Profile

Digital Imaging refers to the increasingly convergent fields of digital image capture, digital processing of images, computer graphical modelling and digital rendering of virtual environments. Launched in 2000, the Digital Imaging Research Centre (DIRC) was created to integrate and enhance research excellence in digital imaging across the University. By applying high quality academic research to the solution of real industrial problems the centre seeks to strengthen its external links with industry and other medical and academic institutions. Currently, the centre boasts research groups in Intelligent Visual Surveillance and Medical Imaging which already enjoy strong external links with industry and hospitals.

Profile

Martin, or "Belfry" to his friends, started using a computer to make motion graphics at age 8, using an Amiga 1200 with DeluxePaint. Having since been educated in technical computer graphics at the University of Teesside, and in the art of animation at AnimationMentor.com; and having in a professional capacity as a 3D modeller at several companies, Martin has a vast array of technical and artistic skills for the motion graphics, visual effects and animation industries. He is obsessed with Batman, The Beatles, and Guinness; and lately has found an interest in gothic Victorian horror novels and how they might translate into animated films.

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As well as being Professor at Kingston, Jonathan is co-founder and Business Development Director of UK software consultancy the OTHER media Ltd. Founded thirteen years ago with Nick Oates and George Crabb, the OTHER media specialises in Electronic Commerce, Educational Internet projects and large scale news and information websites. Current clients include the England and Wales Cricket Board, Delia Smith, Cucina Direct, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Abbey Box Office, Virgin Experience Days, Royal Academy of Arts, Luminar, the Nuffield Foundation, the Brightside Trust, Shaun Woodward MP, Paul Smith and the Zoological Society for London. In 1996 Jonathan worked with David Erixon, Nick Oates and Lars Lund to create Hyper Island School of New Media Design in Karlskrona, Sweden. This university level college now graduates 70 students per year. In 2003 Jonathan was asked to help design the curriculum for IPKO Management Programme, a similar initiative in Kosova, funded by the Swedish Foreign Ministry through the Olaf Palme Foundation. Hyper Island has just opened a second location in Stockholm.

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Karen Cham is Director of ‘Digital Media Kingston’ at Kingston University, London and as such is responsible for leading the team that coordinates the development of digital media teaching, research and enterprise across four faculties. Karen has most recently lead the development of a cross faculty suite of the six interdisciplinary Masters courses that make up the DMK Microstudio, in consultation with an Industry Panel she convened to include Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Samsung Design Europe & DreamWorks. 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. For the last sixteen years she has worked exclusively with digital media, as a Design Company Director, in Senior Management in the digital media industry and as an Academic. During five years in the 5* RAE rated Department of Design & Innovation at The Open University she was invited to join the ‘Embracing Complexity in Design’ research cluster funded by the AHRC/EPSRC Designing for the 21st Century Initiative’, and published works for Intellect and Routledge, amongst others, on the importance of complexity theory to digital media practice. Karens research interests focus on digital media design methodologies, in particular, how established media and communications theory can inform digital aesthetics, computational media semantics and designing for emergent behaviour. Karen is committed to exploring the poetic potential of media technologies within a critical context. To this end she teaches and Supervises reflexive practice in digital media at post graduate and research degree level. She is always interested in user centred design for innovative digital systems and is a Member of Sony Europes 'Playstation First" Academic Board.

Profile

Sunil is Course Director for Creative Technology at Kingston University. Previously he had worked for nearly twenty years in the Design/Technology industries including Broadcast - Quantel , a pioneering digital Paintbox, editing and special effects company as well as Avid Technologies  where he worked on Media Illusion – a Unix based node compositing system, the internet - E-District PLC, an early web based games and interactive TV software company. He also worked in print and multimedia at London Soho based Carlton Books, where he worked a senior designer and in cinema – at Pearl & Dean Cinema he worked on the introduction of computer imaging technology and design for film. At Silicon Graphics he managed their training centre (Silicon Studio, Soho, London) in 2D and 3D applications and worked as freelance designer, trainer and consultant in the UK and abroad. Sunil is member of several Professional bodies such as Computer Arts Society, Higher Education Academy and Drawing Research Network. As an under graduate he originally studied Fine Art and Computer Science and later Drawing at masters level, which directly relate to his current research and teaching interests, which includes: Compositing, Moving Images and Drawing.

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Martin is the course director for Web Development and Software Engineering and User Interaction design. His research interests concern position-aware systems for the general public. He has spent a lot of time studying mobile users' activities, contexts of use and performance, particularly in the context of rendezvousing and commuting. He is currently studying on-line advertising, particularly the trade off between usability, credibility and persuasion, and fix prioritisation in performance tuning.

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Professor Dalke is a leading designer and consultant in the field of environmental and sensory design. Her latest work encompasses the functionality of colour within new sustainable builds, with a particular emphasis on the design needs of people with special needs (ranging from autism through to dementia). She is director of the university's Design Research Centre and Design for Environments – a recognised centre of excellence on colour design and lighting.

She is a design consultant sought by architects, designers and developers the world over, specifically on technical and aesthetic usage of colour design and contrast in the built environment. She has published work extensively on colour contrast and lighting within such diverse enviroments as long-term healthcare settings, retail units, and prisons, to name but a few.

Profile

Darrel Greenhill teaches image processing, computer graphics and games programming. His research interests include computer vision, vision-based gaming and medical imaging and he is a member of the Digital Imaging Research Centre. Research projects include the conversion of 2D video sequences into 3D by automatically finding depth information, a project to improve the quality of rotoscoping using an "active surface" based technique and development of user interfaces for constructing improved queries for searching CCTV surveillance video.

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Paul specialises in creative image processing techniques, he developed software to apply assorted painterly effects to live video using a brush stroke algorithm. He has worked for Kingston University for over 10 years teaching courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level and also taught short courses for industry professionals as part of an outreach initiative developing links between academia and industry. Paul has experience working for Electric Switch, Jim Henson’s Creature Shop and has produced 3D CG assets for computer animation studio Peppers Ghost Productions. His areas of interest include development of articulated rigs for animated creatures, and photorealistic rendering. Paul also co-presented “VScape: Autonomous Intelligent Behaviour in Virtual Worlds using UML” at Siggraph in New Orleans.

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Dr. Andreas Hoppe is a Senior Lecturer within the Faculty of Computing, Information Systems and Mathematics. His teaching interests include games development, computer graphics and parallel processing. His research interests are in visualisation and image processing of large multi-dimensional datasets. He is also interested in real-time simulations for strategy games and is currently developing a massively multiplayer online strategy game.

Profile

A graduate in Modern Languages and Linguistics, with an MSc in Intelligent Knowledge-Based Systems and a PhD in Cognitive Linguistics, Chris Hutchison has more than 30 years experience of teaching and research in the cognitive and computing sciences, with a special interest in their cross-disciplinary application in the areas of e-heritage, museums and digital curation, cultural anthropology, and the verbal and visual arts.

Initially a natural development of his work in digital galleries and museums, Chris has since the mid-1990s worked extensively in the field of desktop virtual reality and multi-user virtual environments, exploring their potential both for representation and interpretation and also as digital laboratories for experimental work in e-learning.

His current research interests are in heritage informatics, knowledge-based interfaces to digital heritage, representations of intangible heritage, and oral histories as indigenous knowledge / social remembering in the construction of Self and Other."

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Based on her background as trained textile designer and the particular interest in digital media technology, Anke's research explores conditions, which lead to the fusion of physical surface and digital display - evoking the confusion and interference of the real and the virtual. In this process, her investigation focuses on visual ambiguities and illusions resulting from the interaction between digital image, material and light influencing visual perception and sense of space. In 2007, Anke was awarded her PhD for her practise-based, interdisciplinary research project 'Blurring the boundaries between the real and the virtual' at Bath School of Art & Design, Bath Spa University, where she experimented with printed textiles/surfaces, animated patterns and projection technology.

Anke holds an MA in textile design from Central St Martin's College of Art & Design (1996) studied digital graphics and animation at the Academy for Media & Arts, Cologne, and textile and fashion design at University of Art & Design in Halle, Germany.

Besides her research activities, Anke is partner at architecture and design practice leit-werk ltd since 2001, engaging in projects with rather interdisciplinary character within the realm of architecture and urbanism and focusing on the application of digital media and ornament. Further, her professional background includes working in the textile industry as well as in commercial textile design practise for many years.

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Professor McDermott has made a major national and international contribution to the contemporary curating of design. She heads the School of Design Masters programme at Kingston University and is an advisory board member of New Design Magazine, the Design Journal and part of the Design Council's Advisory Group Biennial.

She is the author or co-author of more than 11 books on such topics as the history of design, street style British Design in the 80s, the world's leading product designers, furniture design and the work of British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. She describes one of her most influential books, "Made in Britain: tradition and style in contemporary British fashion" as a natural extension of her continuing research into the modern-day British fashion scene. As part of her research Prof. McDermott interviewed such fashion design icons as Alexander McQueen, Julian MacDonald and Vivienne Westwood, in an attempt to understand how these designers approach specific activities and practices such as tailoring, fabric selection and use, branding and accessories.

She is a director of the Curating Contemporary Design Research Group and is chair of the university's prestigious Stanley Picker Gallery. Prof. McDermott is also a member of the Design History Society, the Costume History Society, the National Art Collectors Fund and the Museums Association. She has worked as a consultant for, amongst others, the BBC Education Service, the Science Museum, the Design Museum, for the Victoria and Albert's Twentieth Century Gallery Project and Granada Television (This Morning programme). She has lectured around the world in her subject and curated a number of exhibitions (ranging in content from a celebration of the life and times of Diana, Princess of Wales, through to an exhibition for the French luxury goods company Hermes and an exhibition for the Design Council) as well as regularly writing for a number of design magazines and journals.

She is currently working on a number of projects in China. She has previously won a British Council competition and her project Dreamlab launched in September 2009 to over 20 Chinese universities.

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María Mencía is an artist and Senior Lecturer in Digital Media at Kingston University.

She holds a PhD in Digital Poetics and Digital Art by the University of the Arts, London. She studied English Philology at the Complutense University in Madrid, Fine Art and History and Theory of Art at the University of the Arts London.

Research Interests
On going practice-led research on the area of the in- between the visual, the aural and the semantic in the creation of interactive multimedia artwork and digital poetics. It combines different cultural artistic and literary traditions such as fine art, visual, concrete and sound poetry, with digital poetics and new media theories and practices.

Her practice in experimental textual and sound poetics has been exhibited as installations, videos, performances and net.art at art galleries, international conferences and festivals such as ISEA, FILE, BEAP, onedotzero, Caixaforum, ICA and TATE Modern.

María has been awarded various research grants to develop her practice-led research and collaborate with various international universities such as the RMIT in Melbourne, Australia (AHRC Small Grants); The University of Sydney, Australia (TIES Grant) and Media Research Lab -New York University, NY, USA (Promising Researcher Fellowship by Kingston University).

Her work is in collections such as the First volume of the Electronic Literature Collection, K. Hayles, N. Montfort, S. Rettberg, S. Strickland eds. The Electronic Literature Organization, UCLA Department of English, Los Angeles, as well as, in various databases in research centres.

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Dr Frank Millward is a Composer - Multimedia Artist – Performer whose work since 1982 includes compositions and performances for film, TV, recordings, theatre, site specific performance and multimedia productions. His musical style combines audio art, sound design, jazz, experimental, orchestral and electro-acoustic forms. He has composed and musically directed a number of large-scale site-specific art works for U.K. festivals including: Dining With Alice and The Perfect Day - has a range of commercial experience producing recording for radio, television and music albums - composed and recorded music for a range of applications - games - video art - documentary film - ABC, BBC, Channel 4 and independent producers in Australia and the U.K. and produced a body of work for the theatre and concert stage. His current research interests include a collaborative project with Dr John Rubin entitled The Visual Voice — www.thevisualvoice.co.uk — this research explores the connections between scientific visualization processes, artistic visualization processes and their relationships to sound, knowing that each informs the other and that the blurred divide between technical and artistic is interdisciplinary territory where innovation and new knowledge is created.

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As a professor of Contemporary European Studies at Kingston University, his research and teaching activities spread over several fields, especially Media and Cultural Studies, and International Politics. This variety finds its origin in professional experience gained from the 1970s and 1980s, as an international consultant (for the OECD for instance), and as a researcher in international environmental economics and politics. He has also lectured in French economic studies, and — earlier — in development studies in Algiers (Algeria). Some major publications are in areas such as international environmental politics (the book ‘Timber from the South Seas’, published by Tsukiji-Shokan Pub. In Tokyo in 1990, is still a recognised reference in the field) and French studies (such as the book ‘Contemporary France’, with J. Forbes and N. Hewlett, Longman, 2001). He is currently researching the politics of French neo-colonialism in Africa (a monograph is in preparation on this topic), and the politics of change in French international relations and diplomacy. Also involved in a major archival project on the development of industrial working force in 19th century France.

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Landé Pratt project managed www.screenonline.org.uk, the British Film Institute’s archive on the history of British film and television 2001–2003; was London Technology Network’s Business Fellow 2004–06; and has freelanced as a producer in digital media. Her research interests include media and law; new documentary; media innovation; new advertising practice; user-generated content; the business of media; inter-disciplinary pedagogy.

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Dr Pretlove has an education in construction engineering, architecture and environmental studies. His academic interests include sustainable and environmental architectural design, with a particular emphasis on energy and carbon emissions, and the health impacts of indoor environments. His research work concentrates on the hygrothermal modelling of environments in buildings and the impact that these environments have on the risk of micro-organisms, such as mites and moulds developing.

Profile

Fleeta has extensive experience working with digital technology in the form of teaching, performing and design. He has taught numerous workshops on game design, web creation and video editing. He has taught numerous workshops for a variety of national and international organisations [WAC Performing Arts & Media College, INIVA] on game design, web and cd-rom design and video editing. Professional experience includes consulting with emerging artists [Sheron Wray, Marisa Carnesky], institutions [b3Media, PALabs, Hong Kong School of Creative Media, SpacePlace Studios, Discovery Channel Europe] seeking digital implementations and collaborations involving artists and technology. His recent work includes texterritory.com — a responsive environment that enables an audience to engage with performers via their mobile phones and a documentary on Silicon Valley — insearchofthevalley.com. He has taught at University of Westminster; BBCi; WAC Performing Arts and Media College; and Bank St College, NY. He has also consulted for Hong Kong School of Creative Media; The Harlem School of the Arts; b3Media; and SpacePlace Studios.

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Nancy Tilbury was appointed Course Director for a new postgraduate Fashion Programme at Kingston University in October 2008. She continues to work in the field of intimate body technologies through her personal research titled 'Digital Skins Body Atmospheres' and in the film section of 125creative. Nancy also works on specialist commercial apparel and accessory based soft technologies at Goose Design UK in their Futures division. Goose is owned and run by Director Jenny Arksey and is an advanced apparel agency based in London, UK. Nancy Tilbury's clients include Philips Design, EMI, ITV, L'Oreal, & In Cosmetics/Reed.

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Lawrence Zeegen is an educator | illustrator | writer

As Head of School, School of Communication Design, Kingston University, Zeegen leads undergraduate and postgraduate courses in animation, filmmaking, graphic design, illustration and screen design for film and TV.

Zeegen has lectured and spoken at conferences, institutions and design events nationally and internationally including in Australia, China, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Turkey and the USA. Zeegen has acted as consultant and external examiner for numerous academic institutions in the UK as well as in China, Greece, Serbia, Singapore and Russia. His expertise covers academic course documentation, specifically in the fields of graphic design, illustration, photography and interactive media.

Having worked as an illustrator since graduation with 1st Class Honours in Graphic Arts from Camberwell College of Arts in 1986 and MA Illustration from the Royal College of Art in 1989, Zeegen’s clients have included major international newspapers, magazines, book publishers, design companies and advertising agencies. Zeegen continues to create illustrations for the Comment and Debate pages of The Guardian Newspaper, as a regular fortnightly contributor.

Zeegen was a founding partner of illustration studio: Big Orange based in Hoxton, London and is still operational almost twenty years after it first launched. In the early 1990s Zeegen, as founding partner and director, launched Heart – and remains one of the UK’s foremost contemporary illustration agencies. In 2006 Zeegen launched ZeegenRush, as founding partner and director, before departing to take a more active role in design education.

As a design writer, Zeegen has contributed to numerous magazines and publications including Creative Review, MacFormat, The Journal (Association of Illustrators), Digital Creative Arts, Computer Arts and is a regular lead contributor to Computer Arts Projects. Zeegen is the author of five published books on the subject of illustration – Digital Illustration: A Master Class in Creative Image-Making (Rotovision 2005), The Fundamentals of Illustration (AVA 2005), Secrets of Digital Illustration: A Master Class in Commercial Image-Making (Rotovision 2007), What is Illustration? (Rotovision), and Complete Digital Illustration (Rotovision 2010). His latest book, The Design Graduate’s Survival Manual (Laurence King) will be published in 2010. Zeegen is also currently researching another book - Fifty Years of Contemporary Illustration (Laurence King) for publication in 2011.

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Eddie Berg is the Artistic Director of BFI Southbank which opened to public and critical acclaim in March 2007. He led the 6.2m redevelopment of the former Museum of the Moving Image site which now includes a state-of-the-art Mediatheque, Gallery and Studio cinema alongside the spaces formerly known as the National Film Theatre. Eddie is also contributing to the BFI's vision to develop a purpose-built international centre for film and moving image culture in London for 2012.  Eddie was formerly the founder and Chief Executive of FACT, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology. He was responsible for conceiving and leading the £11m FACT Centre development, which successfully launched in Liverpool in February 2003, forming a crucial part of Liverpool's successful bid to become European Capital of Culture 2008. Since FACT's inception in 1988 Eddie has been responsible for commissioning and producing more than 100 projects by UK-based and international artists working in film, video and new media and has curated and organised a wide range of exhibitions, screenings and events across the world. He has extensively lectured internationally and served on juries and panels at film, art, media, government and corporate events and festivals internationally; was part of the curatorial team for the 2002 Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art; was a judge for the 2004 Paul Hamlyn Awards for Artists, was a member of the Alexander Korda Jury for the Best British Film at the 2006 BAFTA's and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.   In 2005 he was awarded the £10,000 ART 05 Prize for Outstanding Contribution to the Cultural Life of England's North West jointly sponsored by the Arts Council and the BBC.

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A Kingston University, Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture graduate, Clive Goodwin is the founder and Creative Manager of Samsung Design Europe. Whilst working as a freelance designer at Tangerine, he was asked by Samsung to consider setting up SDE. From an office of 800 sq. feet with 2 founders they have expanded to a 3500 sq. feet studio with over 30+ employees. Clive has been instrumental in expanding the studio from purely interaction design to include user interaction, graphical user interfaces, user experience research integrated with a full colour, materials & finish service. The studio is an in-house design consultancy working for all the Samsung client divisions, operating as any consultancy would with project pitching, proposal creating, budget allocation and external partners etc.

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Sarah Lemarie joined SCEE in 2002, to support the ‘Linux for PlayStation 2′ development system, which in turn drew interest from universities. Sarah is now responsible for the support sites run by SCEE R&D, but is still heavily involved in lending support to academic courses throughout the UK and Europe, having set up a PSP development scheme for academia. She still acts as the main academic contact point for SCEE, having taken an active part in Skillset’s accreditation scheme, degree course validations, and many visits and talks.

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Alex McDowell (RDI) is a production designer and film producer who studied at the Central School of Art in London, founding Rocking Russian Design in 1978 to design album covers for punk bands, the sets for TV commercials and eventually, music videos. He has worked, among others, with Tim Burton & Steven Spielberg. In 2002 he won the San Diego Critics Society Award in the Best Production Design category for his work on Minority Report and, in 2004, the Art Director Guild award for Excellence in Production Design for The Terminal. In 2006, McDowell was named Royal Designer for Industry by the RSA, the UK’s most prestigious design society, and was appointed Visiting Artist at the MIT Media Lab. McDowell is an advocate of immersive design and integrates digital technology and traditional design technique in his productions, creating a production design process that allows for the highest level of control over the look of the final film.

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Originally trained in the UK as an illustrator, Shelley has been working in the field of feature animation since 1986. She joined DreamWorks Animation at the creation of the studio in 1995 as co-head of Artist Development, and some of her projects have included ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’, ‘The Prince Of Egypt’, ‘Antz’, and ‘Shrek’.  Now Head of International Outreach at DreamWorks, Shelley has a particular interest in student animation and hosts student events at major animation festivals around the world. She sits on the graduation juries of leading animation schools in France, and on the advisory boards and selection juries of animation festivals including Annecy (France), Imagina (Monte Carlo), FMX (Stuttgart), Encounters (UK), Siggraph 2007 (USA), and 24FPS (India). In 2009 Shelley was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the School of Communication Design, Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture, Kingston University who are leading the DMK project.

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MA by Research: Improving The User Experience
in Vision Based Gaming
Design Research Centre
Supervisors: Karen Cham & Dr Darrel Greenhill

Computer Vision based gaming enhances the functionality of a traditional game controller by allowing the movement or gesture of the player to affect the gameplay. A video camera is used to capture images of the player which are analysed by the computer or console. The Sony EyeToy ™ and Microsoft’s Project Natal are examples of games peripherals which use vision based gaming, laptops are increasingly being supplied with built-in webcams and some prototype games have been demonstrated using the cameras of mobile phones.

Vision based games can make use of face recognition, gesture recognition, motion detection and object identification limited only by the quality of the images, processing power of the computer and functionality of the algorithms being used to analyse the image data.

Although there are only a relatively small number of games which make use of such technology, they are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Game users can be very demanding and they are not very tolerant to processing errors in the vision algorithms which must respond quickly and accurately. There is thus a great opportunity to study ways in which the quality of the gameplay can be improved.

This project will review the current state of the art in vision based interactive technology and develop new methods of user input. Prototype games will be created to investigate the user experience and quality of interaction.