Tech Trailblazers: Advancing Virtual and Immersive Technologies

This is an online ‘in conversation’ session with Professor Sarah Atkinson and three of the GLOW exhibition contributors who have each made significant advances in immersive and virtual production technologies – Rebecca Allen, Margaret Minsky and Donna Cox.

We will explore their early work, and their impact and their legacy within our current creative innovation landscape. The discussion will be facilitated by Professor Helen W. Kennedy, Director of the Virtual and Immersive Production Studio, University of Nottingham.

• Professor Helen W. Kennedy is Professor of Creative and Cultural Industries at the University of Nottingham. She researches feminist interventions into games culture and the creative industries, immersive experience design, and cultural evaluation. Professor Helen W. Kennedy was Principal Investigator on an international project aimed at the transformation of games (REFIG.ca) from 2015-2021. Since 2014, she has been researching experiential cinema as an aspect of the ludification of contemporary culture with Professor Sarah Atkinson at King's College London. Professor Helen W. Kennedy has led and is currently leading a number of funded projects in the area of immersive experiences – XR Circus, Surround Stories and Live, Experiential and Digital Diversification.
  
  
• Professor Sarah Atkinson is Professor of Screen Media at King's College London and the curator of GLOW: Illuminating Innovation. Sarah joined King’s College London in 2015 as Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures working across the Department of Digital Humanities and the Department Culture, Media & Creative Industries (CMCI). She was appointed Head of CMCI from 2017-2020. Sarah has undertaken extensive work into the Live Cinema economy and has worked on a number of funded immersive media projects including a Virtual Reality diversity initiative, a project which explores artificial intelligence and conversational interactivity in games and ‘XR Circus’ which brought together circus artists with immersive technologists.

• Rebecca Allen is an internationally recognised artist inspired by the aesthetics of motion, the study of perception and behaviour and the potential of advanced technology. From the mid 1970’s, Allen was a rare female artist working in the early stages of computer art and digital technology. Her pioneering artwork, which spans nearly five decades and takes the form of experimental video, large-scale performances, live simulations and virtual and augmented reality art installations, addresses the future of gender, identity, nature, and what it means to be human as technology redefines our sense of reality.
  
  
• Dr Donna J. Cox is the Michael Aiken Chair, Director of the Advanced Visualization Laboratory (AVL) at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), Director of Illinois eDream Institute at the NCSA, and Professor in the School of Art and Design, University of Illinois. For over 30 years, she has researched art of scientific visualisation. She organised the first “Renaissance Teams” as an interdisciplinary methodology to address visualisation challenges. Dr Cox and her collaborators have thrilled millions of people with stunning cinematic data visualizations of science for IMAX movies, feature films, PBS HD television, and large-screen digital museum shows around the world.

• Professor Margaret Minsky is a Visiting Arts Professor of Interactive Media Business (IMB) at NYU Shanghai. Her core research has been in the field of haptic interfaces (computational interfaces that simulate objects that you can touch and feel), as well as in computer graphics and educational technology. Her recent investigations are in whole-body interaction in technology and arts environments, with research aimed at increasing cognitive, social, and physical wellbeing. Minsky previously directed research at Atari Cambridge Laboratory and Interval Research Corporation. 

The event will take place online via Zoom. The link will be provided after TicketTailor registration.