Category Archives: News

Events, News, Staff profiles and activity

Exhibition: Automatic Art – human & machine processes that make art

Paul-Brown-Dragon-kientic-painting-edition-of-5

A new exhibition in London presents 50 years of British art generated by artists following rules or by writing computer programs.

The artworks range from system-based paintings and drawings to evolving computer generated images, and include the work of Goldsmiths’ Prof William Latham, who also appears in this summer’s Digital Revolution show at the Barbican.

  • Where: GV Art Gallery, 49 Chiltern Street, London W1U 6LY
  • When: Friday 4 – Saturday 26 July 2014

Artists : Stephen Bell, boredomresearch, Dominic Boreham, Paul Brown, John Carter, Harold Cohen, Nathan Cohen, Sean Clark, Trevor Clarke, Ernest Edmonds, Julie Freeman, Anthony Hill, Malcolm Hughes, Michael Kidner, William Latham, Peter Lowe, Kenneth Martin, Terry Pope, Stephen Scrivener, Jean Spencer, Steve Sproates, Jeffrey Steele and Susan Tebby

SPECIAL EVENT
On Thursday 10 July, Jasia Reichardt and Stephen Bann will present a talk related to the exhibition. Jasia organized the ICA’s, groundbreaking ‘Cybernetic Serendipity’ exhibition in 1968, and Stephen wrote the penetrating introduction to the Arts Council exhibition ‘Systems’ in 1972.When: 6.30 – 9pm Thursday 10 July 2014
Where: Haldane Room, Wilkins Building, UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
Tickets: Admission free but booking is essential
News, Students

Goldsmiths PhD student wins Best Student Paper award

karstenGoldsmiths Department of Computing PhD student Karsten Seipp has won the Best Student Paper award at WEBIST 2014.

The 10th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WEBIST) took place in Barcelona on 3-5 April 2014, bringing together researchers, engineers and practitioners interested in the technological advances and business applications of web-based information systems.

Karsten Seipp was awarded ‘Best Paper First-authored by a Student’ for his paper The One Hand Wonder – a framework for enhancing one-handed website operation on touchscreen smartphones, co-authored with Goldsmiths tutor Kate Devlin.

The conference website states: “The papers receiving these awards were selected from a set of outstanding papers, based on the quantitative and qualitative classifications as well as comments provided by the program committee reviewers, their final classification as full paper and their oral presentation at the conference.”

As a winner, Karsten receives a signed and stamped official award certificate, an invitation for an extended version publication in a book or a journal, one year free membership of INSTICC and a free registration for next year’s conference.

Events, News, Women in Computing

Travel grants for Women in Computing Conference in Arizona

GraceHopperConfAs part of Google’s ongoing commitment to increase the number of women in engineering, they are offering travel grants to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference in Phoenix, Arizona on 8-10 October 2014.

The theme for this year’s conference is “Everywhere. Everyone.” and will offer incredible opportunities for mentoring, networking, and career development.

Female university students and industry professionals excelling in Computer Science can apply for one of the five travel grant to attend the 2014 Grace Hopper conference.

Sponsorship includes:

  • conference registration
  • round trip flight to Phoenix, AZ (from Europe, Middle East or Africa)
  • reimbursement for ground transportation to and from the airport and the hotel
  • arranged hotel accommodations from 7-11 October
  • a fun event with your travel scholar recipients on one of the evenings of the conference.

Apply here by Tuesday 15 July 2014. The winners will be announced the week of 4 August 2014.This conference is open to female residents of countries in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Terms & Conditions.

If you have any questions please email europe-events@google.com

News, Students, Women in Computing

Goldsmiths’ students win best pitch at sexual violence hackathon

Kahani-Team-Pitch-on-main-Screen_edit

Two Goldsmiths’ BSc Computer Science students have been awarded Best Team Pitch for their group project at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict hackathon.

The hackathon was part of a global summit hosted by Angelina Jolie, the Special Envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the Foreign Secretary William Hague that aimed to find practical ways to prevent sexual violence being used as a weapon of war. The hackathon took place at the ExCel centre, Docklands between June 10 and 13 with a top prize of £1500 funding to be put towards further developing the winning app.

Students Sophie Pearce and James Milton worked with a group of eight to create a demo for a digital storytelling app called Kahani that shows the impact of sexual violence on a community from a range of view points.

The app is named after the Hindi word for story and would show positive examples of how survivors, their families and community leaders have dealt with the trauma of sexual violence.

The team behind Kahani won the Best Team Pitch for their pitch to a panel of judges that included heads of major charities, a delegate from the FCO and agency workers with on the ground experience. The top prize Judge’s Choice Award was won by an app that used GPS to direct survivors to the nearest aid centre.

Milton said he was pleased to win best pitch, and found the whole experience worthwhile. He said: “The cause was amazing, the people were inspiring and the challenge of building an effective team in 72 hours was really enjoyable. It has enhanced my belief in the power of computing and social technology to help solve major issues.”

This article was first published on East London Lines by Hannah Ashton

Events, News

Call for papers: Digital Arts as ‘Outsider’

In October 2014, King’s College London’s Underground Arts & Humanities Festival hosts the the conference for Computers and the History of Art (CHArt).

CHArt invites theoretical papers and demonstrations of academic and artistic work addressing – metaphorically or literally – questions of subversive content, design and communication, including:

  • Subversive engagement with digital arts and culture
  • Originality and experimentation v. standards, trends and hypes
  • Disruptions of the commonplace or the mainstream
  • Visual digital subcultures
  • Submerged identities
  • Visualising the underground
  • Elite audiences v. multi-peer connectivity
  • Working in partnership with or against diverse organisations
  • Cross-disciplinary subversive interventions (art/science; big data/visualisation; design/interaction).

Contributions are welcome from all sections of the CHArt community: art historians, artists, archaeologists, architects and architectural theorists and historians, philosophers, archivists, curators, conservators, educators, scientists, cultural and media theorists, content providers, technical developers, users and critics.

Digital engagement with art is thriving. Much of it is actively subversive of the traditional frameworks that enable art to be created and responded to – whether casually or professionally. This subversion takes various forms, including notions of value, uniqueness, fixity and location. The CHArt 2014 Conference wishes to explore the role of digital technologies in the underground creation, display, consumption and study of art.

The online ‘urban dictionary’ defines underground as follows: “A genre in music and other forms of media intended for an elite audience, that is often characterized by its high levels of originality and experimentation, and does not conform to typical standards, trends, or hypes as set by the popular mainstream media.” If emerging conformity and new processes must be disrupted; then what is mainstream; and what is not? – and who can tell?

Deadline: Wednesday 30 May 2014

Submissions should be in the form of a 300-400 word synopsis of the proposed paper or demonstration, with brief biographical information (no more than 200 words) of presenter/s, and should be emailed to chart@kcl.ac.uk by Wednesday 21 May 2014. Please note that submissions exceeding the stated word count will not be considered.

Postgraduate students are encouraged to submit a proposal. CHArt can offer assistance with the conference fees for up to three student delegates. Priority will be given to postgraduate students whose proposals are accepted for presentation. An application form and proof of university enrolment will be required. For further details about the Helene Roberts Bursary please email anna.bentkowska@kcl.ac.uk.

Deadlines

  • 21 May 2014 – Submission of proposals
  • 16 June 2014 – Acceptance notification
  • 27 June 2014 – Speakers to confirm attendance, strictly with payment. All successful proposers will be eligible for the reduced registration fee of £100 (£50 for postgraduate student speakers).
  • 18 August 2014 – Paper submission. Papers submitted by this date will be considered for publication.
Careers, News

Course: Creative programming for teachers

Department of Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross, London SE14 6NW

This four-day course will cover key topics in the new GCSE and A-level computing curriculum. It will give participants the knowledge and methods to unlock the creativity within computing students and inspire them to become programmers. The course leads to the award of a Goldsmiths Teachers’ Centre Certificate of Attendance.

From the very start of the course you will explore techniques that encourage the production of games and other graphical and interactive apps in a secondary school computing classroom. Participants will explore strategies that encourage their students to create highly compelling, interactive graphics and audio programs from the first lesson.

By the end of the course, participants will:

  • be able to write moderately complex computer programs in Python
  • produce creative graphical work through writing computer programs
  • have an understanding of basic programming constructs: variables, conditionals, loops and arrays
  • design creative exercises that teach programming concepts create lessons that teach basic programming concepts involving theory and practice
  • understand the use of creative work both as a means of teaching programming concepts and as a way of motivating students to do programming.

DATES

  • Training sessions: 9am-4pm Wed 28, Thu 29, Fri 30 May 2014
  • Project and lesson presentations: 9am-4pm Friday 4 July 2014

NB. If you are unable to make these dates, we  plan to re-run the course in the summer. Email teacherscentre@gold.ac.uk to register your interest.

BOOK YOUR PLACE by Friday 9 May 2014
This course costs £750. A blended approach of 100 hours of learning time combines face-to-face teaching, self-study and presentations of professional learning.
Please complete the booking form and email to teacherscentre@gold.ac.uk. Any questions, please call 0207 919 7326.