Karen Cham | Digital Media Design

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Karen Cham is Director of Digital Media Kingston and is responsible for coordinating the development of digital media teaching, research and enterprise across four faculties . Karen has been working with media technologies in a creative, managerial and consultative capacity since 1987 and has designed works for audio visual performance, installation, screening, print, disc, server based and distributed architectures, making artwork to commission for London Film & Video Umbrella, Glasgow Tramway and the Foundation for Art & Creative Technology and exhibiting at The Tate, the ICA and across Europe, in Australia, Russia and the US. For the last fifteen years she has worked specifically with digital media as a design Company Director, in Senior Management in the digital media industry, where clients have included Playstation, Diesel & ITV, and as an Academic. During five years in the 5* RAE rated Department of Design & Innovation at The Open University, she won an OU Teaching Award for her role in the online digital photography course and is now a Member of the Higher Education Academy Open Educational Resources Focus Group. She has recently lead the development of a suite of six interdisciplinary MA & MSc courses for Digital Media Kingston across four faculties that were developed in consultation with an Industry Panel she convened to include Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Samsung Design Europe & DreamWorks. Karen Supervises Research Degrees in digital media practice and has published work with Liverpool John Moores University, Computers & the History of Art Group at Birkbeck, the International Symposium of Electronic Arts, Routledge and Intellect. In 2007, funded by the AHRC/EPRSC 'Designing for the 21st Century ‘ initiative, she convened an international 3 day exhibition & workshop ‘Art & The Science of Complex Systems’ bringing together mathematicians, designers and artists to debate design and complexity theory. She most recently had papers accepted by the 'Handbook of Research on Computational Arts and Creative Informatics' and by the American Society for Cybernetics for 'Cybernetics: Art, Design, Mathematics — A Meta-Disciplinary Conversation' at New Yorks Rensselaer Institute and is now offering a three year PhD Scholarship in 'computational media semantics' (Cham, 2007) Karen is committed to interdisciplinarity and current research interests focus on design methodologies for digital media; in particular, how established media and communications theory and practice can inform computational media aesthetics, designing for emergent behaviour and user experiences for 'persuasion, emotion & trust' and in addressing 'dark patterns'. She is always interested in design methodologies for user experiences of innovative systems such as Brain Computer Interface technologies and is a Member of Sonys 'Playstation First" Academic Board.

Staff Profile

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Posted on 08/04/2010 by Karen Cham
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Italianicity

‘Computing Italianicity; Semantic Software’; a  machine learning system designed by Karen Cham (2006)

PhD Scholarship Opportunity

“Content Retrieval using Narrative Ontologies (CRuNO)”, PhD

This CISM Faculty Scholarship offers a £16,000 per annum bursary (for a maximum of three years). In addition, Home/EU fees will be covered as well as funding for equipment, conference trips and training.

The proposed PhD, co-supervised by Karen Cham and in collaboration with the British Film Institute (BFi), will develop methods and methodologies to investigate the automatic extraction of semantic concepts out of produced video content. Many categories of video content are produced following the well established codes and conventions of media production in order to convey concepts. These categories include different genres of feature film and drama as well as advertisements. Such conventions in form and content act to engage the viewer by signifying emotional concepts such as ‘freedom’, ‘success’, ‘authority’, ‘danger’ etc. The proposed research project will investigate techniques for automatic analysis of this content, and develop appropriate representations for this task by testing established methodologies from theoretical analysis to allow machine learning of the relationship between the two. The aim is to allow automatic tagging of video content using these high level semantic concepts, which can then be used to effectively search for video content http://cism.kingston.ac.uk/research/vacancies/details.php?VacancyID=115

Publications

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Posted on 08/04/2010 by Karen Cham
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2009 Cham, K.L., ‘The Art of Complex Systems Science’ Embracing Complexity In Design, Routledge. Book chapter.
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2008 Cham, K.L., ‘Reality Jamming; Beyond Complex Causality in Mediated Systems’; ISEA 08, Singapore. Conference paper.
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2007 Cham, K.L., ‘Aesthetics of Interactive Art’, ‘Digital Visual Culture. Theory and Practice’, CHArt Yearbook 2007 Computers & The History of Art, Vol 3. Journal paper.
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2007 Cham, K.L., ‘Reconstruction Theory, Designing the Space of Possibility in Complex Media’; in Special Issue: Performance & Play: Technologies of presence in performance, gaming & experience design, International Journal of Performance Arts & Digital Media, Vol 2&3: 3, Lizbeth Goodman, Deeverill, Esther MacCallum-Stewart & Alec Robertson (eds), Intellect www.atypon-link.com.
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2007 Cham, K.L. and Johnson, J.H., ‘Complexity Theory; a Science of Cultural Systems ?’, ‘M/C Journal’, Complex, 10: 3, J. Cahir and S. James (eds.), journal.media-culture.org. Journal paper.
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2006 Cham, K.L., ‘Aesthetics of Interactive Art’, Visual Culture,Theory and Practice, 22nd Annual Conference, Birkbeck College, London, 9–10 Nov www.chart.ac.uk. Conference paper.
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2005 Cham, K.L., Hirst, A.J. & Johnson J; ‘Robots, Art & Complexity Science, Art, Complexity & Technology Conference’, Torino; Conference Paper.
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Exhibitions & Screenings

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Posted on 08/04/2010 by Karen Cham
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2007 Art & The Science of Complex Systems, Lighthouse Media Centre, Brighton;
‘Matmos’, a participatory sculpture, designed with Prof Jeffrey Johnson, Chair of the European Complex Systems Society, as part of the international exhibition & symposium presented by Cham & Johnson at Lighthouse Media Centre, Brighton in collaboration with the University of Brighton
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2007 The Open University Artwalks, Milton Keynes,
‘The Appliance of Science’, Commissioned video installation
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2006 Universities Film & Video Conference, California, USA,
‘Ambient Blipverts’, Digital Video Screening as part of international peer reviewed open call for V1B3 – Video in the built environment
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2006 Outvideo 06, Russia;
‘National Grid’, digital video screening as part of international peer reviewed open call shown on 36 public screens across 16 Russian cities www.artpolitika.ru/93/index
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2006 35th International Film Festival Rotterdam,
‘codea/codeb/codec’, teletext intervention on Dutch public service television as part of Satellite of Love exhibition
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Funding

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Posted on 08/04/2010 by Karen Cham
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2007 Art & The Science of Complex Systems, Lighthouse Media Centre, Brighton £13,500.
Convened and ran a three day international workshop and exhibition & presented by Karen Cham & Prof. Jeffrey Johnson, Chair of The European Complex systems Society, at Lighthouse Media Centre, Brighton. As part of ‘Embracing Complexity in Design’, funded by the AHRC/EPSRC Designing for the 21st Century Initiative and in collaboration with the University of Brighton
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2007 ILT in Art & Design Teaching, Action Research Project, City College Brighton & Hove, £1,500.
Provisional research project into the effective use of ILT in Art & Design teaching & learning. Used to support the development of ICT Champions posts and new macintosh production studios. Funding: Internal Staff Development
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2002 ICT for Distance Learning, Learning Web Project, Hammersmith & West London College, £1,000.
I established a course web site from which to support distance learning for the HND Multimedia including course specifications, scheme of work, support materials and relevant links. Funding: Internal Staff Development; Training: Intranet Learning Web Certificate 1 & 2
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2001 Ethnographic Hypermedia, Field Research Trip, The Gambia, West Africa £1,800.
Exploration into the use of digital media to document the use of magical signs in oral culures. Funding: Surrey Institute of Art & Design;Training: PG Cert Research Methodologies (Part One)
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Esteem

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Posted on 08/04/2010 by Karen Cham
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2009 External Validation Panel Member, Winchester University
External Validation of MA Digital Media Practice
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2008 The Future Digerati, D&AD, London
Invited to participate in consultation process with Adobe
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2007 Art & The Science of Complex Systems, Lighthouse Media Centre, Brighton;
international exhibition and symposium curated by Cham & Johnson at Lighthouse Media Centre, Brighton in collaboration with the University of Brighton
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2007 The Open University ArtTalks, Milton Keynes
‘4D Performative Systems in Live Art & Digital Media, invited talk on art practice as part of The Open Universities Art Talks Season
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2003 Centre of Vocational Excellence in Digital Design,
Key contributor to the Sector Skills council awarding ‘CoVe’ status to City College Brighton & Hove
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