient of numerous grants and awards such as The Joan Mitchell Foundation

Stipend, The School of The Art Institute of Chicago Trustee Scholarship and the 2000 John

Quincy Adams Fellowship. Her sound works are published on Staalplaat, Boxmedia und

Experimental Sound Studio Chicago.


Celine Llewellyn-Jones - How physical gaming, play and adventure can be integrated with

online learning environments for adult learning, to create enchanted, engaging and social

learning spaces and a greater sense of learning agency.

Celine is a Researcher and Learning Technologist at SMARTlab and

London Metropolitan University, an Associate Researcher for Futurelab

and a freelance mobile and location-based game and experience designer.

She has an MA in Fine Art, an MA in Electronic Arts, an HEA teaching

and learning accreditation and is currently working towards a PhD

investigating the role of digitally augmented bodies in learning.

Anita McKeown - Local Mediated Mappings of Performance Intervention Strategies

Anita McKeown’s role at SMARTlab is within Project Development –

Partnership and Participation. She is an interdisciplinary artist, producer

and researcher working in the public domain, exploring the potential of

open-source software to transform space to place. In 2004 she won the

prestigious Bravo Award, the only non U.S. citizen to do so for a digital

public art project in Memphis, TN, and her work continues to be exhibited

and performed nationally and internationally. In 2008, she was elected by invitation to the

Royal Society of Arts. She is Co-founder and Creative Director of Arts Services Un-

incorporated (ASU) a not for- profit community arts organisation established in 2006, and

based in South East London. Since 1998 she has worked for a number of organisations

within the arts e.g. Lewisham Youth theatre, Razor Edge Theatre Company, Music in Prisons,

Heart N Soul Theatre Company, utilising her extensive experience of project development

and management.

Kasia Molga - Wondering Between Paint and Digital Data – Concepts of Sublime, Divine

and Beautiful in Visual Fine and Digital Art Practice In the Hyperlinked World

Kasia Molga is a practicing interdisciplinary artist, living and working in

London. She studied Fine Arts and Animation in Academy of Fine Art in

Poznan (MFA), Poland and Interdisciplinary Design in Central Saint

Martin College of Arts and Design in London (MA), UK. She also studied

film and video in the latter college (1998). Her practice combines

traditional media such as painting, drawing and traditional animation with

cutting edge digital interactive and mobile media. Through her pieces she questions viewer’s

attitude towards conventions of understanding what art is, while introducing new way of

experience using modern technologies. Quite often she takes accepted definitions of various

art forms step further, pushing boundaries of expression and perception of work of art. Her

visual work mainly explores notion of Interconnectedness as ephemeral compassionate

bonds among people entwined with the Universe. Since Kasia’s first exhibition in Poland in

1992, she has exhibited her work worldwide. She presented her work in a number of

galleries, venues and festivals, among them: ICA (UK), BBC British Film Festival (UK),

Design Mai Festival (Berlin), Contemporary Arts Space Osaka (CASO) in Japan and OXO

Tower (UK). She also was nominated to number of awards and stipends, among them

DMA’05 awards for her contribution to promote music through her website design work.


She is commissioned on regular basis and her multimedia pieces supported events such as

London Fashion Week (London) and Creative Links (London). Currently Kasia runs her own

studio which is a platform for her both commercial and non-commercial projects as well as

dynamic space for sharing experiences, ideas and work with other artists all over the world.

She is a PhD candidate at SMARTlab (University of East London) where she focuses on the

issue of personal human presence in context new digital and communication mobile

technology. Prior to that Kasia was a lecturer in University of Greenwich, where she run three

workshops: animation, digital design and net art. She has also taught in Westminster College.

Nigel Newbutt - How can Facial Motion Capture be used effectively in Virtual Environments

to help Improve Learning in people with Social Learning Difficulties?

Nigel is a Senior Lecturer in the department of CMS (Computing and

Mathematical Sciences), at the University of Greenwich. He gained his

first degree at Leeds Metropolitan University in 2001, in Multimedia

Technology, and has since completed his Masters at the University of

Greenwich in Higher Education. His teaching currently involves Digital

Media Production, 3D Animation and Advanced Animation and Motion

Capture courses, as well as Programme Leading BSc (Hons.) Digital Animation and

Production. Nigel is also researching and interested in virtual environments and how these

can be used to aid learning. This coupled with an interest and expertise using facial motion

capture, are all reasons for developing research (PhD) aimed at improved communication for

children with autism. Nigel is also a reviewer and fellow of the HEA (Higher Education

Academy), a member of a SIG for Podcasting, presented research internationally and an

elected member of Academic Council at University of Greenwich.

Cathy O’Kennedy - The Divine Normal……. dancing with ‘real’ people across the boundaries

of professional and community dance practice for mixed ability choreographers and movers.

Cathy O’Kennedy is an Irish dance artist and choreographer with over

three decades of experience of teaching, performing and creating dance

in community and education settings in Ireland. She is currently the

creative director of Counterbalance Integrated Dance Group and is the

Artistic Director and choreographer for Fluxusdance.

Will Pearson - Digital Comics & Interface Design for (Dis)Ability

Will Pearson is a doctoral student at SMARTlab, part of the University of

East London, where he studies mobile texts stimulating the auditory

imagination. He is currently an Associate Researcher with Futurelab,

media artist using Processing and openFrameworks, and researches

interaction architecture. Previously, he has lectured in games design and

object orientated college and been Director of an Arts Council England

Thrive project looking at cultural infrastructure in context of regeneration and population

growth. Between 2004-6, he worked for NESTA, where he was a core member of the CEP

Technology Working Group. He has a long standing commitment to inclusive design, has his


own online collective Sevenspiral dedicated to supporting a number of musicians and

illustrators. He also consults for Pixel Lab, the UK’s premier consultancy supporting the

videogaming sector, working on the London Games Festival Fringe programme as a project

manager. Sevenspiral was a BBC Innovation Labs finalist in the March 07 lab. In April 07, he

successfully pitched for a client (Cardiff School of Art and Design) at the Content 360

competition (MIP) in Cannes; he’s a consultant on their mobile development project,

Reacticles Global, a co-development project with the National Film Board of Canada.

Robbie Perry - Music and the Cognitive Process: Stimulus and Effects on the Mind and Body

Robbie Perry is a musician and music facilitator who creates musical

instruments from recycled materials and technology for use in live and

theatrical performances and the facilitation of creative workshops with

children of varying ability including Down's Syndrome, Autism and

Asperger's. He Lives in Co Cavan, Ireland where he is currently working

on his PhD with UEL's SMARTlab. The subject of his PhD is how the use

of suitably designed musical instruments and interfaces can aid in the creativity and

expression of children with various disabilities by helping to overcome the physical difficulties

and techniques needed that conventional instruments may present themselves with.

Perparim Rama - Minimal Path Systems and Optimisation Techniques in Architecture,

Urbanism and Community Development

Rama is a founding director of 4M Group. He has the overall

responsibility for the management and development matters within the

Group. He has been involved in various large scheme developments

including his duties as a London team project leader on ENK Complex

Mixed Use development in Prishtina and as a specialist consultant for

developing Smart Solutions for Spatial Planning and Architecture for

Newham Council and Tower Hamlets. He has over ten years experience on a range of

projects in residential, commercial, hotels, mixed use developments and master planning

within UK and internationally. Having worked and traveled extensively in different countries

over the years, collaborating on large scheme projects, he has developed an entrepreneurial

flair and creative thinking to design new enterprises. Rama has teaching experience as a unit

tutor at Nottingham University School of architecture, he is also a visiting tutor/critic at UEL on

Degree, Diploma and MSc, and as visiting critic at the Architectural Association. He

conducted extensive research on spontaneous settlements and self organisation and is an

expert in Generative Architecture and Smart Buildings. He is a member of Centre for

Evolutionary Computing in Architecture and is continuing his research as a PHD student at

SMARTlab Digital Media Institute.


Sapna Ramnani - Gaining Independence in Documentary Production through Assistive

Technology: On-camera Interview Techniques Developed by, with and for People with

Complex Disability’

Sapna Ramnani, an independent documentary film-maker since 2000,

has Cerebral Palsy, effecting motor functions. Being a wheelchair user

with speech impairment impacts on the way she produces documentaries.

Sapna's current method of work when interviewing on location is to train

another person to ask questions on-camera under her supervision.

Interviews appear formal and structured, not allowing Sapna, the film-

maker, to spontaneously ask questions, or to make the interview informal and conversational

while developing a relationship with interviewees. Sapna will adapt conventional ways of

interviewing on camera to make it possible for film makers with speech and communication

impairments to take a more journalistic and spontaneous approach to documentary

production with the physical limitations of film makers like herself in mind. This unique

approach to documentary production will create possibilities for new ways of presenting

information and issues to audiences. This study will explore how film makers with complex

disabilities and communication impairments are able to produce documentaries

independently and how technology and conventional interview techniques can be adapted to

make this process easier.

Dan Sutch - Supporting the development of health and wellbeing in young people

Through the use of mobile, immersive technologies Dan’s an educational

researcher at Futurelab (www.futurelab.org.uk), where he investigates

the role of digital technologies for learning. In particular he’s interested in

mobile learning, the role of the teacher in technology-rich learning

environments and values-driven assessment (how we can make visible

and celebrate the things we value in education). Dan is a PhD student at

SMARTlab, looking at how a highly mobile, wearable, phatic and immersive digital technology

called a Fizzee can encourage young people to be more physically active. This study is

looking at the extent to which young people develop an emotional relationship with their

Fizzee and build on this to change their activity behaviours. When not working, Dan’s

normally found surfing in North Devon or traveling very slowly to the beach in his 1964 VW

camper van.

Turlif Vilbrandt - Digital Materialisation

Since first touching a keyboard, over 20 years ago, Turlif has been

inseparable from digital processes, programming and technology. He has

a long history working with and developing, various Web technologies,

3D Computer Graphics and Digital Materialization (the accurate and

complete representation of any real or imagined object digitally and/or

the creation of real, tangible, usable instances of these digital objects).

Turlif established one of the first companies to develop and holistically apply function based

Solid Modeling to real world applications using personal computers. Offering this unique

technology and approach has taken Turlif and his company across the globe. His ideas and


technology have been applied to diverse applications over the years, from environmental

down hole drilling to ancient temple reconstructions. In addition to helping create and develop

the emerging field of Digital Materialization, Turlif has made contributions in the areas of

digital historical preservation, virtualized (transparent) learning (educational 3D sims/games),

Web based Content Management Systems, and decentralized, free/open developmental,

social, and legal frameworks. He is the architect, author and co-developer of a variety of

software applications and frameworks. During the last 4 years, in rural Japan and Norway,

Turlif founded and helped establish digital community centers dedicated to IT education and

personalized micro-manufacturing. He is also an active participant of the Free, Libre and

Open Source Software (FLOSS) community. In spite of Turlif’s life long infatuation with

technology, he believes that the traditionally pure pursuit of “technology for technology’s

sake”, is a flawed approach. Turlif maintains that human and environmental issues will have

to be a factor in the future of technology innovation for successful economic and social

development to occur (particularly in this age of personal digital empowerment). He is

developing his own FLOSS licensing to help address, in part, this issue. Turlif currently sits on

the board of directors of several international organizations including a newly formed non-

profit in Japan dedicated to Digital Materialization. Turlif comes to the PeopleLab from MIT

FabLab Norway where he is Director of Technology.

Alison Williams - Architectural Spaces & New Modes of Experience Design

Alison Williams BA (Hons.) Fine Art (Sculpture) Reading University

Research topic Following fifteen years of professional work with creativity

in the workplace, particularly the impact of physical space on that

creativity, her SMARTlab research is: ‘The impact of physical space on

people’s ability to be creative at work.’ She is seeking to identify and

codify the elements of physical press (or environment) at work that afford

the potential for small-c creative behaviour in the workplace; and is aiming to develop a

syntax of creativity based on these codified elements. The syntax of creativity will, it is hoped,

provide a framework for designing physical press in the workplace that actively supports the

widest possible range of creative approaches by the workforce. Her core field is creativity

research, and my contingent fields are architectural psychology, environmental psychology

and innovation management.


Index of completed SMARTlab Practice-based PhD students with details of their supervisory teams

1. Amrani Zerrifi, Fatima

Current post: Senior Lecturer, University of Fes

PhD title: Stripping Off the Veil

Institution: Open University; transferred for completion with the University of Surrey

Enrolment: part-time British Council funded

Submission: 2001

Details of supervisors: Professor Lizbeth Goodman (OU & Surrey)

Professor Fatima Sadiqi, local supervisor Fes Morocco

Exam team: Professor (internal) & (external)

2. Birch, Anna

Current post: MA Performance Leader, University of Surrey

PhD title: Staging and citing gendered meanings: a practice-based study of representational

strategies in live and mediated performance

Institution: University of Surrey; transferred to SMARTlab, Central Saint Martins, University of

The Arts

Enrolment: part-time

Submission: 2004

Details of supervisors: Professor Lizbeth Goodman (Surrey &SMARTlab/CSM), Dr Radan

Martinec

Exam team: Professor Tina Keane (internal) & Professor Leslie Ferris (external)

3. Bowen, Eleanor

Current post: Freelance practitioner/arts facilitator

PhD title: Drawing and Becoming Otherwise, the Archaeology of a Linear Practice

Institution: Wimbledon College of Art & Design, London

Enrolment: full-time

Submission: July 2005

Details of supervisors: Professor Rod Bugg (Wimbledon); John Stezaker (RCA), Professor

Lizbeth Goodman (external co-supervisor)

Exam team: Anita Taylor (Wimbledon) & Yve Lomax (RCA)

4. Bread, Ryya

Current post: SMARTlab Adjunct Researcher/PhD supervisor

PhD title: METHODOLOGICAL EMBODIMENTS :: Psychical Corporeal Performances of

Subjective Specific Auto[erotic]-Representation(s)

Institution: Falmouth College of Art (validated by University of Plymouth) Enrolment: Full time Research Studentship from Falmouth College of Art (1997 - 2000) Submission: July 2001 Details of supervisors: Director of Studies- Professor Penny Florence Supervisors: Professor Rob Bugg (external supervisor),

Professor Lizbeth Goodman (external co-supervisor) Exam team: Professor Professor Edward Cowie (in ternal) & Professor Marsha Meskimmon

(external)


5. De Gay, Jane

Current post: Senior Lecturer, Leeds University

Institution: Open University


Details of supervisors: Professor Lizbeth Goodman

Exam team: Dr Richard Allen (internal) (external)

6. Diamond, Sara

Current post: Principal, Ontario College of Art & Design

PhD title: A Tool for Collaborative Online Dialogue: CodeZebraOS

Institution: SMARTlab, UEL (transferred in with advanced standing from Central Saint

Martins)


Submission: Awarded August 2009

Details of supervisors: Professor Lizbeth Goodman (DOS), Dr Sher Doruff, Dr Haris

Mouratidis

Exam team: Prof Haim Bresheeth, Prof Dominic Palmer-Brown, Prof Diana Domingues

7. Dorosh, Daria

Current post: Professor, Fashion Institute of Technology New York

PhD title: Patterning: The Informatics of Art and Fashion

Institution: SMARTlab, UEL (transferred from Central Saint Martins)


Submission: Awarded June 2008

Details of supervisors: Professor Lizbeth Goodman (Surrey &SMARTlab/CSM)

Dr Radan Martinec (CSM)

Philippa Beale (UEL)

Dr Patrick Fuery (UEL)

8. Doruff, Sher

Current post: Mentor/Lecturer/ Amsterdam School for the Arts; Research Fellow, ARTI

Lectoraat

(Theory and Practice in Artistic Research) Lecturer, University of Amsterdam

(Masters of Artistic Research); Adjunct Faculty, SMARTlab, UEL

PhD title: The Translocal Event and the Polyrhythmic Diagram

Institution: SMARTlab, Central Saint Martins


Submission: 2006/ PhD completed 2006

Details of supervisors: Professor Lizbeth Goodman (DOS)

James Swinson (CSM), Sally Jane Norman (Uni Sussex)

Exam team: (internal) & Professor Brain Massumi (external)


9. Flanagan, Mary

PhD title: Playculture: developing a feminist game design

Current post- Esteemed Professor, Darmouth University

Director of Studies at Central Saint Martins: Dr Lizbeth Goodman

Co-supervisors: Patricia Austin, Dr Radan Martinec

10. Gilson-Ellis, Jools

PhD Title: The Feminine/Oral in Contemporary Art Practice

Enrolment date at Dartington: 1994 (part-time) Transfer to Surrey 1998

Completion: Summer 2000

Viva: Wednesday 6th September 2000

Director of Studies at Surrey: Dr Lizbeth Goodman

Exam Team: Professor Janet Lansdale (chair), Dr Anna McMullen (Trinity College Drama

Dept) external and Dr Penny Florence (Falmouth College of Art) second

external.

11. Graiouid, Said

PhD title: Communication and Everyday Performance in Morocco

Institution: University of Surrey

Submission: 2000

Details of supervisors: Dr. Lizbeth Goodman, Dr. Taib Belghazi

12. Hales, Chris

Current Post: Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Interactive Film, SMARTlab (0.2)

PhD Title: RETHINKING THE INTERACTIVE MOVIE: A practical investigation demonstrating

original and engaging ways of creating and combining ‘live action’ video segments

under audience and/or computer control

Institution: University of Surrey, Central St Martins College of Art, SMARTlab UEL


Submission: August 2006

Supervisors: Prof. Lizbeth Goodman, James Swinson (Central St Martins)

Externals: Heide Hägebölling and Haim Breesheth

13. Kueppers, Petra

Director of Studies, Dr Lizbeth Goodman

14. Merriman, Vic

Director of Studies, Dr Lizbeth Goodman

15. Milanovic, Vesna

PhD title: Re-embodying the alienation of exile: feminist subjectivity, spectatorship, politics &

Performance

SMARTlab at UEL

Submission: 2006

Director of Studies, Prof Lizbeth Goodman; Co-supervisor: Prof Patrick Fuery


16. Morie, Jacquelyn Ford Morie

Current post: Head of ICT and Digital Futures, the Institute for Creative Arts, USC

PhD Title: Meaning and Emplacement in Expressive Virtual Environments

SMARTlab at UEL

PhD Awarded: April 2008

Director of Studies: Prof Lizbeth Goodman

17. Nalls, Gayil

PhD title: World Sensorium: Theory, Practice and Significance of the World Social Olfactory

Sculpture

SMARTlab at UEL

PhD Awarded: April 2008


18. Nigten, Anna

current post: Director of the V2 Lab for Unstable Media, Rotterdam

PhD title: Processpatching; defining new methods in R&D

Submission: 2006

Details of supervisors: Dr. Lizbeth Goodman, Dr. James Swinson

19. Paris, Helen

PhD title: Visceral/Virtual Performance

current post: Reader in Performance, Brunel University

PhD, The University of Surrey

Submission: 2000


20. Pearce, Celia

Current post: Asst. Professor of Digital Media, Georgia Tech

PhD title: Playing ethnography: a study of emergent behaviour in online games and virtual

worlds

current post- Head of Gamelab, Georgia Institute of Technology

Enrolment: full-time tenure-track professor

Submission: Completed July 2006

Details of supervisors: DOS-Dr Lizbeth Goodman;

Supervisors- Dr Hayley Newman, Patricia Austin

Exam team: Internal-; External- Professor Dominic Palmer-Brown

21. Prendergast, Jane Margaret

PhD title: Mapping Feminism in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Institution: Murdoch University

Submission: 1999

22. Tomlins, Claire

PhD title: The UK Corporate Identity-Image Interface Design Constraints and Enablers

Institution: University of The Arts, London

Submission: 2008


23. Wilkie, Fiona

24. Vogelsang, Axel

PhD title: Hyper-Image Network: An investigation into the role of text and image in the design

of hypertext networks with specific consideration of the World Wide Web

Further completions: Sue Bonnet, Joan Forbes, Tracy Martin, Jan Goulden, Mourad Mkinsi,

Abdellatif, Hakim, Eleanor Marguiles, Zoe Akamiataki


Research Clusters & a Shortlist of Relevant Current Projects:

Research Cluster 1:

Multimodal Interfaces and Assistive Technologies for User Empowerments

Current projects of this group:

o TRUST (Open & Multimodal Interfaces, including the Activechair)

Group Leaders: Prof. Lizbeth Goodman (Project Director), Dr Brian Duffy (Haptics/Robotics

Director)

Co-PIs: Dr Marc Price (screen systems), Jeremi Sudol (sensor systems)

Team: Jana Riedel, Kate Brehm, Tahmina Parvin, Clilly Castiglia

The Trust project is an immersive game and healing environment for young people, with and

without disabilities, in and out of hospital. It aims to empower kids to move freely in

imaginative worlds, even if they can not leave their beds or wheelchairs. The project began

with SMARTlab and has been produced locally in New York, Dublin, Singapore, and now

back in London at the Stephen Hawking School.

The work on Trust and its associated multimodal interfaces taking place in the PLAYroom is

informed by SMARTlab’s long term close partnership with the robotics & haptics engineers of

the Open Interfaces Team (led by Dr Brian Duffy at MLE, Dublin) and previously, also in

collaboration with research teams at MLE, NYU, NTU et al. SMARTlab is delighted to host the

new iterations of this work in the PLAYroom at UEL. SMARTlab works directly with

communities (children in special schools and hospitals) and creates new stories and

animated game worlds with accompanying educational materials, whilst Brian Duffy continues

his work with us, designing and constructing bespoke haptic chair environments, with Jeremi

Sudol et al creating new sensor tools, and Marc Price working on screenic integration of

accessible packages for immersive play.


o InterFACES: tools for non-verbal languages for social interaction and

communication

Group Leaders: Dr Mick Donegan (eyetracking expert), Professor Lizbeth Goodman

(Educational and Performance/Communications Technology expert), Professor Dominic

Palmer-Brown (Neural Networks and Data Pattern/Analysis expert)

Work underway includes the next iteration of the InterFACES project, co-directed by

Professor Goodman with Dr Mick Donegan, joining the team from the Oxford ACE Centre,

where he has pushed the boundaries of eye-tracking technologies for assistive tech and user

empowerment.

The team as a whole now includes Professors and associate researchers, along with a group

of research students, working in the multi-disciplinary domain of Assistive Technology

interfaces for gaming on a universal design platform, along with new research into bio-

affective feedback triggers for movement and ‘control’ in virtual worlds and game

environments (including learning environments).

We are testing the effectiveness of available tools for using eye movement as a control

mechanism for communications by people with little or no other voluntary muscle movement.

With collaborator James Brosnan, the ‘alpha user’ of the system, we are writing a book

including an expert analysis of the health and well being advantages of using an ‘unplugged’

interface system (forthcoming from MIT Press, 2007)

Research Cluster 2:

Accessible Tech / Personal & Community Fabrication, & ICT4D

Current projects under this research cluster include:

o Communities of Play: MAGICbox

Group Leaders: Professor Baktiar Mikhak, Professor Lizbeth Goodman, Suzanne Stein

Team: Jose Marinez, Turlif Vilbrandt, Toby Borland, Ed Baffi, Clilly Castiglia, Damini Kumar,

Tahmina Parvin

The MAGICbox Project has been designed as

the core learning community test bed for this

broad range of researchers. The MAGIC lab

space will host MAGICbox: its equipment and

research teams, and will provide a base for the

seminars, think-tanks, skillshop and playshop

events.

In these, the SMARTlab core methodology of

action-research and the integration of theatre


games into learning games will be tried and tested alongside more standard ‘product design’

and learning methods.

o Immersive Play

Group Leaders: Professor Lizbeth Goodman,

Kristina Nyzell, Suzanne Stein

Team: Ed Burton, Anita McKeown, Clilly Castiglia,

Fiddian Warman, Dr Genaro Rebolledo-Mendez, Dr

Esther McCallum-Stewart, Dr Jacquelyn Ford Morie,

Dr Celia Pearce

This group occasionally works in collaboration with

the Rix Centre for People with Learning Disabilities, and/or with selected school and

community groups throughout the UK and internationally. The Immersive Play team explores

online games and engines of use for East London communities of young people and people

with disabilities.

It is closely linked to the research of Soda: one of a set of core creative teams based in the

MAGIC centre at UEL. Soda has won numerous grants and awards (including a BAFTA) for

their creative uses of new technology in play, learning and art.

Immersive Play also interacts closely with UEL’s Rix Centre, and provides the Rix with a high

tech home on the UEL campus, where their long term work into gaming and interaction

studies for people with learning disabilities can be developed in a practical space for future

tech development and hands on site-based research.

o ScreentoScreen/ BodytoScreen

Group Leaders: Dr Leslie Hill, Dr Susan Kozel, Dr Sher Doruff, Dr Marc Price, Prof. Lizbeth

Goodman et al

Team: Dr Deveril Gallagher, Dr Jools Gilson-Ellis, Dr Christopher Hales, Stanza, Alexis

Johnson, Dr Sol Haring, Anita McKeown, Jana Riedel, et al

The SMARTlab has invented a number of new

interactive screen technologies over the years,

and is currently investing in research around

the uses of screenic work in learning, teaching

and entertainment.

Dr Leslie Hill and Dr Susan Kozel convene

research into the spaces of real people and

bodies in virtual space, and of the virtual in

physical space. The range of projects and the

large cohort of PhDs underway in this field are testament to the new sites of convergence and

divergence in interactive media practice. The work of interactive film makers, experience


designers, digital narrative experts and designers and performers all comes together in

collaborative showcase events and publications arising from this group.

Dr Sher Doruff invented the Keyworx platform with the WAAG society Amsterdam, and

developed and tested the software through a major four years research project that led to

award of the PhD with the SMARTlab in 2006. She leads a new team including three noted

post-doctoral scholars and practitioners or interactive film.

o SafetyNET: Wearable Technologies that communicate and empower women

Group leaders: Professor Daria Dorosh, Sheila Robinson, Dr Susan Kozel

Team: Camille Baker, Daria Dorosh, Kathy & Tara Mooney (Bodkin Designs), Rachel

Lasebikan, Gayil Nalls

One of the biggest gaps in the field of rapid prototyping of

tools for learning, internationally, is the field of ‘wearable

tech’ that can be made in affordable, accessible settings.

The SMARTlab runs the SafetyNET project for women

and young people who have survived domestic violence,

and creates shelter and IT training programmes to ‘skill

up’ women for more safe, sustainable future careers.

As part of this project, the team has created two award

winnings set of wearable tech and ‘cyberfashion’

garments and fashion lines, premiered at the prestigious

Siggraph conferences in Los Angeles in 2004 and 2005.

The fashion and technology teams have joined forces with

MAGICbox, to purchase a Shima Seiki Whole Glove

Knitting Machine, to be added to the MAGICbox

equipment and training programme, specifically to encourage women and artists to apply their

skills to the making of new technology tools. In this, the team aims to move the field of

physical computing across the gender divide, and to empower next generation technology-

enhanced learning on new materials and fabrics, wearable technologies and futuretech

platforms for girls and women as well as for (the primarily male domain often described as)

‘techies’.


o Bridging the Gender Gap

Group Leaders: Dr Leslie Hill, Dr Esther McCallum-Stewart, Dr Mary Flanagan

Team: Vera Doerk, Vicki Munsell, Mary White, Dr Celia Pearce, Dr Katherine Milton, Camille

Baker et al

Professor Goodman is a leading theorist of

Gender Studies and a noted PI of projects

exploring the learning methods and

preferences of girls and young women, in club

tech learning environments, home

environments, women’s shelter, Open

University courses et al. Amongst the

numerous projects addressing the ‘girl games’

for education agenda upon which Professor

Goodman has worked as a senior

advisor/learning expert, a notable few include:

Values at Play (VAP), co-PI with Dr Mary Flanagan: exploring the values of gaming and the

implications of gender-aware programming and technology tools creation HOPE: a network of

hospital-based online game and education tools tested by medical doctors and patients in US

children’s hospitals (Harvard Med, Johns Hopkins et al).

Rapunzel, was led by Dr Mary Flanagan in New York public schools and Netsmartz was led

by Vicki Munsell as part of the BGCA/Microsoft Clubtech project.


Contact Us

For more information about the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute and our projects, please

contact us at:

University of East London

4-6 University Way

London

E16 2RD

United Kingdom

Tel: 020 8223 7823

Fax: 020 8223 7140

Email: [email protected]

Or visit our website at: http://www.SMARTlab.uk.com

The symbol of the SMARTlab is the butterfly: a creature of beauty (reflecting its artistic

aesthetic) and scientific wonder, and a metaphor for social change motivated by personal

growth and empowerment.

Version updated [8/24/10 10:47:15]

SMARTlab information kit_24aug10

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