Tom Ang
Tom is a photographer, writer, and broadcaster. Not new to the academic world, Tom was Senior Lecturer in Photographic Practice at the University of Westminster, London for over 12 years. He has had 22 books published on photography and video. The popular “Digital Photographer’s Handbook” has been translated into about 20 languages. “Digital Photography Masterclass” has proven popular with readers and reviewers: it won the Library Journal’s ‘Best How-to Book of 2008 and was chosen by Shutterbug as its ‘Créme de la Créme’ of Top Digital Imaging Books of 2008.
Tom presented two ground-breaking six-part series, ‘A Digital Picture of Britain’ and ‘Britain in Pictures’, for the BBC as well as an eight-part series for Channel News Asia entitled “Singapore”.
Tom chaired the Arts Council England organization for Chinese Arts in Britain and is a founding member of the World Photography Academy, where he led the Student Focus program for its first two years.
His current interests include documentary film-making, high-definition video, fine-art photography, writing fiction and poetry. Tom resides in New Zealand. www.tomang.com
Ian Taylor
Ian Taylor is recognised as one of New Zealand’s leading Maori innovators.
A lawyer by training, Ian was lead singer for 70’s band Kal-Q-lated Risk, and a television presenter for Play School, Spot On, Fast Forward and NZ Funniest Home Videos. He is also an award winning producer of a number of documentaries including Back Yard Visionary/The John Britten Story, Burt Munro, The Worlds Fastest Indian and the highly acclaimed ‘Aramoana’.
After a 20 year career with Televison New Zealand, Ian left in 1988 to establish three successful technology businesses from his base in Dunedin: Taylormade Media – a television and multi media company; Animation Research Ltd (ARL), one of the country’s most celebrated high tech companies; and BookIt, a specialist on line booking company ()
In 1992 ARL revolutionised the televised coverage of sport with the development of a 3D real-time graphics tracking application for the Americas Cup. Since then, through their sports brand Virtual Eye, www.virtualeye.tv , they have gone on to become one of the worlds leading sports graphics companies covering global events such as The Open Championship, The US Open,The Ryder Cup and the European Tour in golf, F1, and the World Rally Championship in Motorsport, in cricket they are one of only two companies in the world accredited for the Decision Review System in cricket, winning the Nine Network Ashes contract last year.
Through Taylormade Media, Ian pioneered many new innovations on both television and the Internet including one of the world’s first animated television hosts to work alongside real presenters.
In 2006 ARL’s Air Traffic Control Simulator, built in partnership with Airways New Zealand, won three categories of the Computer World Excellence Awards.
Ian was a member of the New Zealand ICT Task Force, was one of four Trustees on the Secondary Futures Trust, developing a New Zealand strategy for education in 2020, is a Fellow of the Royal Computer Society of New Zealand and was inducted into the New Zealand Technology Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2010 Ian was named the North & South New Zealander of the Year.
Ernest Edmonds “Art and Interaction”
Interactive art has become much more common as a result of the many ways in which the computer and the Internet have facilitated it. Issues relating to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)are as important to interactive art making as issues relating to the colours of paint are to painting. It is not that HCI and art necessarily share goals. It is just that much of the knowledge of HCI and its methods can contribute to interactive art making. This paper reviews recent work that looks at these issues in the art context. In interactive digital art, the artist is concerned with how the artwork behaves, how the audience interacts with it and, ultimately, in participant experience and their degree of engagement. The paper looks at these issues and brings together a collection of research results and art practice experiences that together help to illuminate this significant new and expanding area. In particular, it is suggested that this work points towards a much needed critical language that can be used to describe, compare and discuss interactive digital art.
Ernest Edmonds is a pioneering digital artist, an international expert on human-computer interaction and, specifically, creativity and the Creative Industries. He first used computers in his art practice in 1968. He is Professor of Computation and Creative Media in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Technology, Sydney. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Transactions, fast track, section of the MIT Press journal Leonardo and a Co-Editor of the journal. His art is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, who are collecting his archives as part of the National Archive of Computer-Based Art and design. www.ernestedmonds.com
Panel Session: Place and Creativity
Chair: Prof Phil Long
with Hael Kobyashi (UTS), Anna Tregloan and Richard Kirk
What is the relationship between place and creativity – as process, as interaction, as product? Is architecture an external representation of our inner workings? Does space provide a context for creative engagement with each other, with ideas, and with things found or constructed? The negotiation of space and particularly the dynamic relationship between audience and performance is a discussion of boundaries. The intersection of spatial creaitve practice implies, like the technoloigies that are driving it, a continual evolution that now adds the fourth, lived dimension, challenging how we quantify & negotiate the ‘spaces of creativity,’ How is this negotiation shaped by our digital tools?
John Kao tells us “place confers tangibility to creativity”. What tangibles do we ask place to bring us to conjure into existence?
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out
—Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”
Walls stifle creativity, whether real or intangible. Creativity then is in part destroying walls in an environment that is safe, encouraging and tolerant of error, expectant of the fruits of failure. Join the panelists as they talk about what space and creativity means to them, their work the ways they encourage it.
Panel Session: Envisioning future creativity
How the digital world will change the production and reception of creative work
Chair: Prof Roly Sussex.
Here’s the challenge:
- Imagine the creative arts at least 20 years from now.
- Choose one or more domains of creativity, or invent one.
- Present the process of creation, or the result of creation, or its reception.
You could present a creative work, a concept, a prototype, or a social context for appreciating creative work. Or any combination thereof. Or some other vision of the creative future. How does your vision of the creative future differ from today’s? Use any media or combination of multimedia. If your submission isn’t in prose, add a paragraph about what makes it distinctive and different.
Timing:
- Submissions to be received by midday, Wednesday 30th November
- Judging from midday to 3pm, Wednesday 30th November
- Results and prize awarded at the conference closing session: 3pm Wednesday 30th November