S U M M E R 2 0 1 0
SMARTlab Newsletter
3 ways/cce project (funded by the Arts Council & CCE)
E work on the theme of camoflauge;
H E C A M O U F L AG
S E C O N D PA RT O F T
T Y O F B AT H .
P RO J E C T I N T H E C I
The first two project threads have been achieved, and are due for London installation soon:
Camouflaged
(including SMARTlab artists Tara Mooney, Vanessa
Weigand, Lizbeth Goodman et al with a full list of
participants included on the web site):
In the current socio-political climate, inclusive values
supposedly permeate every walk of our lives. The reality
of this situation is that for many young people and adults
with special needs it is the margins of society in which
they seem more likely to find themselves. A number of
our young people feel ignored by mainstream society
and lack popular cultural representation. It seems to
many that they become invisible elements in a society
which purports to welcome them with open arms, whilst
their eyes remain shut to who they really are and what
they can contribute. Yasmeen Al Awadi, an artist whose
work covers marginalised groups who are often ‘socially
invisible’, worked alongside fashion designer Tara
Mooney to document a project whereby students
designed and made their own camouflage. Students
were photographed by Gigapan artist Ben Thomson who
produced interactive images of three settings (school,
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In 2010, Professor Lizbeth Goodman was
selected as a Creative Agent to bring
together teams of artists and
technologists to work on site in UK
schools, to increase the collaborative
potential of learning for all students.

The first project has been underway at
the Threeways Special School in Bath,
with collaboration from Futurelab, Queen
Mary University, and independent artists
from many genres. The project includes
three strands of work: visual/fashion
storytelling, and music enabled by
assistive technologies for all.
Bath city centre and a local woodland) with the ‘invisible’
students hidden in the images.
Digital Story Telling
Students engaged with storyteller Michael Loader and
digital performance artist and SMARTlab intern Keir
Williams (a graduate student from Queen Mary,
University of London, working on an internship basis with
our team) on a range of off site visits to generate stories
based on stimuli found in a number of man-made and
natural spaces. Students were empowered to use their
own voice to express preference in terms of story
content and the materials used to support the retelling of
their tales. Students gathered multisensory resources
ranging from digital sound and visual recordings to
natural and man made objects. Parents were then
invited to a digital storytelling festival run by the students
in the Sensory Theatre at Three Ways School. The third
project thread of interactive music enabled by assistive
technology and eye control is currently in development:
watch this space.
The Indian folknest project

SMARTlab returns to India. . .

9 SMARTlab team members have

been selected to take part in the
European Commission's Folknest
Project to explore the analog and
digital possibilities of art in India.

SMARTlab joins as the Digital

Media Institute base for a project
funded in December 2009, when
Contact Base, London
Metropolitan University, UNESCO
India and Planet Art eXchange
(PAX) were awarded a Cultural
Heritage grant from the European
commission for the EGG project - Ethno-magic Going Global. The EGG objective is to promote West Bengali
folk art.

This Artist exchange programme will involve 15 European artists from a large spectrum of disciplines leading
to the creation of the Hindustan nomadic art installation which aims to bring to the Western audience a
centuries old West Bengali tradition in a contemporary form, combining folk arts with interactivity.

The SMARTlab team has been entrusted with the realisation of the Shadow Interactive Dance piece, for
workshops in London in July and October, live interaction in India in August, editing in November and final
presentation in interactive form in London in December this year.

In this work, commonalities of the Chhouu and Jhumur folk dances and contemporary western dance will be
featured using real time interactive video, sound and graphic technology to amplify and extend the
expressive potential of this virtual collaborative, interdisciplinary performance.

Some of the team (Tara Mooney - SMARTfashion and textiles expert, Seanan Brennan - world music expert,
and Bobby Byrne - dance/choreography expert) will travel to Bengal in August to work on preproduction
for the piece. The full team includes Lizbeth Goodman (Director/Mixed media artist), Sher Doruff (live and
online music expert), Cathy O’Kennedy (Choreographer), Vesna Milosevic (Dancer / Choreographer),
Vanessa Weigand (videographer / editor) and Taey Kim (media / web artist).

Read more at http://pax08.com/folknest/about-hindustan/

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New Masters in Interactive Digital Media Recent Viva

Professor Demetrios G Sampson

(IEEE), Dr Mick Donegan, Zoe
Akamiotaki after Zoe's successful
PhD viva, 4th June 2010

On 6 June, PhD student Zoe

presented the results of her years
of work on ʻLudic machines: on
Alongside members of UEL’s Department of Computing and Interactive the narrative of early childhood
Technology and Engineering (CITE) and their Multi Media Technology playground themed equipment
team, SMARTlab has been developing a new Masters course: designʼ, in a successful Phd Viva!
Interactive Digital Media. The programme offers both MA and MSc
outcomes from a practice-based range of modules, combining relevant
contextualisation and theoretical approaches to digital media projects. Show & Tell
The range of possible projects might include assistive technology for
learning, interactive narratives and games, digital materialisation and
rapid prototyping, multimedia performance, digital sound, mobile
technologies and web design.

This programme aims to provide an enhanced experience of interactive

digital media project design and realisation. The key focus is on
developing students’ prior skills to a professional level, or supplementing
their current skills with industry-relevant theory and project management
SMARTlab team members
expertise. Rather than looking at theory for its own sake, this course will
following Professor Sampson's
underpin the practical work of students with applicable conceptual and
Show and Tell lecture
contextual knowledge, so as to provide them with a clearer
understanding of how their work fits within a set of practices.
Methodologies are suggested to aid successful outcomes of the
students’ individually conceived projects, as well as offering methods
and approaches common to many projects, either on the course, in
current work elsewhere or in the future.

Professor Goodman has won an international grant to share this course

specifically with women students in the Middle East and Africa, for whom
opportunities to study in the West are often severely limited. The Pilot
project is due to go live later this year.

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The July PhD seminar is nearly upon us (this time with a big live
Music Jam!)

The next SMARTlab seminar will run from the

9th to 16th of July 2010. SMARTlab is running
three yearly seminar sessions for their PhD
students from around the world at UEL, London.
This summer, faculty and students will focus on
the ‘practice’ component of SMARTlab's special
PhD Programme.

As well as giving students ample time for both,

one-to-one peer support and ideas exchange
within the international group, the SMARTlab
seminar week also includes a series of talks and
seminars designed to meet the needs of each
student.

The seminars cater to the wide range of subject areas, fields of research and specialities of our students.
The current session aims to get back to basics and explore the nature of a practice-based PhD and the aim
for an original contribution to knowledge in cross-disciplinary fields. Furthermore, the week-long programme
includes practical and academic advice on theory, writing and funding, as well as discussion, debate, and
special events.

Additionally as a celebration of the arrival of the summer, SMARTlab's music crew, Steve Cooney and others
with musical experience, will present a communal synthesis of individual talents.

Toby Borland (MAGICbox): Active Energy

Toby Borland (SMARTlab Researcher and

MAGICbox community technology/rapid
prototyping lab manager) provides technical
direction for the “Active Energy” project in
conjunction with Loraine Lesson of cSPACE and
Fiona Fieber of  [S P A C E]. This project involved
the "Geezers", a self-actualised club of
superannuated inventors, and the design class of
Bow Boys School under the tutelage of Richard
Alvarez to explore and create practical energy
generating turbines. The project gave a hands-on
engineering course through the practice of an arts
delivery (exploration, development & exhibition).

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Phase 1 of the project had three distinctive programs: - teaching and exploring renewable energy sources at
Bow Boy School with an assistance of the Geezers - the installation of a self-illuminating wind turbine on the
roof of the "Age Concern" building off Roman Road, Bow. The wind turbine uses a persistence of vision
effect to create a moving circular light display.  - testing of several water turbine prototypes in the
Hydrodynamics department flume tank in the University of East London. Phase 2 will see the creation of
several small-scale water turbines situated in the river Thames, with an illuminated display of the energy
being generated. The project is not so much to power the Houses of Parliament, as to engage the
participants and public in the practical design considerations of inshore, marine and tidal power.

Tobyʼs hard work has this year, as for the past 4 years, also supported many of the AVA (School of
Architecture and Visual Arts) fashion and product design students, with major shows including London
Fashion Week informed by materials and garments made in our labs!

FACULTY & PhD Students NEWS

Dr Leslie Hill

SMARTlab PhD Programme Convenor and

Performance Maker, Dr Leslie Hill (co-director,
Curious) is touring nationally and internationally
with a new performance titled the moment I saw
you I knew I could love you. The performance
made in collaboration with filmmaker Andrew
Kötting, composer Graeme Miller and performers
Claudia Barton and Joseph Young. the moment I
saw you I knew I could love you is about gut
feelings; impulse, love and undefended moments.
The audience is cast adrift with only stories and
half- remembered truths to sustain them; huddled
snugly together inside salt encrusted life rafts, while
performers, soundscapes and fragments of film drift past. The flotsam and jetsam includes memories of the
moon landing, a whale who watches jumpers from Beachy Head, and live ultrasound images that are read
like tea leaves to reveal past secrets and future hopes.

Dr Mick Donegan

SMARTlab featured under the Government sponsored “Emerging Technologies Initiative”. Following link
shows two young people using eye gaze control to create music by playing real instruments using gaze
control at Three Ways School, Bath.

http://emergingtechnologies.becta.org.uk/ (Click on the down arrow under the picture on the left and you'll
see an eye - then click on the video next to it.)

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SMARTlab's Interfaces work on Eye Gaze
Control featured on BBC2 and BBC HD.

The following link is a 3-minute clip of Dr Mick

Donegan working with a severely disabled young
boy, Tim, enabling him to create music, speak
and paint pictures far more quickly and easily
than he had ever done before. It is taken from a
recent BBC HD programme called 'Karate Kids'
for Children's TV that was so well received it was
subsequently repeated to a wider audience on
BBC2. Link: http://vimeo.com/10345659

Dr Esther MacCallum-Stewart

Dr Esther MacCallum-Stewart attended the Under the Mask Conference in

June 2010 at the University of Bedfordshire. As an invited speaker, she talked
about theorising the difficult and often contradictory actions of role-playing
within online spaces. In her capacity as Vice President of DIGRA, she also
sat on the closing panel which discussed ways forwards for Games Studies
in the UK. DIGRA sponsered the networking event after the conference as
part of their ongoing mission statement to bring academics together within
Games Studies on both local and international levels.

Publications in the last six months have included a special edition on The Imaginary in the Journal of
Gaming and Virtual Worlds (co-editor with Denise Doyle, also SMARTlab and the University of
Wolverhampton), chapters in the first of the MIT Press (E)Mergencies series on Virtual Learning, The
Edinburgh Guide to Contemporary War Literature (on games and warfare), and a paper for Games and
Culture on the growing convergence between television drama and gaming strategies. Work submitted
involves a chapter on social communities in online games for The Online Games Reader (in press).

Esther is currently preparing her book on Social communities in Online Games for publication.

Dr Ryya Bread

Dr Ryya Bread is recently appointed Curatorial Director for

Kestle Barton, a new arts venue situated on 50 acres of farm
and woodland near The Helford, in Cornwall, UK
(www.kestlebarton.co.uk). After a five year conservation and
restoration phase, the doors opened to the public for the first
time in May 2010, featuring our first exhibition of the season:
Rupture – contemporary photography by Patrick Shanahan
of the post-mining landscape of Cornwall. This first season
features four solo exhibitions that have something to say
about Cornwall; including photography, sculpture, painting

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and a unique installation of archival and contemporary works around the role of St. Ives in WWII. Dr. Bread
joined the team early in 2010 to help get the gallery and the arts programme operational for the first season
and to begin outlining more long term curatorial objectives for the future of Kestle Barton. The aim is for the
converted farm to be a self-sustaining venture that integrates arts, conservation and the farming history of
the site into an inclusive model of community and artistic engagement.

Bruce Damer

A paper by SMARTlab PhD student Bruce Damer was accepted, following

peer review, for inclusion in the 12th International Conference on Artificial
Life, the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems, to be held in Odense,
Denmark in August. The paper describes the core research and architecture
for Damer's PhD thesis: "The EvoGrid: A Framework for Distributed Artificial
Chemistry Cameo Simulations Supporting Computational Origins of Life
Endeavors". The paper was co-authored by Damer, Peter Newman, Richard
Gordon, Tom Barbalet, David Deamer, and Ryan Norkus and will be
presented at the conference by Damer and included in the conference
proceedings, to be published by MIT Press. Link to conference site: http://www.alife12.org/

Taey Kim

Taey Kim, SMARTlab core team member and PhD student, has been
invited as a panellist to present her work at the American Literature
Association 21st Annual Conference, Hyatt Regency San Francisco on 28th
of May 2010. Her paper, ‘Translation in Transit: The Artistic Intervention of
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’ is part of her PhD research project. The paper
examines the relationship between the physicality of writing, the physicality
of embodied diasporic experiences and their transition into language,
language being subjected to severe pressure from both migratory experience
and the artist.

She also has been invited as a visiting artist to contribute to the Expanded Media programme at Kansas
University in the US to present her artwork and lecture from April 5- 7, 2010. She gave a lecture titled,
‘Unwriting Narrative Space’ and creative workshop in the Community-Based Art class and work with
graduate students in the Visual Art Department. She will have a major solo exhibition in upcoming December
in Seoul funded by Korean Arts Council.

Will Pearson

SMARTlab researcher and PhD student, Will Pearson is taking part as an Urban Ideas Baker with the
British Council Creative Cities programme in Pilsen in the Czech Republic, 12 -15 June 2010, to engage
with the 2015 City of Culture plans and opening up public space within the city. He is also participating in a
programming sprint at University of Wales Institute of Art and Design, Cardiff, supported by the Touch Trust
to develop new computational resources for pupils with autism.

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 In addition, he is continuing work with Personal Updates
Sound and Music and Tuke School from the team:
Peckham to create and install new
creative computational tools with a
group of interaction designers. In
addition to all of this, he is working on
a number of iPhone projects. The
interactive installation he has been
working on in Newcastle at Seven
Stories, through Culture Lab at Newcastle University opens mid-July.
It's a face-capture, projection system using video clips to create an
interactive wall, based around the classic children's story, The
Professor Lizbeth Goodman is
Borrowers.
delighted to introduce her
young son Lucas Alan, who
was born on 19 March 2010
and is already gearing up to
perform with the team at our
July event!

Lucas Alan Goodman-

O'Snodaigh (Born 19 March
2010) will join the SMARTlab
team at the PhD seminar in
July this year; he is already
giving serious consideration to
his 'original contribution to
knowledge', as demonstrated in
his look of open concern. . . :-)

Rachel Lashebikan is proud to

introduce her gorgeous
daughter Siri, born in December
2009: