Category Archives: Women in Computing

Events, Women in Computing

Mon 9 Nov: Creativity apps, casual users and serious AI

kcomptonKate Compton, UC Santa Cruz, is speaking on creativity apps at Goldsmiths, University of London.

When: 1pm-2pm, Monday 9 November
Where: Room RHB 144, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths, University of London

Many creativity tools exist to support task-focused creativity, but in recent years we have seen a flourishing apps for casual creativity, fun and explorative creativity rather than task-completion. Creativity apps to make pottery, music, and Mario levels are bringing creativity to audiences outside of professional creative workers, but making this move requires new design patterns and best practices. Kate Compton will present some of her favorite new patterns that make these apps successful, and demonstrates them with new interactive prototypes.

Bio: Kate Compton is a long-time Procedural Content Generation (PCG) practitioner. She wrote the first paper on procedural platformer levels, generated the planets for Spore, and wrote the latest SimCity fire system. She is now a PhD candidate at UC Santa Cruz developing artificial intelligence to augment human creativity with generative art. She likes laser cutting, 3D printing, founding companies, and baking.

 

Events, Students, Women in Computing

Report from Sonorities 2015

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Mari Ohno, student on the MFA in Computational Arts, reports on Goldsmiths’ contributions to the international sound festival in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

From 22 to 26 April 2015 there are 19 events in and around the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast. For the launch of the festival the festival, Goldsmiths’ Sonics Immersive Media Lab hosted a concert and listening room.

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I presented two electroacoustic compositions, entitled floating sound and speaking clock at the Sonic Lab, Sonic Arts Research Centre.

floating sound is a composition using the sound of the composer’s bloodstream as a sound source, and was presented as an acousmatic live performance with 16 channel sound system on 23 April.

speaking clock is also a composition created with the recordings of speaking clocks in various sites around the world, and played in a loop during the festival at the SARC Surround Room.

My colleague Matthias Moos, who graduated from the MA Computational Arts last year, presented his installation piece ’Exhibit A – Oh My Gosh’ at the MultiMedia Room SARC throughout the festival. This piece is an audio-visual installation projected on the top of woofer speaker unit, to make a holographic illusion.

Inspiration, News, Students, Women in Computing

Computational Arts student wins funded residency at Cafe Oto

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Goldsmiths postgraduate student Mari Ohno has recently been chosen for a  funded residency at Cafe Oto organised by Sound and Music.

The Embedded programme places composers into extended relationships with leading national arts organisations. Aimed at talented composers and creative artists at an early stage in their career, Embedded is a bespoke programme, providing practical hands-on experience and a range of significant creative opportunities.

Mari, a sound artist, composer and sound designer, will spend 18 months in residence at Café Oto, developing creative ideas and practice, as well as producing live events and collaborations.

Bio Effector  A membrane suspended in a gallery is vibrated like a drum by the sound of visitors’ bloodstreams, which are detected and modulated in real time.

A graduate from the MA in Creativity in Music and Sound at Tokyo University of the Arts, Marie creates sound installations and electroacoustic compositions that explore various dimensions of human perception.

Her works have been presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo Wonder Site, FILE (Brazil) and New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival. She has been selected for prestigious competitions including Japan Media Arts Festival, Tokyo Sonic Art Award, the International Composition Competition and Workshop Adelaide (Australia). In addition, her works have also been selected for participation in international conferences and art festivals including NIME, ISSTC (Ireland), Invisible Places (Portugal), WOCMAT (Taiwan).

Events, MSc Computer games and Entertainment, News, Students, Women in Computing

Goldsmiths students win Ukie Game Jam again!

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‘Code Name Spy’ has been named as the winner of the biggest ever Ukie Student game jam, making it the second consecutive win from students at the University of Goldsmiths.

The jam, which ran 11-12 May 2015, saw 14 teams from Ukie’s student membership competing against each other to create the best game possible in 36 hours, with the theme’ identity crisis’.

The teams were paired with industry mentors and supplied with food and drink, with the winning game being given an exclusive pitch on Square Enix’s project Collective and receiving a specially made trophy for their university.

Goldsmiths student team leader Aldo Curtis said:

We had a great time and we are ecstatic to have been chosen as the winners with our game, Code Name Spy.

“We wanted to make something different which fitted the jam theme and this is why we came up with a conversation game where you play through a seven year old’s idea of a spy movie. We spent a lot of time laughing about the art, sounds and the ridiculous script, but we learned so much from the jam.

“We had a great venue at Goldsmiths, and being partnered with an industry mentor, like our own mentor Ed Fear, meant we could get valuable critique, tips, advice and comments on the game which really helped us create the best game possible in the given time.

The full Goldsmiths team were Aldo Curtis, Sam Hayhurst, Sokol Murturi and Andrea Castegnaro, all students on the MSc in Computer Games & Entertainment.

Dr Jo Twist, CEO of Ukie said, “The standard of games that the Ukie students managed to make in such a short period of time was amazing. The jam offers invaluable experience to games industry stars of tomorrow and gives them a chance to get quality one-to-one time with key industry people. All the entrants have really done themselves proud.”

Mentor of the Universe and CEO of Utopian World of Sandwiches, James Woodrow said:

“I am completely lost for words. It is such a privilege to have been awarded Mentor of the Universe! It’s very moving to have been put forward by the team. They put in a lot of hard work and it was an absolute pleasure to have worked with such a terrific bunch over the course of the jam.

“I’m looking forward to seeing what they do in the future as they really came together to produce something quite beautiful for their first ever game jam and I am sure they all have bright futures ahead of them in the industry. I hope that everyone involved enjoyed the experience as much as I did.”

‘Code Name Spy’ and all other game entries from the game jam will be available on Ukie’s website in the coming weeks.

Study games computing at Goldsmiths:

Events, Students, Women in Computing

Report on student-run Digital Arts Computing exhibition

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First year BSc Digital Arts Computing student Lina Sarma writes about BROKEN CODE, the 4-day exhibition students organised in April 2015.

The opening of Broken Code a few weeks ago was the inaugural exhibition of the new Goldsmiths Digital Arts Computing course.

Our punning title referenced the process of experimentation in artists’ work in which the unintentional often yields the most desirable outcomes. It also made comic admittance to our freshness of experience as coders and curators, and anticipated that perhaps one or two of the exhibits may not function as intended at all times. As one of our fellow artists once concluded “great art needs more beeps”.

The pieces themselves covered a variety of practices ranging from 70s-style psychedelic glitch art mash up (Suraya Barnes & Grace Clinton) to the exploration of sound as a form of broken interaction (Qian Lim).

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Especially entertaining to the public was Ixtli’s piece, Press Any Key which allowed only single key interaction with a computer. Key presses resulted in seemingly arbitrary outcomes on an old CRT screen, but the interface tempted the viewer with an elusive hard copy of a selfie from a nearby printer.

The exhibition welcomed more people than we could ever have expected, and we received good reviews from people who not only enjoyed the “really entertaining and fantastic pieces,” but also found time to compliment the wine.

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For us the artists it was a stressful but also a very exciting and resourceful experience.

Careers, Staff profiles and activity, Women in Computing

Join our team! New lecturing posts at Goldsmiths Computing

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Goldsmiths Computing are recruiting six new staff to join our growing department.

The posts:

  • Lecturer in Computer Science
  • Lecturer in Computer Science (0.5FTE)
  • Lecturer in Games & Graphics
  • Lecturer in Games Art (0.5FTE)
  • Lecturer in Computational Arts (0.5FTE)
  • Post Doctoral Teaching & Research Fellow.

Lectureships pay £42,452 – £48,721 per annum (or the pro rata equivalent for part-time positions), including London Weighting. The Post Doctoral Teaching & Research Fellow position pays £34,110.

The deadline for applications is Monday 8 June 2015.

Inspiration, MA/MFA Computational Art, Students, Women in Computing

Computational Arts student wins Saudi innovation & entrepreneurship prize

MA Computational Arts student Hadeel Ayoub has won an Innovation & Entrepreneurship Prize for Saudi Students in the UK.

Her prize-winning project, the Sign Language Glove, uses flex sensors to ‘translate’ the hand and finger positions used in sign language into alphabet characters on an LED display.

As well as winning the £1000 bronze medal prize, Hadeel was approached to present her innovation at the Innovation Leaders Conference at Cambridge Judge Business School and the Arab Innovation Network Annual Conference  in Jordan.

She was also approached by Evolvys Venture Builders, a technology network that identifies innovations and helps to bring them to the market. The CEO, Dr. Evolves Oudrhiri (one of the competition judges) offered Hadeel some of their microchips to incorporate into the next prototype of the sign language glove.

“I got the idea for the sign language with arduino project while I was working on a photo editing software which allows the user to control image pixels and has the freedom to input letters as pixels. I thought to substitute the keyboard input with interactive sign language using flex sensors and an arduino. 

“For the flex sensors for the fingers I used an accelerometer to detect hand orientation. For aesthetic reasons, I replaced the microcontroller from arduino uno to the sewable lily pad so I could hide it within the glove fabric. I also got some conductive thread to patch things up without breaking the circuit.

“Finally, instead of the serial monitor (and again for aesthetic purposes), I got an LED 4-digit-numerical display screen to display the letters. I still haven’t decided if my device should be wireless but if so, I will also attach an external battery power supply and a bluetooth module.”

(Text adapted from Hadeel Ayoub’s Sign Language Glove project blog)