Category Archives: Students

Inspiration, MA/MFA Computational Art, Videos

Artist Memo Akten inspires Computational Arts students

Blogpost by Theo Papatheodorou, programme leader of MA/MFA in Computational Arts.

MA/MFA in Computational Arts students got a real treat on 23 January when renowned computational artist Memo Akten visited the MA to run a crit session and discuss his work and process.

When Memo first came in, he discussed his role in the openFrameworks community. The students in the Workshops in Creative Coding class on the MA are using openFrameworks to make interactive audiovisual applications using computer vision, machine learning, networking protocols, sensors and a lot more. Memo’s contribution to openFrameworks is great and it was really enjoyable listening him talk about his involvement.

We then went through 15 of the best end-of-term project assignments and Memo gave feedback, ideas and critiqued the work for the benefit of the students.

The highlight of the session came later when Memo gave a talk about his work. It wasn’t a typical talk listing his contributions and achievements (among other things the Golden Nica at Ars Electronica). He hopped between selected projects highlighting a common thread: how ideas are formed, how he picks tools, collaborators and how he (occasionally) pitches ideas to clients.

Some nuggets of wisdom from his talk:

  • On learning new technologies: Give yourself a project and a deadline. Working with tight deadlines enhances the creative process, increases the motivation and facilitates learning.
  • On forming new ideas: He often hacks away on a small thing late at night. This small thing might be just an experiment, a proof-of-concept or a study of a topic that fascinates him. For example, he started investigating and playing with the theme of harmonic motion. The work that started as a humble Processing sketch became an audiovisual installation, a 360-immersive projection, a live performance using 16 percussionists and ultimately a light show outside the Blenheim Palace. See the video below for its manifestation outside the palace.
  • On pitching ideas: Keep a (somewhat) organised file with your ideas. If you do develop something, blog about it, make a how-to video, share your code and your idea with the world. When you’re approached for a commission look over the stack of ideas and scale one up for a project. Don’t get too attached to your ideas. Be ready to throw away one that is not so fresh any more.

Memo is currently completing his PhD in A.I. and machine learning for expressive human-machine interaction at Goldsmiths.

This post was originally published on Goldsmiths’ Computational Arts blog.

 

Events, News, Students

Goldsmiths hosts Global Game Jam 2017

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For the second year running, we’re inviting students from Goldsmiths and
beyond to participate in a marathon computer game creation event.

Global Game Jam is an international event, taking place in dozens of locations around the world. Over 48 caffeine-fueled hours, participants will develop, programme, test and present a whole bunch of new games.

Starts: 4.30pm Friday 20 Jan 2017
Ends: 7pm Sunday 22 Jan 2017
Venue: Launch event at RHB 300, then moving to Hatcham St James (the church), New Cross SE14 6AD. Map
Tickets: Free. Book online here

At the Goldsmiths event, students from first year to PhD will collaborate in teams, enrich their skills and build their professional portfolios to show off to potential employers. It’s not only for Computing students, but also those studying Design, Music, Creative Writing – or anything else. We welcome students from outside Goldsmiths, as well as members of the London games development community.

Global Game Jam is the world’s largest game jam. The weekend makes a global creative buzz in games development – be it programming, iterative design, narrative exploration or artistic expression. GGJ encourages people with all kinds of backgrounds to participate and contribute to this global spread of game development and creativity.

GGJ is not a competition: it’s known for helping foster new friendships, increase confidence and opportunities within the community. It is an intellectual challenge, where people are invited to explore new technology tools, try new roles and test their skills.

Everyone gathers on Friday late afternoon and watches a short video keynote with advice from leading game developers. The secret theme is announced (last year’s was “ritual”) and teams worldwide are then challenged to make games based on that theme, with games to be completed by Sunday afternoon.

Our participation in Global Game Jam marks Goldsmiths as a university that is central to the world of creative, innovative, international games development. The event is organised by Goldsmiths Computing and the student tech society Hacksmiths.

News, Students, Videos, Women in Computing

First prize for BrightSign smart glove at Seoul hackathon

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A Goldsmiths Computing student’s ‘sign language glove’ has taken first prize in an exclusive South Korean hackathon attended by hand-picked students from some of the world’s best universities.

PhD Arts & Computational Technologies candidate Hadeel Ayoub, third-year BSc Creative Computing student Leon Fedden, and 2016 MSci Creative Computing graduate Jakub Fiala took part in the IBM Watson A.I. Hackathon in Seoul earlier this month. Organised by the Art Centre Nabi, the hackathon focused on pioneering technology for use in social care.

Hadeel, an MA Computational Arts graduate who is now studying for her PhD, has spent the past year working on the second version of her BrightSign glove, which turns hand motions into text and speech. In addition to the new developments in the glove’s technology, she has also consulted with Rose Sinclair from Goldsmiths’ Department of Design on the best textiles to use for the product.

During the three day hackathon, the Goldsmiths team built, programmed and trained the BrightSign glove on site. On the final day they presented the project at a public event with a judging panel including the director of IBM Watson.

The BrightSign glove contains an on-board, battery-powered single board computer, flex sensors and an accelerometer. Used in combination with a range of gestural and semantic analysis tools, users can generate and control reliable speech through a dictionary of hand gestures.

The first version of the design made international headlines in 2015, with Hadeel explaining the glove’s potential to improve communication between people with different disabilities.

The Goldsmiths team, supervised by the Department of Computing’s Dr Rebecca Fiebrink and Dr Mick Grierson, were up against stiff competition from Seoul National University, the Georgia Institute of Technology and New York University, among others.

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Adapted from a Goldsmiths News article by Sarah Cox

News, Students

Goldsmiths Games student wins assistive music technology commission

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Andreas Lopez-Muro Alfaya Y Frias, a second-year BSc Games Programming student, has won a prestigious commission from Drake Music to create a new piece of music inspired by or using assistive music technology.

As part of Drake Music’s Connect & Collaborate London programme, Andreas was one of four people given the opportunity to shine a light on music technology  which is breaking down the barriers disabled artists face when making music.

Andreas, a guitar and piano player specialising in grime, metal and jazz, won the Emerge Commission for emerging musicians aged 16-30, in partnership with WAC Arts.

Andreas is looking forward to working on this commission and joyfully said: “When I found out I got the Emerge commission, it felt like Christmas came early for me this year.”

The commission will include support and mentoring by an experienced Drake Music Associate Musician to create a new piece of work. The style of music is open and a free choice, as long as it has been inspired by or is created using music technology.

All commissions are in partnership with a leading London arts organisation, each with a different focus and style to bring the work of talented disabled musicians to a wide audience. All four commissions will be presented at a showcase event in March 2017.

Data Science, MSc Data Science, News, Publications, Students, Women in Computing

US elections: Goldsmiths data science research links voting habits with sickness & death

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A new dissertation by MSc Data Science student Caroline Butler highlights the relationship between health and politics in the USA.

MSc Data Science student Caroline Butler has been investigating whether there is a relationship between mortality among middle-aged white Americans, social and economic well-being, and the 2016 presidential primary election outcomes at county-level.

Her research suggests that middle-aged white Americans living in counties with higher death rates are more cautious voters. That is, they are more likely to vote for a safe bet over a wildcard such as Trump.

After analysing data from the United States Center for Disease Control’s WONDER tool, the United States Census Bureau’s County QuickFacts, and the Kaggle forum, 2016 US Election, Caroline discovered a pattern connecting death rates to voting.

Contrary to expectations, a one unit increase in the all-cause mortality rate increased log odds of Hillary Clinton winning in that county’s Democratic presidential election primary by 1.5693 compared to Bernie Sanders. However, this result could have been skewed by Bernie Sanders’ younger fan base.

To Caroline’s surprise, a one unit increase in the all-cause mortality rate decreased log odds of Donald Trump winning his primary in a county by 1.4371.

The project was inspired by recent evidence that drug and alcohol poisoning, suicide and chronic liver diseases have caused the mortality rate among middle-aged white people in the United States to increase. At the same time, anti-establishment candidates, such as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, have achieved unexpected success.

In a follow-up investigation to her project, Caroline ran her data on mortality, socio-economic status of a county, and which state the counties were in through the CHAID machine learning algorithm, and found that with 85-89% accuracy, you could predict who would win the primary for each political party.

Her results suggest that for both white people and all races combined, the social and economic well-being of a county is as much related to the outcomes of the 2016 primary election as the mortality rates of middle aged Americans is.

“Understanding whether mortality data for middle-aged white Americans is associated with political viewpoints is important not only from a political perspective, but also for purposes of developing appropriate public health directives,” Caroline explains.

“I was surprised to find that in areas with higher mortality rates, people were more likely to vote for Clinton over Sanders in the primaries – but I’d suggest this could be because Sanders had a high number of young, so generally more healthy, voters.

“A similar study should definitely be done for the United States Presidential Election so we can compare the voting patterns from the Democratic Party to the votes from the Republican Party.”

Adapted from a Goldsmiths news article by Sarah Cox

News, Students, Videos, Women in Computing

Computational Arts graduate wins FutureFest Art Prize 2016

Ulla Nolden, graduate of Goldsmiths’ MA/MFA Computational Arts, has been announced as one of four winners of the 2016 FutureFest Art Prize, run by the UK innovation foundation Nesta.

Following an open call for entries, twelve shortlisted artists were selected from over 270 entries responding to four themes of FutureFest – Love, Play, Work and Thrive. Works were showcased at FutureFest in London on 17-18 September 2016. Four winners were selected and announced at the event, following a live audience vote.

Winning the ‘Play’ category, Ulla Nolden’s Pure Movement 3, environment 1.2 maps the behaviour of swarms through intricate algorithms, inspired by an interest in the balance between simplicity and complexity in insect swarms.

The four winners each receive a £500 cash prize. In addition, their work will be launched and promoted on Sedition to an international audience of art collectors and digital enthusiasts. The judging panel included artist Claudia Hart, FIELD creative studio,  Ghislaine Boddington (body>data>space) and Dr Morgaine Gaye (Bellweather: Food Trends).

Events, Students

Student profile: Kevin Lewis on Hacktoberfest Ldn

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In this guest blogpost, first year Creative Computing undergraduate Kevin Lewis introduces his contribution to Hacktoberfest.

Hi there! My name’s Kevin Lewis – I’m a BSc Creative Computing student and vice president of Hacksmiths, Goldsmiths’ Tech Society. I’m also a technical events organiser and I’m currently running an event that I hope you’ll be interested in: Hacktoberfest Ldn.

Hacktoberfest is a month-long celebration of Open Source Software. Your challenge as a developer is to support OSS by submitting four pull requests during October. In return, you get a sweet limited edition t-shirt and the warm fuzzy feelings of doing good.

My event is Hacktoberfest Ldn, a guided entry to Hacktoberfest. You will learn what Open Source is, how to use git, and how to contribute to the community and the projects they write. Even if you think you’re not technical enough, no contribution is too small – bug fixes and documentation updates are valid ways of participating.

When: 6pm-9pm Monday 24 October 2016
Where: Newspeak House,133 Bethnal Green Road, London E2 7DG

We’ll have representatives from Digital Ocean and GitHub Education at the event, and a whole bunch of amazing and friendly developers. The space itself is a hub for socio-political technologists, who run many events throughout the year, many of them free. If you’re on the fence – come for the people and the free food.

Please read our Events Code of Conduct before attending. And if you have any questions, you can send me a message on Twitter or via email to klewi014@gold.ac.uk.

Thanks, Kevin.
If you’re a Goldsmiths Computing student and would like to write a blogpost here, please email p.fry@gold.ac.uk, or message us on Twitter.