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News, Staff profiles and activity

A message to our new undergraduate students

Dear students,

RobertZimmerAs the start of term approaches I want to tell you how much I’m looking forward to welcoming you later this month. I’ve been at Goldsmiths for many years and I have found it to be a uniquely special place.

Our computing department is one of the most exciting places for teaching and research in the country. Currently we have a wide range of research in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, data science, music composition and analysis, cognitive science, games design, intelligence agents, biological modeling, drama, design and art.

We are confident that you will find this department an environment in which you can develop as a creative, skilled professional. We regularly introduce new programmes to ensure we are offering degrees that are fulfilling, cutting-edge, and relevant to industry. This year we launched the BSc in Business Computing & Entrepreneurship and next year we will launch a new BSc in Data Science. 2016-17 will also see the launch of the new Fabrication Lab to build on our range of specialist teaching and research spaces.

I hope that you will have fulfilling and exciting years of study with us – we will aim to do whatever we can to make this happen. As well as your degree study, I hope you take advantage of the wonderful opportunities that Goldsmiths gives you in terms of culture, charity, sport, art and music. Increasingly employers are not just looking for academic excellence but a well-rounded graduate who has been involved in a wide range of activities.

Before you arrive

  • If you are starting in the foundation year, you might want to start familiarising yourself with How to think like a Computer Scientist, an online book which will help prepare you for the Introduction to Programming module you’ll be starting soon.
  • Year 1 students on all of our programmes might want to look at this video series by Daniel Shiffman, which will help prepare you for the Introduction to Programming module. The link is to video 1.1 but you can carry on with the tutorials in order. You can download p5js here.

Have fun! (Of course, some of you will be too busy preparing for the new term to look at these resources before you get here. That’s fine; there’ll be plenty of time for studying once you arrive.)

All of us in the department very much look forward to welcoming you to Goldsmiths. I hope to see some of you at GoldStart – but please remember that you do still need to attend induction.

Yours faithfully,

Prof Robert Zimmer
Head of Department

Staff profiles and activity, Videos, Women in Computing

VICE interviews Dr Sarah Wiseman on being a lecturer in her twenties

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VICE magazine recently asked three university lecturers: ‘What’s it like to lecture at university while you’re in your twenties?’

One of them was Dr Sarah Wiseman, 29, a research and teaching fellow in the computing department at Goldsmiths University of London. She leads lab sessions, talking to around 50 students at a time, and also has some experience lecturing. Here’s what she said…

“I actually hope the students still think of me as a young person – maybe I’m just getting old and desperately want that to be the case,” she laughs. “I was a bit nervous at first, but I’ve learned a lot after a few years of teaching. I’ve learned it’s absolutely OK to admit you don’t know the answer to something. You’d look like an idiot otherwise. And I’ve learned to freestyle a bit, rather than stick to a script.”

Sarah has taken part in Science Showoff gigs designed to help young academics become more confident public speakers by getting them to do stand-up comedy about their research. “It was kind of terrifying, and definitely put the teaching into perspective,” she says.

When it comes to socialising, Sarah thinks it’s important to maintain a very clear boundary between undergraduate students and academics. “You want to be approachable… but it’s about being viewed as a professional, rather than a friend,” she explains. “There is a culture of end-of-the-day drinks among colleagues in my department, but not with the students. In fact, we do need to be a bit careful about what pubs to go to in the New Cross area to make sure there aren’t awkward encounters.”

Inspiration, Students, Videos

Computational Arts student builds A.I. orchestra to play Riley’s ‘In C’

InC1

More than 50 years after composer Terry Riley created the ever-changing ‘In C’ for an indefinite number of performers, an MFA Computational Arts student from Goldsmiths has designed an artificially intelligent orchestra which will allow musicians to play the piece solo.

Composed in 1964, Riley’s experimental and influential masterpiece consists of 53 short melodic fragments lasting from half a beat to 32 beats, with each phrase repeated an arbitrary number of times.

It has been performed with 11 musicians or up to 124, with each performer having control over which phrase they play and when. The piece also has no set running time – it could last 15 minutes or for hours.

With ‘In C++’ Gregory White has created a series of independent virtual performers who make their own decisions about which notes to play, when to progress to the next bar, whether to play hard or soft, and so on, through a form of artificial intelligence.

Each performer is aware of the others, correcting themselves if they start to lag behind or rush ahead in order to ensure what they play compliments the rest of the ensemble.

The program Gregory has written produces MIDI (digital) notes which are then sent to hardware instruments (physical digital instruments), software instruments, or any other MIDI controlled device – potentially including lights. He’s so far trialled it with chimes, a more droney version with heavy reverb, and a percussion-only virtual orchestra.

The artist explains: “I decided to choose the piece ‘In C’ for my MFA Computational Arts project for a number of reasons, but primarily because when performing Riley’s work, I realised that my thought process was rather algorithmic.

“I had 53 cells of information, each I would repeatedly execute until I decided that I had passed a certain threshold – at which point I would progress to the next cell. When all cells had been played, I would repeat the last until I decided to stop performing, or ‘terminate the program’.

“I thought it would be interesting to take the ensemble element out of the piece, and see how it could change, or what new ideas could be explored, when the decisions about which pitches to play were taken care of.

“What is the human performer’s role? They could perform with an instrument alongside the machine; they could act as a conductor, influencing volume, pattern changes, the texture of the piece, the timbre of each performer, effects processing, and so on. And how is one person’s interpretation of the piece different to an ensemble’s?”

“Plus, I just really, really, wanted to do this project so I could make the C++ pun.”

InC1246

About the artist
Gregory White’s fine art practice includes photography, filmmaking, sound design, creative coding, and human-computer interaction, as he believes that each informs the other.

He attended the University of East Anglia, and received a Bachelor’s degree in Music Technology with a specialisation in Sonic Arts. Currently Greg (@gregwht) is working as a freelance video editor, photographer, and general sound guy, while studying MA Computational Arts part-time at Goldsmiths.

Gregory White’s ‘In C++’ will be on display at METASIS, the Goldsmiths, University of London MA and MFA Computational Arts show from 8-11 September.

 

This article, written by Sarah Cox, was first published in Goldsmiths News

 

Careers, Events, Inspiration, Women in Computing

Queens of Tech: Talks by inspiring c♀mputer scientists

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15% of Goldsmiths Computing students are women. Although that’s double the national average for university computing departments, it’s nowhere near good enough. So we’re aiming for 50%. 

Join us for Goldsmiths’ new Women in Computing speaker series. These remarkable computer scientists will talk about their work – and inspire you to be part of the next generation of amazing women in tech.

Thurs 16 June: Dr Kate Devlin _ My Life with the Sex Robots

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Dr Kate Devlin is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London. This evening she gives a lively overview of her career and her current research on sexual companion robots.

Kate has a background in both archaeology and computer science and has combined these with applied perception, focusing on digital cultural heritage. She is an active campaigner for mental health awareness and also for raising the profile of women in computing.

Where: Room 342, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths
When: 6:30 – 8pm Thursday 16 June 2016
Book your free ticket

Thurs 23 June: Susan Stepney _ Can slime mould compute?

susan-stepney
If you have a PC, tablet, or smartphone, you have used a computer. But some people use billard balls, beams of light, sticks of wood, chemicals, bacteria, slime moulds, spaghetti, even black holes, as computers (although some of these only in theory!).

How can these things be computers? What can we do? Can they do things your smartphone can’t? And why are these people using such peculoar things to compute with, anyway?

Susan Stepney is Professor of Computer Science at the University of York, Department of Computer Science. In this informal lecture, she discusses her career and research in non-standard computation, biologically-inspired computational models, and emergent systems.

Where: Room 342, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths
When: 6:30 – 8pm Thursday 23 June 2016
Book your free ticket

Thurs 30 June: Vinoba Vinayagamoorthy _ Inventing the TV of the future

VV

Vinoba is an R&D Engineer for the BBC, working within Broadcast & Connected Systems. She thinks up new types of synchronised companion screen experiences for connected homes. Currently, this ranges from building prototypes for new & archived content to running exploratory studies to gauge how our audiences might react to them.

Previously, Vinoba Vinayagamoorthy focused on building prototypes that combine content on social networks with programmes being played on a connected TV.

Where: Room 342, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths
When: 6:30 – 8pm Thursday 30 June 2016
Book your free ticket

More posts involving Women in Computing

News, Students, Videos, Women in Computing

Goldsmiths research student builds Daphne Oram’s unfinished ‘Mini-Oramics’

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A Goldsmiths Computing researcher has built a music synthesiser and sequencer designed – but never realised – by electronic music pioneer Daphne Oram more than 40 years ago.

PhD student Tom Richards has spent the last three years poring over an unfinished project by Daphne Oram (1925 – 2003), one of the central figures in the development of British experimental electronic music.

Daphne Oram
Daphne Oram

Oram was the co-founder and first director of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and is credited with the invention of a new form of ‘drawn sound’ synthesis – Oramics, which was recently the subject of the ‘Oramics to Electronica’ exhibition at the Science Museum.

The original Oramics machine was designed in the early to mid 1960s and was built with funding from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

It was different to many early forms of electronic synthesisers: the composer/musician drew onto a set of 35mm film strips which ran past a series of photo-electric cells, generating electrical signals to control amplitude, timbre, frequency and duration.

The original Oramics Machine was the size of a large office photocopier, so was too cumbersome for the average musician. In the early 1970s Oram began work on Mini-Oramics (perhaps inspired by Moog’s development of the Minimoog), but as far as we know she never completed a prototype.

“There were a lot of reasons why she didn’t launch Mini-Oramics,” explains Tom. “She was working on her own, she wasn’t affiliated to a large organisation or university.

“She had ups and downs in her life, and at the time she was working on Mini-Oramics, she also worried that her approach to musical research was out of fashion when compared to chance-based and computerised techniques. She was unable to secure the further funding she needed and she eventually moved on to other research.

“In an alternate universe, Mini-Oramics might have become an actual product, bought and used by musicians all over the world.”

Dr Mick Grierson, director of Goldsmiths’ Daphne Oram Archive, and Tim Boon head of research at the Science Museum, invited Tom Richards to do a practice led PhD on the subject of Oramics. Tom decided to re-imagine and then build Mini-Oramics.

“The rules were simple. I had to imagine I was building the machine in 1973, interpreting Daphne Oram’s plans and using only the technologies that existed at that time.”

Tom is now working with six contemporary composers, giving each of them a few days to play with the Mini-Oramics machine.

One of the composers, London-based sound artist Ain Bailey has recently been working with the MiniOramics synthesiser. “It’s a fantastic instrument. I’m not a formally-trained musician, so it’s been great to work with an instrument where I can create the sounds graphically,” she said.

Other composers working with MiniOramics include James Bulley (see video above), John Lely Jo Thomas, Head of Goldsmiths Electronic Studios Ian Stonehouse and Rebecca Fiebrink.

Tom adds: “This is an opportunity to experience what it would have been like to use Mini-Oramics, had Oram managed to complete it. It’s a way to test how important her ideas were, and to consider how influential she could have been.”

Inspiration, News, Students, Women in Computing

Computational Arts graduate wins £5,000 Aspen Online Art Award 2016

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Goldsmiths alumna Matilda Skelton Mace has been announced as the winner of the Aspen Online Art Award 2016.

Matilda Skelton Mace graduated from Goldsmiths’ MA/MFA Computational Arts programme in 2015. She is a London-based artist and designer, working with the building blocks of reality- space, light, and geometric form. 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.

Last year she was shortlisted for the HIX Award and has exhibited installations at galleries, nightclubs and festivals. This year her work is centred on providing visuals for music events by promoters including Gottwood festival, Inverted Audio and Blueprint Records.

'Party at our place'. Projection mapping and sculpture, 2015.
‘Party at our place’. Matilda Skelton Mace, 2015. Projection mapping and sculpture.

As winner of the Aspen Online Art Award, Matilda has been commissioned to create a virtual world based on the unique digital ‘fingerprints’ of visitors to their website.

Drawing on the phenomenon of ‘Sky Islands’ – mountains with unique flora and fauna caused by climatic isolation from the surrounding lowland – users’ metadata are used to create particular landforms with their own plants and weather systems. Visitors with matching characteristics (for example using the same hardware or operating system) generate landforms in a similar location to eventually build up a mountain range corresponding to correlations in metadata. Their weather and plant life reflects the geographical location of the user. Visitors can explore this expanding world and a visual representation of metadata profiling emerges, with its implications for anonymity rights and freedom of expression.

Launched in 2014 by Aspen Insurance Holdings in association with the Contemporary Art Society, the Aspen Online Art Award is the first of its kind in the UK.

The judges, who included Attilia Fattori Franchini, Curator, and the Aspen Art Committee, selected Skelton Mace from a shortlist of seven artists to win a commissioning prize of £5,000 and the opportunity to create a new online-based work for Aspen’s renowned art collection.

Attilia Fattori Franchini said: “This award is a fantastic opportunity for an emerging artist and the strength of Matilda’s proposal shows that she is one to watch. It will also sit particularly well within Aspen’s collection as her ideas around data privacy and cyber risk are particularly pertinent to our contemporary culture.”

Lanny Walker, Art Consultant at the Contemporary Art Society, said: “Matilda’s artwork explores many themes relevant to current debates within contemporary art and beyond, where identity, data privacy and our virtual footprint are continuous concerns. In this she follows in the footsteps of artists including Hito Steyerl, Oliver Laric and Heath Bunting, who touch upon these issues in their own practices.”

This year’s shortlist was dominated by Goldsmiths’ 2015 Computational Arts graduates, with Lior Ben Gai and Angie Fang also nominated.

Events, News, Students, Videos

Thu 2 June: GENERATION undergraduate Computing show

GENERATION-ANIMATED

Get ready for GENERATION 2016 – the exhibition and performance event showcasing the very best work produced by undergraduates across our degree programmes in 2015-16.

Expect virtual reality games, experimental architecture, Deep Dream technology, audiovisual performances and a musical table – all developed this year by students from our Creative Computing, Games Programming, Music Computing and Digital Arts Computing undergraduate degrees.

All are welcome to come experience the work, talk to exhibitors & performers and enjoy a good old party. Over 18s only after 5pm, when the bar opens.

Where: The Stretch, Goldsmiths Student Union, Goldsmiths, London SE14 6NW
When: 12noon – 8pm Thursday 2 June 2016
Online: GENERATION 2016 website

All are welcome. No booking needed.

UPDATE: Here’s what judge Justin Spooner said about the show

“The level of inventiveness and craft skills was fantastic throughout the show, and it gladdens my heart to think of many of those students taking their idiosyncratic approach to digital creativity out to meet the world.” Read his full review here