Category Archives: Events

Events, Staff profiles and activity, Women in Computing

Goldsmiths Showoff: STRANGE DAYS

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What happens if you fill a pub with clever and lovely people then invite loads of amazing Goldsmiths academics to entertain them?

Join us for a chaotic cabaret in the pub featuring a line-up of Goldsmiths experts who will reflect on the strange, dark time that has been 2016.

When: 6:30pm – 9:30pm Thursday 3 November 2016
Where: Amersham Arms, 388 New Cross Road, London SE14 6TY
Tickets: £6/£5 + booking fee. Buy online

In 2016 we entered the Darkest Timeline: Brexit, Bowie… Trump? Join us at the Amersham Arms on 3 November – days before the most powerful nation on earth shows us how broken democracy really is – to hear Goldsmiths, University of London academics take you on a high-speed dash through their chosen subject.

Featuring the algorithms of online dating, hidden satanic messages, cats and class war. Expect laughs, facts that sound totally made up but aren’t, and loads of terrible PowerPoints.

Comedian and compere Steve Cross will once again keep everyone to time.

The line-up:

  • Kate Devlin (Computing) on the algorithms of online dating: a scientific and a personal perspective
  • Sylvia Pan (Computing) – What can virtual humans do for us?
  • Rob Cenci (Media & Communications) on the Call of Insecurity – the first-person shooter
  • Sarah Wiseman (Computing) on the weird and wonderful world of the Quantified Self
  • Chris French (Psychology) on hidden satanic messages – find out if you can hear them
  • Dee Harding (Computing) – Tired of Experts
  • John Price (History) – No Hard Felines: Class War… with cats
  • Dominique Santos (Anthropology) on the Anthropology of NOT climbing trees

When: 6:30pm – 9:30pm Thursday 3 November 2016
Where: Amersham Arms, 388 New Cross Road, London SE14 6TY
Tickets: £6/£5 + booking fee. Buy online

All proceeds from ticket sales will go to The Running Charity.

Events, Staff profiles and activity, Videos

← Subscribe here to win NEW SCIENTIST LIVE tickets

COMPETITION NOW CLOSED

We’re giving away five free tickets to New Scientist Live, which runs 22-25 September 2016.

New Scientist Live is a festival of ideas and discovery, taking place at ExCeL London. Rooted in the biggest, best and most provocative science, New Scientist Live will touch on all areas of human life. The show will feature four immersive zones covering Brain & Body, Technology, Earth and Cosmos. Advance tickets cost £25.

Goldsmiths Computing are running one of the show’s centrepiece exhibits, a psychedelic virtual reality experience called Organic Art VR.

How to enter the competition

Subscribe to Goldsmiths Computing’s blog using the ‘GET POSTS BY EMAIL’ widget on the left of this blogpost. This will sign you up to receive new blogposts by email.

If you can’t see the widget, have a look on the blog homepage. If you’re viewing this on a phone or tablet, scroll down to the bottom.

Closing date: 11pm Tuesday 20 September 2016. We’ll pick five new subscribers at random, and email them on Wednesday 21 September with details of how to claim their free ticket.

Events, News, Students

Narrative Games convention returns to Goldsmiths this November

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AdventureX, the UK’s only convention dedicated to narrative-driven gaming, takes place at Goldsmiths for two days this November.

Now in its sixth year, AdventureX is a free event bringing together developers & gamers with a passion for interactive storytelling.

The team have already met their Kickstarter target, but you still have a few days left to pick up some nice goodies in exchange for your cash pledge. Support AdventureX on Kickstarter

When: Saturday 19 – Sunday 20 November 2016
Where: Professor Stuart Hall Building, Goldsmiths
Tickets: Free. Apply here to join as an exhibitor, speaker and/or panellist

Co-produced by Goldsmiths PhD student Tom Cole, the two-day convention is a celebration of creativity, indie development and geek culture.

 

Events, MSc Computer games and Entertainment, News, Staff profiles and activity

Organic Art VR: a psychedelic experience unveiled at New Scientist Live

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Visitors to this month’s New Scientist Live event in London will be the first to experience Goldsmiths computer artist William Latham’s organic art in virtual reality.

Organic Art VR surrounds the viewer and places them inside strange evolving forms resembling sea anemones, ancient ammonites and multi-horned organisms with which they can interact. The forms the viewer sees are reminiscent of those one might encounter in an alternative alien evolution.

Bred and crossbred in software from multiple parents, Organic Art’s bizarre forms are created by a process of artistic evolution driven by human aesthetics.

The aim of Organic Art VR is to give viewers a surreal and immersive experience in which they shape the world around them.

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Organic Art 2016 VR derives from the pioneering work of Latham and mathematician Stephen Todd in the late 1980s and is now fully immersive, enabled by HTC Vive VR headsets and high-resolution NEC video wall screens.

Organic Art VR has been developed in the Goldsmiths Department of Computing by Professor Latham, visiting professor Stephen Todd and research fellow Lance Putnam under the Digital Creativity Labs research project.

The inaugural New Scientist Live event, created by the team behind the world’s best-known science magazine, is a four-day festival of ideas and discovery for all the family. British astronaut Tim Peake will open the show and visitors will see the latest science and technology including the Bloodhound 1000mph rocket car, the world’s leading robots and drones, Virtual Reality experiences, science workshops for all ages, more than 100 world-leading scientists, a robotic cocktail bar and plenty more.

Adapted from a news release by Sarah Cox first published on Goldsmiths News

Careers, Events, Inspiration, Women in Computing

Queens of Tech: Talks by inspiring c♀mputer scientists

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15% of Goldsmiths Computing students are women. Although that’s double the national average for university computing departments, it’s nowhere near good enough. So we’re aiming for 50%. 

Join us for Goldsmiths’ new Women in Computing speaker series. These remarkable computer scientists will talk about their work – and inspire you to be part of the next generation of amazing women in tech.

Thurs 16 June: Dr Kate Devlin _ My Life with the Sex Robots

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Dr Kate Devlin is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London. This evening she gives a lively overview of her career and her current research on sexual companion robots.

Kate has a background in both archaeology and computer science and has combined these with applied perception, focusing on digital cultural heritage. She is an active campaigner for mental health awareness and also for raising the profile of women in computing.

Where: Room 342, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths
When: 6:30 – 8pm Thursday 16 June 2016
Book your free ticket

Thurs 23 June: Susan Stepney _ Can slime mould compute?

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If you have a PC, tablet, or smartphone, you have used a computer. But some people use billard balls, beams of light, sticks of wood, chemicals, bacteria, slime moulds, spaghetti, even black holes, as computers (although some of these only in theory!).

How can these things be computers? What can we do? Can they do things your smartphone can’t? And why are these people using such peculoar things to compute with, anyway?

Susan Stepney is Professor of Computer Science at the University of York, Department of Computer Science. In this informal lecture, she discusses her career and research in non-standard computation, biologically-inspired computational models, and emergent systems.

Where: Room 342, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths
When: 6:30 – 8pm Thursday 23 June 2016
Book your free ticket

Thurs 30 June: Vinoba Vinayagamoorthy _ Inventing the TV of the future

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Vinoba is an R&D Engineer for the BBC, working within Broadcast & Connected Systems. She thinks up new types of synchronised companion screen experiences for connected homes. Currently, this ranges from building prototypes for new & archived content to running exploratory studies to gauge how our audiences might react to them.

Previously, Vinoba Vinayagamoorthy focused on building prototypes that combine content on social networks with programmes being played on a connected TV.

Where: Room 342, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths
When: 6:30 – 8pm Thursday 30 June 2016
Book your free ticket

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Events, News, Students, Videos

Thu 2 June: GENERATION undergraduate Computing show

GENERATION-ANIMATED

Get ready for GENERATION 2016 – the exhibition and performance event showcasing the very best work produced by undergraduates across our degree programmes in 2015-16.

Expect virtual reality games, experimental architecture, Deep Dream technology, audiovisual performances and a musical table – all developed this year by students from our Creative Computing, Games Programming, Music Computing and Digital Arts Computing undergraduate degrees.

All are welcome to come experience the work, talk to exhibitors & performers and enjoy a good old party. Over 18s only after 5pm, when the bar opens.

Where: The Stretch, Goldsmiths Student Union, Goldsmiths, London SE14 6NW
When: 12noon – 8pm Thursday 2 June 2016
Online: GENERATION 2016 website

All are welcome. No booking needed.

UPDATE: Here’s what judge Justin Spooner said about the show

“The level of inventiveness and craft skills was fantastic throughout the show, and it gladdens my heart to think of many of those students taking their idiosyncratic approach to digital creativity out to meet the world.” Read his full review here