Careers, Events, Students

Wed 18 May: Careers in Computing

it_labs

This May, Goldsmiths Computing students are invited to our Computing Careers fair to meet potential employers and kick-start your career.

When: 1.00 – 4.00pm Wednesday 18th May 2016
Where: RHB 274, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths

As the academic year comes to a close, here is an opportunity for our students to meet employers from across the computing sector, including IT consulting, tech and software development. There will also be a chance to discover opportunities with design studios and other creative roles.

Confirmed exhibitors include Hewlett Packard, Euromoney, Sogeti UK, GradIT, QA Gateway and Vassit.

The event will include:

  1. an exhibition where you can meet employers on a one-to-one basis
  2. a programme of talks to give you an insight into developing relevant skills.

2.00-2.30pm – Shay Olupona, Hewlett Packard
Goldsmiths alumnus Shay Olupona will be discussing his experiences of the Hewlett Packard graduate scheme and his current role within one of HPs most high profile projects. He will give an insight into the industry from his perspective as a recent graduate and offer some advice for students looking to secure their first role, as well as tips for the HP application process.

2.30-3.00pm – Helen Kempster, Goldsmiths Careers Service
Helen will lead this session to help you think about how to put together a successful CV or application for the IT and computing sector. We will look at some examples, and you will get tips on how to make your applications stand out from the crowd.

This event is open to all Computing students, and is a collaboration between the Careers Service and the Department of Computing. If you have any questions about the event, please contact Helen Kempster.

 

Staff profiles and activity, Videos, Women in Computing

Staff profile: Sylvia Xueni Pan

SylviaWhite

In this blog post, we profile the professional development Dr Sylvia Xueni Pan, who joined Goldsmiths in September 2015 as a lecturer and researcher in Virtual Reality.

In 2015, deputy head of Goldsmiths Computing Marco Gillies (who had been one of her PhD supervisors) invited Sylvia Xueni Pan to apply for a job at Goldsmiths. She had been with for University College London for 11 years, and was ready to move on. Sylvia had joined UCL for her Master’s in Computer Graphics after studying Computer Science at Beihang University, Beijing. She wanted to answer the question: Beyond mere entertainment, how can computer graphics benefit us?

For instance, she was interested in how socially anxious and confident men interact with a forward virtual woman.

The beginning of a conversation with an avatar

And it gets more personal

Some participants really enjoyed this experience, quite visibly

Continuing on this theme, Sylvia’s PhD research looked at how virtual reality systems might reduce social anxiety, language barriers and cultural difference (something she had experienced personally as a Chinese woman in London). For instance, she studied how the personality of an avatar (shy or confident) could influence our behaviour.

A subsequent post-doctoral position at UCL investigated how people respond when confronted with a moral dilemma in Virtual Reality. Her work was featured in BBC Horizon: Are You Good or Evil? (1’40” to 7’40”). (Related publications here and another here)

Her research interests pulled her towards psychology and neuroscience, resulting in post-doctoral positions at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (UCL), using VR to study the neuroscience of social interaction. Here, she discovered that we subconsciously copy an avatar when playing drums with her.

“But at UCL, the emphasis is on being brilliant at code. But there’s not enough creativity or appreciation of how code might be applied in the real world. I’m not so interested in the technical stuff – I’m interested in how it feels, and whether it works. So it made sense for me to come to Goldsmiths Computing, where creativity is really valued.”

At Goldsmiths, Sylvia teaches third-year and Master’s modules in Data Visualisation, Computer Graphics & Animation, first-year module Audio-Visual Computing, and second-year module Perception & Multimedia Computing. Part of her research interest is on building understanding between autistic and non-autistic people.

“There’s lots of work that tries to teach autistic people how to live in the non-autistic world. For example, at UCL I was working on a camera that can alert its users to emotional meaning by sensing facial expression. But I’m now more interested in teaching non-autistic people how to understand the autistic experience.”

At Goldsmiths, Sylvia is working with her students on VR environments that simulate what it’s like to be autistic. These tools can show non-autistic people what it is like to live in a world where sound affects vision, and where it is difficult to filter or prioritise sensory input.
She’s also keen to involve her students in this research.

She recently challenged her third year Computer Graphics students to create their own work that simulates autism for the non-autistic user. Some students were excited with this idea and decided to do their final year project with her. For instance, see this blog profile of one of her students’ project.

Alongside this, Sylvia has also been working with a team of philosophers, neuroscientists, and doctors on how GPs respond to medical dilemmas in Virtual Reality.

She is excited about the future of Virtual Reality and the unlimited applications in VR that would change our life in all aspects.

“Virtual Reality is going to revolutionise the way we teach, and more and more students will be excited about VR and motivated to pursue a career in this area.”

 

News

One more funded PhD in Intelligent Games & Game Intelligence

Could you be one of our next cohort of students who are putting advanced research ideas into digital games and finding ways to improve people’s lives using games technologies?

We have one more remaining 4-year studentships available for September 2016 entry, fully-funded to cover fees (Home/EU rate) and a tax-free stipend.

The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence (IGGI) is an exciting place for you to undertake PhD research, working with world-leading academics and top industrial games partners. We currently have 23 students working on research in areas including:

  • artificial intelligence
  • emotion and immersion in games
  • new ways to interact with games
  • applications such as using games to help neurological patients and to learn how children acquire language
  • intrinsic motivation in computational creativity
  • crowdsourcing solutions via gamification.

About IGGI

IGGI is a collaboration between the University of York, the University of Essex and Goldsmiths, University of London. We train the next generation of leading researchers, designers, developers and entrepreneurs in digital games.

IGGI gives you the chance to work on a focused research topic to extend the forefront of current knowledge in digital games technology and applications. IGGI gives you the opportunity to work with our industrial partners on your research, allowing you the possibility to contribute directly to the future of games. You’ll have the opportunity to undertake industrial placements during the programme. These give you first-hand experience of the gaming industry, contributing to your research, as well as giving you the skills needed to succeed in a career in the games industry or games research.

Our partners include organisations such as: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, The Creative Assembly, Codemasters, 22Cans, Eutechnyx, Roll7, Rebellion, Game Republic, UKIE, TIGA, The Knowledge Transfer Network, BT, Age UK and Sue Ryder. Your research work with partners like these will help to increase the use of games as a tool for scientific research and societal good, as well as creating more fun and profitable games that exploit research advances.

Your research will take up around 80% of your time, working closely with one or more expert supervisors. This research will be supplemented by a tailored teaching and training programme where you will develop games and undertake other activities in small teams with the other IGGI PhD students.

You’ll also develop through events such as:

  • the IGGI Games Jam, a 48 hour Game Development Challenge to enhance your skills in game design and development and teamwork. This is part of a global Games Jam, so you will be working with and competing against teams from across the world
  • the IGGI Symposium, a student-led event that is a showcase for student research alongside industry and academic speakers
  • industry days, where practitioners from industry share insights into their business and present real-world problems for teams to solve.

You’ll receive practical skills training from a range of academic leaders. Core modules include Games Development, Games Design and Research Skills.

You will have the opportunity to access cutting-edge advanced optional modules from all three institutions with topics such as:

  • Advanced Computer Vision
  • Multi-Agent Interactions and Games
  • Storytelling in Theatre, Film and Television
  • User-Centred Design
  • A.I. for Game Developers
  • Graphics and Geometry for Games
  • Understanding Social Media
  • Intelligent Systems and Robotics
  • Machine Learning and Data Mining
  • Media Theory.

Apply for IGGI

We have 11 fully-funded studentships to award to outstanding students that cover fees and an annual stipend of £14,057 (or £16,057 with London weighting if studying at Goldsmiths) for four years (at rates current for 2015/16; this may increase according to EPSRC minimum payments guidance). 3 studentships are available at Goldsmiths, University of London.

You can contact potential supervisors directly or we can help you to choose a principal supervisor from York, Essex or Goldsmiths based on your interests and background.

>> Apply here

Events, News, Students, Women in Computing

7-8 May: Anvil Hack 2016

anvilhack

Get your energy drinks ready. Anvil Hack II invites students from around the UK to congregate in Hatcham St James (aka The Church) for our FREE annual 32-hour creative hackathon.

Organised by Hacksmiths, Goldsmiths’ student-run computing society, Anvil Hack II focuses on the creative applications of technology (this is not a prototyping session for your new startup). Use your skills to make something wonderful, arty, musical, or just plain old awesome.

We’ll provide you with space, food, drink, electricity and WiFi (thanks to support from Goldsmiths and Degeneration IT, plus sponsorship from Improbable and Chirp)  so that you can get on with the real work – making cool things!

When: 9.30am Saturday 7 May – 6.00pm Sunday 8 May 2016
Where: St James Hatcham, St James, New Cross, London SE14 6AH
Who: Any enrolled UK undergraduate or postgraduate student, or graduate less than a year out of university. Students will be required to show their student ID on arrival.
Tickets and info: anvil.hacksmiths.club // Register now

Hacker Ethic #5: “You can create art and beauty on a computer”
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution

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

Aspen Art Award shortlists three Goldsmiths graduates

Three MA/MFA Computational Arts graduates have been shortlisted for the prestigious Aspen Online Arts Award 2016.

Angie Fang, Lior Ben Gai and Matilda Skelton Mace all graduated from Goldsmiths in 2015, following their degree show exhibition EXCEPT/0N.

angieAngie Fang is a UK-based Chinese digital artist who works in digital media, audio visual performance and interactive installations. Her online video work is created entirely in C++, making use of complex 3D OpenGL and digital signal processing techniques entirely of her own devising.

Her work focuses on the tension between sound, space and visual elements, and also the subtle experience between the technology synthesized and the reality. Her works, Nito , L-Pattern, Bud and Organic Flow were exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum; and the immersive installation Under the Water installed in Hotel Elephant gallery. Outside of her academic research, she also gained experience working for Studio XO and United Visual Artists. bongbongsquare.com

liorLior Ben Gai is an Israeli digital artist, working in various digital mediums since 2008. His work explores potential intersections between artificial life and synthetic biology, examining notions of ‘lab aesthetics’ whilst creating experiences that rely on his strong visual sense.

As an independent artist, Lior explores generative strategies and computational creativity to produce expressive software, animation and sound. He is emotionally drawn to computer generated graphics, strongly believes in project based learning and enjoys thinking about things he never thought about before. His commercial works include museum installations and exhibits, mobile games, web applications and custom interactive software. soogbet.net

matildaMatilda Skelton Mace is a London-based artist and designer, working with the building blocks of reality, space, light, and geometric form. She creates her own interactive systems in C, C++, Processing, Java and HTML5.

Her work features strong use of projection and materials to transform physical space, creating sculptural interactive digital artworks. She is interested in the ‘in between’, exploring ideas of implied, imagined and virtual space, the dissonance that can arise between real and virtual and the way we perceive it. This year she was shortlisted for the HIX Award 2015 and has exhibited at galleries, nightclubs and festivals. belikeotherpeople.co.uk

BSc Digital Arts Computing, Events, News, Students, Women in Computing

28-29 April: SYMBIOSIS Digital Arts Computing exhibition

symbiosis-invite

Please join us for the opening night party for Goldsmiths’ BSc Digital Arts Computing exhibition 2016.

Featuring work by 22 artists, the exhibition explores the symbiotic (and sometimes dysfunctional) relationship between technology and art.

The artworks – interactive installations, photography, painting and sculpture – investigate surveillance, antisocial networks, tattoos, cyber feminism, big data and the intimacy of human eye contact.

The exhibition is free and open to the public.

Opening night party: 5.30pm – 9.30pm Thursday 28 April 2016
Where: Hatcham St James (The Church), St James, London SE14 6AD
Exhibition continues: 10am – 7pm Friday 29 April 2016

BSc Digital Arts Computing, Inspiration, Students

Art project uses ‘Snooper’s Charter’ surveillance tech to data mine your life

better-forever

A downloadable plugin that mines your browser for data – then builds a profile of your personality and lifestyle – has been created by Goldsmiths Digital Arts Computing student Joe McAlister.

Joe’s project, entitled You Probably Live in Horsham, asks: If the government’s ‘Snooper’s Charter’ legitimises mass surveillance, can we use the same technology to study ourselves?

An art piece with a strong political theme, Joe has combined a visual spy-like aesthetic with the programme’s ability to generate eye-opening reports on the user’s mind-set, creating a feeling of shock, awe, and a slight sense of unease.

Designed to promote discussion around the paper trail we leave on the internet, and how safe that data is online, You Probably Live in Horsham also asks the user to compare their online identity with how they see themselves in real life.

“In our materialistic society many people’s lives have become intertwined with the internet to such a degree it’s become hard to imagine the boundaries between virtual and real,” says Joe – a first-year Digital Arts Computing undergraduate who’s set to graduate in 2018.

“I want to prompt people to look at their lives from a new perspective. When important elements of your identity appear in a list in front of you, it becomes de-humanising. You become just another person on a piece of paper, or in this case, a computer screen.

“I want people to see it, step back a second, and consider a completely different side to their identity which they might not have previously seen.”

“The Home Secretary’s Investigatory Powers Bill demands web and phone companies log the IP addresses, URLS and connection times for every citizen for a year. Theresa May has emphasised how ‘terrorists’ are using the internet to evade detection and by using blanket surveillance they can help prevent this. But at what point does this ‘harmless’ state surveillance become the precursor to something resembling a totalitarian state?”

Behind the scenes of You Probably Live in Horsham it’s a complex system: after the user installs a plugin, it injects a Javascript file into every website that’s visited. This script will then use JQuery, Javascript and Ajax to collect the IP address, URL and timestamp of every web address.

The data is then formatted into a storable format, and individual parts of it analysed. Given the project’s purpose in raising awareness of data security, all data is stored locally in the user’s browser, with only small elements sent temporarily via encrypted ‘https’ to remote servers run and secured by reputable companies.

Install the plugin
Click here to download the plugin. Once loaded simply press ‘add to chrome’. The extension should now be installed and the eye icon should be visible in the top right hand side. The eye will move when it analyses a page. You don’t need to do anything to prompt the analysing of a page just browse like normal. To view your paragraph as it generates click the eye icon. The longer you use the plugin the more accurate the data will be. I suggest using it for a few days before taking what it says seriously.

After running the program for a short time on his own computer, Joe’s report proved remarkably accurate, guessing among other facts that he went to Goldsmiths, travelled from Horsham in around 72 minutes, worked a lot late at night and was probably thinking mostly about “Southern Rail or big data”.

joe_mc
Joe McAlister caught on camera

The gathering of data then allows further assumptions to be made manually, even by people who don’t know you. For example, the programme shows that Joe owns a Mac and travels a lot so it’s likely a lightweight version like a MacBook; he likes the artist Yayoi Kusama so it’s likely he also likes other installation art; he’s a computer programmer, appreciates art and goes to Goldsmiths, so he’s likely to be studying Digital Arts Computing.

“The personas we display to people across our idealistic online lives and our more realistic lives can be very different,” adds Joe. “This programme might generate a report for you that reflects your online escapism, or you’ll find more of your real personality comes out.

“From just a few dozen URLS, You Probably Live in Horsham can generate huge amounts of data, and the longer you use the plug-in, the more accurate that data will be,” adds Joe. “And unlike your inclusion in the government’s data retention scheme, it’s entirely optional and easy to stop.”

Adapted from a Goldsmiths News story published on 20 April 2016.

Creativity, independence and learning by doing.