News & Events December 2008

RAE 08 Success

The Wales Institute for Research in Art & Design (WIRAD) is pleased to announce that in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise the Art & Design panel rated 95% of the research submission as international standard, with 70% rated as either Internationally Excellent or World Leading. Using Times Higher weightings this makes the submission 12th out of 70 in the UK and the best in Wales. This significant achievement by WIRAD's founding members, UWIC and Newport, demonstrates very clearly the international quality of WIRAD's research. It puts WIRAD in the best possible position to build on this achievement through our invitation to key research partners from across Wales to join in this success story.

Mind Cupola, Affective Environment Exhibition

12 November-15 December,
Cube3 Gallery, University of Plymouth

Dr Brigitta Zics's interactive art work explores the potentiality of a cognitive-driven interaction (or passive interaction) process which is based upon a complex system of instant affection technologies (mechanical and audio-visual) and affective computing (face analysis based on temperature and gesture). It addresses the body-mind interconnection and aims to produce a so-called 'cognitive-feedback loop' in the spectator's cognition through the aesthetic experience. The system measures the emotional and behavioural reactions and acts to guide the person towards an optimal experience, which is an immersive state in a condition of 'equilibrium'. It is anticipated that the desire to enter this condition and the mastering of the interaction produces new levels of immersion and cognition.

Spectators are invited to step under the cupola at the highlighted place. After detecting the person, the cupola and the camera mover will move to the appropriate position. The spectator is advised to be relaxed and only use movements of the face and gestures to react to the system actions. The spectator's main guide is the visualisation, which displays the condition of the spectator (chaotic states, meditative states or the proposed equilibrium). Through the interaction the person might reveal hidden messages on this condition behind the visualisation. To find this information and to enter a spiritual-like state the spectator has to recognise the laws of the cognitive-based system which can be formulated as processes of self-observation.

Dr Zics's practice-based research examins the contemporary aesthetic of interactive media art, in order to propose a useful practical model of interactivity founded on a critical approach to both existing theory and practice. Her recent PhD thesis The Transparent Act as a New Aesthetic Model of Art: Cognition and Interaction through the Transparent Medium establishes a new model for interactive media art that offers an immaterial engagement with technology at a locus where cognition and the aesthetic intertwine. This model is constructed following a revision of both the theory and practice of interactive media art, which identifies a materialistic bias of technology-mediated art production caused by a confused concept of technology as both tool and medium.

Visit here for more information on Brigitta Zics's work.

ReacTickles Global Design Charette

5th December 2008, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff. Llandaff Campus

ReacTickles Global, a new phase of the Reactive Colours project. The broad aim of ReacTickles Global is to explore how the inherent connectivity of mobile and web technologies can be exploited to provide an inclusive, immersive environment, primed for playfulness, creativity and social communication.

The Reactive Colours project, developed by Wendy Keay-Bright, Alun Owen and Ben Norris, at Cardiff School of Art and Design, was awarded funding by NESTA in 2005. The overall aim of the project has been to encourage children to playfully engage with technology in a variety of settings, both at home and at school and to evaluate whether an experiential, rather than a directly purposeful environment, can reduce the anxiety that inhibits social communication and imaginative thinking for children on the autism spectrum. The outcomes of the project have included the ReacTickles software, the Reactive Colours website, and the ReacTickles Creativity Box.

The design research methods adopted for Reactive Colours placed the user at the heart of the development, in real, face-to-face settings and through the Reactive Colours website and led to the creation of the wonderfully playful and relaxing ReacTickles software. Formal and exploratory, discovery-led strategies evolved to enlist collaboration from experts, alongside those who understood the immediate needs of the autistic child - families, teachers and adults on the ASD spectrum.

The ReacTickles Global Design charette* is the 2nd of these workshops. The 1st orkshop was held on 14th August 2008 at the Dyscovery Centre, where children took part in short open ended exploration and idea generation activities. The charette will review the outcomes of this 1st workshop. The event will be structured around considering user experience within realistic parameters in order to facilitate design specifications for development.

Twenty participants have agreed to take part in the ReacTickles Global Charette. The participants include an expert stakeholder group, able to represent potential enduser communities and a design visualization/developer group with a broad range of experience in artistic practice. The stakeholder group encompass a wide variety of professional backgrounds, including Special Needs service provision, community support and education, technology and software distribution, psychology, clinical practice, regional government and teaching. During the charette the stakeholder group will contribute expertise and ideas within a given time-scale and assist with the evaluation of emerging proposals in the context of social, technological and pedagogical constraints. They will also play a key role in identifying potential sponsorship and funding opportunities.

The Memorial Walks book launch

16th December 2008, Royal Oak, Bermondsey

Simon Pope's The Memorial Walks (Film and Video Umbrella), a book cataloguing 17 walks with writers including Iain Sinclair, George Szirties, Sally O'Rielly, Amanda Hopkinson, Geoff Dyer, Matthew Hollis, Hari Kunzru and Tom McCarthy was launched in Norwich on 15th November 2008. Pope, an artist and Reader and member of CFAR, was awarded financial support for the publication which records and contextualizes a series of performances for the exhibition Waterlog (2007). Edited by Steven Bode and designed by Herman Lelie it has been published by Film & Video Umbrella, (London) and will be distributed internationally. A London launch is planned for 16th December 2008 at the Royal Oak, Bermondsey.

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