[EMS-NEWS]

Dear all

Just as a reminder : we have some great students from Queen mary
coming to give a talk today. Please come along to the talks at 3pm in
the GDS, Ground Floor, Ben Pimlott Building.

Info on their research below :

Dave Meckin

"Media and arts technologies are transforming who has access to
creative activities and how they are experienced in many fields.
Electronic music systems have the potential to enable people with
special educational needs to express themselves creatively and develop
new understandings about their actions and the world around them.
While there are a number of assistive and educational music
technologies currently available, there has only been a small amount
of research published with regards to their development and use. The
research project presented focuses on increasing the level of
knowledge about the ways in which such technologies can be developed
and implemented to enable young learners to actively participate in
group musical activities, whose needs perhaps prohibit them from doing
so with conventional instruments. Two case studies will briefly be
outlined detailing current use of music technologies in a special
educational needs school located in Bath. The ensuing discussion will
be centred around reflecting on the methods employed by the researcher
to explore and evaluate these technologies."

"I am a musician, sound artist and sound designer. I am also a
research student at Queen Mary University of London in the Media and
Arts Technology Doctoral Training Centre. Previously I studied a BA
(Hons) in Digital Music at the University of Brighton and a MSc Sound
Design at the University of Edinburgh. I am really fascinated by the
possibilities of technologically mediated sonic interactions between
people, which is where most of my research and practice is focused."


Henrik Ekeus

Closing the Action-Perception Loop in Generative Composition
Many generative artists and composers combine low-level interacting
elements to engender an emergence of higher level forms and patterns.
However when working with such systems it can be difficult to
anticipate what effects micro-level parameter changes might have on
macro-level forms and behaviours, and further it is often impossible
to completely explore the vast state-spaces that these systems
possess.  Consequently the working process is discontinuous and often
involves a certain amount of trial-and-error.
Exploratory research that seeks to address this is outlined.  Here a
gaze tracking system engenders a structural coupling between an
artist/user and a visual generative system; 'eye catchiness' a fitness
function in a continual evolution of emergent visual forms.

Henrik Ekeus is a composer, sound designer and researcher. With a
background in computing, he often explores generative and algorithmic
processes in his works. These range from acoustic and electronic
compositions and interactive installations to sound walks and film
soundtracks. He is currently a PhD candidate on the Media and Arts
Technology program at Queen Mary University of London where his
research seeks to elucidate the nature of algorithmic creation in the
arts and its relationship to perception and cognition.


Pollie Barden

The Telematic Dinner Party: an exploration of social presence among
casual groups
There is an increasing desire for individuals to connect through
computer-mediated communication. In particular, there is a growing
trend of applications aspiring to support social presence in social
and leisure settings. Here is the exploration the opportunities for
social presence around the practices of a dinner party. The
presentation and discussion will cover the findings of a series of
telematic dinner parties. A telematic dinner party connects remote
guests together through technology to share a meal. Within each dinner
party, the focus will be on impact of playfulness and collaborative
events as contributions to increased social presence or the feeling of
guests dining together. Additionally, I will address the implications
for designing social structure as the main contributor to social
presence rather than the technology platform.
Ultimately we're trying to recreate and re-imagine something everyday,
just eating with others, social interaction. Something that is for
everyone to be shared with anyone. We have the technology on our
laptop and smartphones. While the technology can provide the means to
access friends and loved ones, do we feel connected? Latency is
heartbreaking when you really want to be with someone. How can we feel
that we are together? Could a dinner party, leveraged as a social
platform, foster ‘social presence’ between remotely located groups in
a technology mediated social event? Essentially, can we escape the
tyranny of our physical location and party together telematically?

Pollie is an American visual artist and game designer.  Her diverse
artistic background bridges photography, book arts, sculpture,
interactive art and documentary. Her artwork has been exhibited in
museums and galleries both in the US and in Europe. She has designed
'Big Games' as well as games for the mobile platform. Her games have
run in the Come Out and Play Festival, the Figment Festival and
Conflux Festival.  Pollie collaborated with the Institute of Play on
designing a social network and running after school programs for their
Quest to Learn (Gaming) School. She has developed games as assessment
tools to up new avenues of employment for people with cognitive
disabilities. She co-founded and co-designed snagu, photo scavenger
hunt game that was a 2006 mtvU Digital Incubator Award winner. In
2008, she was the keynote speaker on Women in Game Design at Bridges
Summer Institute at Brooklyn College. Pollie has a masters from the
Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU. She is currently
pursuing a PhD in Media and Arts Technology at Queen Mary University
of London. Her research interest on the intersection of distance,
food, dinning, and games as influences on social presence in
technology mediated social events. View her work at pabadesigns.com


Berit Greinke

Twiddletone
With the development of electronically enhanced textiles there is a
necessity in identifying and understanding new demands towards
fabrics. The evaluation of an e-fabric hand not only requires the
identification of the handle of a fabric but also needs to consider
its responsive qualities. An e-textile has an imposed function which
blends into intuitive fabric handling of a conventional textile. This
can lead to an awkward interaction, such as pressing buttons on a worn
device, which disregards the malleable qualities of the fabric as a
material. This project, based at Culture Lab Newcastle University, set
out to gain information about the handling of textiles that have been
electronically enhanced through a sound response related to touch. The
study addressed the question of how to design towards a mutable
interaction and e-fabric hand in textile design. The overall aim was
to explore the potential of fabrics as sound interfaces, not
interposed between input and output, but as “coordinators between
phenomena” (Dourish, 2001) of tactile and audio experience.

Berit Greinke is an artist and researcher in textile design and sound.
She has studied at Art School Berlin, and graduated from Central St
Martin’s College of Art & Design, gaining an MA in Design for Textile
Futures in 2009. From October 2010 she has undertaken an EPSRC funded
PhD in Media and Arts Technology at Queen Mary University of London.
Her practice-based research focus is on cross-modal experience,
developing interactive installations of textiles and digital sound.
Her work has been exhibited internationally and has won multiple
awards, such as the Surface Bursary by the London Printworks Trust
funded by the Leverhulme Trust, NOBELini Award funded by the Medical
Research Council and the DAAD annual scholarship. She delivers
workshops in the field of e-textiles and performance, collaborating
with various artists and curators such as David Littler and the
sampler-cultureclash project.



-- 
Dr Michael Grierson
Dept. of Computing
Goldsmiths College
London
SE14 6NW
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+44 (0)20 7919 7171 x5139

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