Nancy Diniz (Generative Processes in Design)
Dr James Collett (Squeezed States, Synchronization and Bars) website
Helen Scalway (The Submariner’s Cell)
Julian Lindley (Environment & Society: From Micro to Macro, Structure to Anarchy)
Professor Benedict Anderson (Soft Landings Hard Cells)
Dr Matthew Overton (Metaphorical Evolution: How Cells Influenced (my) Business Research)
Nicolas Salazar-Sutil (Blocking the Cell: Samuel Beckett’s Quad & Frayn’s Copenhagen; Geometry and Microscopy in
Theatrical Practice)
Dr Vito Veneziano (Software Engineering Development Process: The Meiotic Model)
Samuel Bicknell (From Mimesis to Memes: The Theatre as Survival Machine in The Wooster Group’s Brace up!)
Professor Simeon Nelson (Monad, Leipniz’s Metaphysical Corpuscle/Moon) See 'Artist's exhibiting work' for bio/details.
Bio/extracts - the Speaker's:
Nancy Diniz (Generative Processes in Design)
"Nancy Diniz is Programme Leader of the Interior & Spatial Design Course at the School of Creative Arts at the University of Hertfordshire. There she also teaches in the MA Interior & Spatial Design. She is also a visiting lecturer at the Architecture Course in DAU/ISCTE, IUL, Lisbon, Portugal.
In the past she was Senior Lecturer at the Architecture Course in Lisbon DAU/ISCTE, IUL, Lisbon, and Subject Leader in Technology & Environment at the University for the Creative Arts – Canterbury Architecture School, Canterbury, UK.
Nancy is an External Examiner of the MA Interior and Living Design at Domus Academy, Milan, Italy.
In addition to her academic activity, Nancy is principal of the studio “Augmented Architectures”, a research+design practice working on adaptive and interactive systems for Architecture.
Nancy is currently completing her PhD in evolutionary behaviour in Architecture at the Bartlett School, UCL.
Main Research interests:
Generative Design, Adaptive Design, Parametric and Digital Fabrication, HCI, Physical Computing".
Dr James Collett (Squeezed States, Synchronization and Bars) click here for: full bio/website
"James Collett is a lecturer in the School of Physics, Astronomy & Mathematics. Before going to University, he worked at Pilkington's European Technology Centre as part of the team developing the UK's first holographic head-up displays for aircraft. His PhD work, at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, was on circulation invariants in stellar dynamics and included the discovery of the stellar dynamical analogue to fluid helicity".
Helen Scalway (The Submariner’s Cell) is an artist interested in the representation of spatial experience, exploring maps, diagrams and architectural drawing to evoke complex and multi-dimensional spaces.
Helen originally studied English Literature at Cambridge University, then some years later, sculpture at Kingston University and Chelsea College of Art. Awards include an AHRC Small Grant in the Performing and Creative Arts, 2004, residencies in The Drawing Research Project Space, Wimbledon School of Art, University of the Arts London, 2007-8. From 2007-2009 she worked as an artist within the Department of Geography, Royal Holloway University of London, and the V&A, on a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council entitled ‘Fashioning Diaspora Space’ (more in the Artist's exhibiting section).
Julian Lindley (Environment & Society: From Micro to Macro, Structure to Anarchy) FRSA, MCSD, FHEA, MA
"I am a lecturer who does not lecture and a designer who does not design. I help students and clients see what is needed and how to attain these goals. At UH I help students understand the value of design and to see the bigger picture for design beyond just a consumer artefact into a realm where happiness, well being of individual, communities and the environment, technology all impact on the type of future we are attempting to influence. All of this is held together by an over arching design methodology which encompasses research, creative evolution and final propositions. As a practicing designer I assist clients to understand the value of their output and use traditional design skills to optimise the products and services they provide, acknowledging all stakeholders requirements. Design is an intellectual process of understanding which needs to be used carefully to gain real rather than perceived benefits. As a maxim I tell my students
“Design what is right not what is expected”
My specialist research interests rotate around Sustainability, particularly social sustainability and how the design process can achieve this through behaviour change and other design interventions. Man can learn from nature both in structure and mechanical solutions, nature has usually got there first".
Professor Benedict Anderson (Soft Landings Hard Cells) (see website for details)
Dr Matthew Overton (Metaphorical Evolution: How Cells Influenced (my) Business Research)
Senior Lecturer in Project Management, University of Hertfordshire Business School - website
"Graphic depiction is an established method to communicate information. It may be viewed as a paradigm, with metaphors and symbols at one extreme and mathematic precision at the other. Due to primary and secondary education, graphic conventions have been adopted by general practitioners and widely understood by mass audiences, though graphical education, excellence and novelty has declined with increased usage of computer software to produce graphics. Responding to the interest in understanding the creative process and adoption of new ideas by individuals and their dissemination via innovation networks, work was undertaken to use network graphics to explore and explain activity".
Nicolas Salazar-Sutil
(Blocking the Cell: Samuel Beckett’s Quad & Frayn’s Copenhagen; Geometry and Microscopy in
Theatrical Practice) Nicolas Salazar-Sutil, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College
This paper compares the use of confined geometric spaces in Beckett’s television play Quad (1981) with Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen (1998) on the basis of the movement patterns or blocking of the actors on stage, which reproduce geometric configurations derived from cellular space. In the case of Quad, Beckett’s mime evokes the pacing of four individuals in what resembles a prison cell. In the case of Michael Frayn’s play, the three actors on stage reproduce the sub-atomic dynamics in a cell’s nucleus, thus eliciting the dynamics of the famous meeting between the physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in September 1941, which is the subject of the play. I argue that confined spatiality, and miscroscopic geometry provide dynamic tensions in space that are appealing from a performative point of view, insofar as this cellular space is animated by performative properties (tension, energy, dynamic relations). For this reason, I argue that the cellular is not equatable with a receptacle or passive stage, but a living space, which, when realised in theatrical practice, can be an agent that is as central to the action of the play as the actors themselves.
Dr Vito Veneziano (Software Engineering Development Process: The Meiotic Model)
"Nature has developed several interesting approaches to solve quite a unique problem, namely how to support and evolve "life". It has selected several methods to solve the problem across generations, by balancing existing information (DNA patterns, etc.) with a mixture of randomic changes, which would allow new organisms to be created and "processed" by the natural selection cycle.
Nature had plenty of time to do so, of course, which software engineers haven't (that is another unsolved problem, by the way!). But they could start copying nature for their own problem solving, or... could they?"
Samuel Bicknell (From Mimesis to Memes: The Theatre as Survival Machine in The Wooster Group’s Brace up!) Sam Bicknell is an M.Phil student in the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham and is currently writing his thesis on adaptations of dramatic texts in postdramatic performance.
Professor Simeon Nelson (Monad, Leipniz’s Metaphysical Corpuscle/Moon)
See Artists exhibiting work for bio/information.
Lindsay Bloxam - photographic prints
Lindsay Bloxam has had a long held interest in the scientific which can be traced as far back as her MA in 1995, where she was composing and illuminating 2D and 3D cellular arrangements inspired from her father, Dr D.L.Bloxam’s electron micrographs. The publicity of her work led to a meeting with another Chemist, Dr Christina De Matteis in 1998. They collaborated to produce a range of molecular lighting pieces which were shown at the RCA’s ‘Creating Sparks’ Sci-Art exhibition in 2000, London. They went on to produce commissioned pieces for the National Endowment of Science, Technology and the Arts in 2002, The Royal Society of Chemistry in 2002 and in Nottingham University’s school of Pharmacy in 2010. Bloxam uses photograms to enable her to capture the photoreactions that occur when light is passed through an object onto paper. Her early experiments were exhibited at the Photographer’s Gallery, London in 1994. These early experiments have been the inspiration for a body of new work (see attached images) some of which were exhibited in a group show at the New York Hall of Science, USA in 2008.
Bloxam is interested in photography’s ability to materialise the impalpable, while simultaneously dematerialising what is solid and real. The floating organic bodies and cellular worlds depicted in Bloxam’s work only exist on photographic paper and are unable to exist in reality. She creates a symbiosis between three dimensional form and light to reveal particular layering and structural qualities within objects. The photograms record the reactions that occur when light is passed through these objects onto paper. There appears to be an alteration in the state of matter, energizing or breathing life into them, so that a once vacant and inert material contains a vibrant presence. Through the use of light, dull and lifeless forms could be transformed into spirited, significant beings.
The results appear organic, and yet the images are derived from man-made beginnings. The transformed objects have their origins in the mundane and everyday. They are created from a range of objects through experimentation with glassware filled with liquids, wire and fabric, plastic tubes, bottles and coffee cup lids. The objects are allowed to absorb, transmit, amplify, direct, conceal and interplay with light, transforming these irreverent, mundane materials into beautiful, other- worldly states. The resulting photographs provoke us to consider ideas relating to scale from the universal, such as planets and solar systems to the minute cellular worlds captured though electron microscopy.
Balint Bolygo - screen based showreel
Bolygó’s work explores the similarity between the artistic and scientific mind. His work explores how both minds are motivated by the same need to discover/uncover, and turn resulting ideas into totalities.
Tina Engstrom - photographic prints (Captured; the cellular in performance)
Tina Engström is a Swedish photographer based in London. She regularly works with theatre and dance companies across London and her photographs have appeared in Time Out and many other publications. She is currently studying Photography at Central St Martins College of Art & Design, where she is working on a series of portraits of people with unusually long hair as well as a project on dead fish. For any further information, please email: tinaengstrom@btinternet.com
Daniel Goodbrey - interactive installation
Cells: War On Weird. Hypercomic installation by Daniel Merlin Goodbrey
Daniel Merlin Goodbrey is a comic creator and new media lecturer based in Hertfordshire. Born on Halloween and raised by a family of antique dealers, Daniel earned his Master’s degree in the Digital Practices of Hyperfiction in 2001. Since then he has gone on to become a prolific and innovative comic creator, gaining international recognition as a leading expert in the field of experimental digital comics. Goodbrey’s digital work received the International Clickburg Webcomic Award in Holland in 2006 while his work in print was awarded with the Isotope Award for Excellence In Mini-comics in San Francisco in 2005. His works for print includes The Last Sane Cowboy & Other Stories and Iron Man 2020 from Marvel Comics. He is currently serialising three ongoing webcomics at his own site, E-merl.com, which also houses the complete archive of his experimental works to date.
Previous Hypercomic Installations:
The Archivist - Pumphouse Gallery, London, 2010.
The Casita Situations - Avicenne Hospital, Paris, 2009.
4 Derangements - SICAF, South Korea, 2009.
PoCom-UK-001 - ICA, London, 2003
Volkhardt Mueller - film/showreel Cell/Pastoral (by remote submission)
"I am from Swabia in South West Germany where I graduated with a Staatsexamen in Arts Education and a Research Degree in Intermedial Design from Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design.
Since I moved to the UK in 2002 I have worked across a range of media as maker of objects, mixed media installations and a performer of my own and other artists’ work. Most of my practice has an element of site or context specificity to it. This coincides with my interest in the politics of landscapes both rural and urban and the ways they are interconnected. As a member of Blind Ditch artists group I have worked collaboratively as a designer/ conceptual artist for theatre & performance as well as key facilitator on the award winning VANLAND project. I teach, present and facilitate creative work from participatory art in the community to University level. I like to know where I am located within my immediate environment and the people that shape it. At the same time I am aware how important it is to think further and beyond" Voldhardt Mueller (more on artists' website)
Simeon Nelson - presentation and film - Moon
Simeon Nelson obtained a BA in Fine Art from Sydney College of the Arts in 1987. After establishing himself as an artist in Australia and Asia in the 1990’s, he moved to London in 2001 and is currently working on commissions and exhibitions in Asia, Australia, Europe and the UK. He is Reader in Sculpture at the University of Hertfordshire and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts. He was a Finalist in the National Gallery of Australia’s National Sculpture Prize in 2005 and a Finalist in the 2003 Jerwood Sculpture Prize. Passages, a monograph on his work was published by The University of New South Wales Press, Sydney in 2001. In 2008 he had a solo show at the Royal Geographical Society, London as their inaugural artist in residence (full bio on website).
Heidi Saarinen - films - spatial choreographies
Curator of CELLS, Heidi is interested in the poetic relationship between body and space, particularly in unusual places and neglected locations such as derelict buildings and in the midst of the urban/rural landscape; the beach, bridges, shopping centres, bus stops etc., London based Heidi is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire/Interior & Spatial Design and has a background in dance and performance. These two disciplines (spatial design and dance/performance) are merging as Spatial Choreographies, via Sister Suitcase, her artistic practice, where connection and collision can occur, to question space and to help analyse human interaction with the immediate landscape.
Helen Scalway - The Submariner’s Cell - presentation & drawings
Helen Scalway is an artist interested in the representation of spatial experience, exploring maps, diagrams and architectural drawing to evoke complex and multi-dimensional spaces.
She originally studied English Literature at Cambridge University, then some years later, sculpture at Kingston University and Chelsea College of Art. Awards include an AHRC Small Grant in the Performing and Creative Arts, 2004, residencies in The Drawing Research Project Space, Wimbledon School of Art, University of the Arts London, 2007-8. From 2007-2009 she worked as an artist within the Department of Geography, Royal Holloway University of London, and the V&A, on a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council entitled ‘Fashioning Diaspora Space’.
Click here for Helen's artist blog on the V&A website
In May 2009 she exhibited the work arising from this research project in the Royal Geographical Society. She has shown elsewhere in London, in other cities in the UK and internationally. Her work is held in various collections including the V&A, London: Chelsea College of Art Artists Book Collection, University of the Arts London, and The University of the West of England Centre for Fine Print Research.
Rebecca Thomas - cell drawings & paintings
Cells
"I am interested in the body and biological sciences. These images are about the connection between the visible surface of the body and the invisible depth.The body can be attacked from the inside and a diseased cell can suddenly be present. The work is about the vulnerability of the body.A physical aspect of the body can change form rapidly. What interests me about cells is that the body can be attacked from the inside,our bodies are so vulnerable and we invent anti bodies to fight cells.
antibodies not only used to “mobilise the immune system to attack cancer cells and destroy them,” but also as weapons to independently destroy the harmful cells". Rebecca Thomas
Anne Tilby/Fred Tilby Jones - Photographs
A collaboration between Anne and Fred Tilby Jones:
This series of four images focuses on the repetition and biomimicry* of packaging.
Its repetition echoes cell structures in nature.
Packaging accommodates modules and the transition of modules.
Packaging is the science, art and technology of enclosing and protecting, serving to insulate and cushion the module(s).
It may be superfluous, excessive and is often non bio-degradable.
In isolation its abstract nature is often beautiful and a work of art.
Consider the egg box classic !
*Biomimicry studies nature's models and then imitates or takes inspiration from these designs and processes to solve human problems
Under the reign of the Sultan Osman II iin the Ottoman Empire, many concubines were imprisoned in the Topkapi Palace and thrown to their deaths into the River Bosphorus .
This shot through the window, shows the River Mersey in Liverpool and reminded me of their situation.
I asked Fred to capture the image.
ABOUT US:
Fred Tilby Jones : Photographer and Videographer interested in 35 mm and medium format, currently studying film at Warwick University.
Awards: Winner of Herts Photography Competitions (Buildings Heritage) 2006 and 2007.
Anne Tilby: Film/opera production designer and artist working in mixed media and trash.
Design for Spitting Image and Father Ted, and Opera at Covent Garden.
Awards include: BAFTA and RFTS Nominations,
International Advertising Awards (collaborative): Golden Arrow, Silver at Cannes, CLIO
www.bigfrieze.com www.trashfactory.co.uk
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