Events

Thu 24 Sept: Fashion | Bodies | Technologies

design_talk

Goldsmiths’ THURSDAY CLUB presents short lectures and a conversation with Elke Gaugele and Dani Ploeger.

Where: Location: RHB 2107, Richard Hoggart Building
When: 6pm-8pm, Thursday 24 September 2015
Free. All welcome, no booking required.

Dr. Elke Gaugele will raise a critical studies approach towards ‘Fashioning the Future’ phantasms, which are often inscribed in smart textiles as well as in its future technologies. Looking at issues that engage with fashion, body and technology he will suggest a perspective on ‘biometric subjectivation’ that entangles fashion and surveillance, with examples from the history, science and biopolitics of fashion.

Elke Gaugele is professor for Fashions & Styles at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, dean of the Institute for Education in the Arts. She researches on fashions’ history of science as well as on biopolitics and new technologies in fashion; on aesthetic politics and postcolonial approaches in fashion, textile and cultural theory.

Artist Dr. Dani Ploeger will speak on digitized planned obsolescence and art, in relation to his recently published Leonardo paper Abject Digital Performance: Engaging the politics of electronic waste. His performance installations involve consumer technologies and readily available medical devices, and explore themes around the technologized body, ecology, sexuality and vanity.

Dani Ploeger is an artist and theorist, whose artwork has been featured in galleries and museums across Europe, North-America and China, as well as festivals including transmediale (Berlin), CYNETART (Dresden) and Arse Elektronika – a festival of sex and technology (San Francisco).

This event is co-organised with Goldsmiths’ MA Fashion and the Goldsmiths Fashion Research Unit and kindly sponsored by visiondirect.co.uk

THE THURSDAY CLUB is an open forum discussion group for anyone interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in today’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s).

News, Staff profiles and activity

Master web design with our new global computing course

Learn how to build, test and deploy a mobile-ready website with a new online course led by Goldsmiths’ Department of Computing.

Designed for beginners, the course will be launched on 15 September 2015 by the University of London International Programmes.

The course, Responsive Website Development and Design. has six component courses with the final one culminating in a project. This requires the student to develop and design a website through the learning that has been acquired by completing the first five courses.

The course is designed to enable learners to understand and develop all the technical layers found in a typical website. These range from the familiar interface text, through to several layers of technology, right down to the underpinning database structure.

Goldsmiths has led on developing this specialisation following a successful bidding process undertaken by Coursera to add new ‘high demand’ courses to its portfolio of 34 such Specialisations. This win follows a successful collaboration between the University of London International Programmes and Goldsmiths during the first phase of MOOCs in 2013.

A more recent MOOC, Creative Programming for Digital Media and Mobile Apps, was also designed by Goldsmiths and has seen more than 187,500 learners enrol on the three occasions it has been made available. The record number of enrolments make it one of the most successful MOOCs for the University of London International Programmes.

Professor Mark D’Inverno, Pro-Warden for Research and Enterprise at Goldsmiths, said: “We have a very distinct approach to teaching computing, which is both highly creative and deeply technical, with the capability of producing the next generation of programmers for the creative industries. Our experience also extends to the undertaking of a large scale European project, which supports advanced peer feedback and social learning analytics – all of which have been built into this Specialisation for Coursera”.

The MOOC is expected to attract learners from across the globe. “Not only will the course enable learners to master a skill and acquire expertise in web design and development but it will also make them more attractive to any prospective employer, regardless of whether they chose to go into a technical job or an unrelated area,” adds Michael Kerrison, Director of Educational Innovation and Development, University of London.

The first of the six component courses for the Responsive Website Development and Design programme will be launched on 15 September 2015. The programme is led by Dr Matthew Yee-King with additional teaching by Dr Kate Devlin, Dr Mick Grierson and Dr Marco Gillies from our Department of Computing.

Adapted from a news story published on Goldsmiths’ website here.

News, Staff profiles and activity

BBC reports on Paul, one of Goldsmiths’ robot artists

paul-robot

BBC’s ‘Get Creative’ team have recently produced a series of video reports on Paul, one of Goldsmiths’ robot artists.

They interview Paul’s creator, the artist and computer scientist Patrick Tresset who spent six years building an artist robot with a camera for an eye, a robotic arm and an old school desk for a body.

To be a sitter for one or more of the ‘Paul’ robots created by Patrick, join him for a workshop at The Big Draw launch event at the Weston Library, Bodleian Libraries Oxford on 19 September 2015.

Events, News

Thu 17 September: Goldsmiths artist-in-residence presents new work

hamilton

This week, visual and sound artist Helena Hamilton presents the kinetic sound sculpture developed during her 3 month artist-in-residence at the EAVI research group within Goldsmiths Computing.

“Currently the material that I am sampling and researching is chalk. I am intrigued by both its sonic and visual qualities, using its brittleness and subsequent mark making as a measure of time/interaction/effort.”

The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session with Helena. All welcome.

EAVI is a research group focused on embodied interaction with sound and image. We broach issues of whole body interaction, haptic feedback, sound image relationships, all in live real time applications. They are a small group of academics, researchers, and PhD students, carrying out cutting edge research across a diverse range of topics including motion capture, eye tracking, brain computer interfaces, physiological bio-interfaces, machine learning, and auditory culture.

When: 4pm-6pm, Thursday 17 September 2015
Where: WB100, Ground floor, Whitehead Building, Goldsmiths

WB100_map

Events, Students

EXCEPT/0N Computational Arts show

EXCEPTION710-360-banner

Welcome to our MA/MFA Computational Arts show EXCEPT/0N: Divided by Zero,  a show demonstrating the rich and diverse spectrum of possibilities in creative computation.

From Artificial Intelligence to algae, gender to generative algorithms, biometrics, affective computing, and sonic arts, EXCEPT/0N presents to the world a spectrum of the possibilities of creative computation, which is richer for the diversity and interplay in methods.

Held in the striking St James Hatcham building at our New Cross campus, EXCEPT/0N features work by students on the MA (one year) and MFA (two year) courses, based within the Department of Computing.

Where: Hatcham St James (church), St James, New Cross SE14 6AD Map
Opening party: 6pm-9pm Thursday 10 September 2015
Exhibition continues: Fri 10am-7pm / Sat – Sun 12pm-8pm / Mon 10am-7pm
View the exhibition website

The participating artists explain:

“In society, machines are widely available and technology becomes more transparent day by day. As artists, incorporating technology and computation into our working practice allows us to communicate in a language, which is shared across cultures.

“As music and art can be said to be ‘universal’ languages, so code can be understood as the common language of machines worldwide. Our creative approach to the use of technology, programming and machines allows us to communicate our vision and interact with others through society, technology, and across the vast space of human experience.”

Dr Mick Grierson, MA/MFA Computational Arts Programme Leader, says:

“Our students can program computers, make robots, and build mobile applications, but they aren’t simply engineers and technicians – they are examples a new form of media and fine art practitioner, capable of understanding and controlling complex computational technology in creative ways, for the purpose of producing entirely new works of art.”

EXCEPT/0N is the result of a year of intense study, equally focused on technical and critical aspects of computational arts.

The exhibition previews on Thursday 10 September at 6pm and will run until 14 September. Special performances have been scheduled for the exhibition’s opening night.

 

 

Staff profiles and activity

Surreal spaceships and strange eggs: A beginner’s guide to the art of William Latham

William Latham in front of his Artwork at Summerhall, Edinburgh
William Latham in front of his Artwork at Summerhall, Edinburgh

Artist and computer scientist Professor William Latham recently gave a TEDx talk on evolutionary art and computers to an audience in Oxford of 1,600. Read on or watch the video below to find out how his work – initially inspired by the exhibits in the Natural History Museum – has developed over the decades. What can we expect to see in years to come as the relationship between science and art continues to develop?

Read more…
News

£18m hub set to revolutionise digital games and media research for good of society

Goldsmiths, University of London and partners have been awarded £18m to develop research in virtual reality, digital art, data visualisation and graphics, for the benefit of science, society, education and culture.
This new Digital Creativity (DC) Hub will harness the power of digital creativity to provide new technologies for games and interactive media, exploiting the space where they meet. The project will lead the way in developing innovative digital products which enhance our daily lives, from personalised digital health services to the use of interactive media in education, says Universities and Science Minister Jo Johnson.
Chancellor George Osborne announced in the Budget that the University of York-led DC Hub is one of six new research centres that will drive forward the UK’s Digital Economy research, knowledge and skills.
The DC Hub will employ 15 of the best impact-driven digital creativity researchers in the world to transfer knowledge and expertise gained from £90m of investment in digital creativity research at Goldsmiths, York, Falmouth and Cass Business School over the last decade.
Professor of Computing William Latham leads the project for Goldsmiths. He says: “Our research and software development team will focus on the core themes of Digital Art and Graphics, Virtual Reality, Data Visualisation, and Procedural Content Generation.
“We are working in close collaboration with the teams across the DC Hub and aim to deliver cutting-edge research and software shaped by our engagement with our industry partners. The DC Hub led by The University of York builds on our close collaboration developed over several years.”
The DC Hub will ensure that:
• Research ideas find a fast route into the marketplace through partnerships with industry.
• Scientists, social scientists, government and the third sector work together to use the enormous potential of games and interactive media to achieve social good.
• Museums, galleries and publishers of games and media maximise the positive impact of the digital world on creative culture.

The DC Hub is co-directed by Professor Peter Cowling and Professor Marian Ursu, University of York.
Example projects include:

• embedding advanced artificial intelligence in commercial digital games through working with industry partners
• working with broadcast companies, producers and performance companies to develop new ways of interacting with TV programmes and theatre performances,
• developing ways to improve engagement with digital archives and digital assets for heritage sites and archaeologists
• engaging with local authorities to help them to reach citizens to understand policy changes through the use of games and media.

The DC Hub partners range from large organisations such as the BBC and Aecom, SMEs, including games companies such as Revolution Software and AI Factory, charities such as Dyslexia Action and New Visuality, and networks and funding organisations such as Game Republic and Creative England.

Creativity, independence and learning by doing.