Creative ID: 655

My arts or creative practice (including details about my specific focus within that art form/practice and my strengths)

I am a transdisciplinary design and science researcher and educator who is passionate about the role that a scientifically well-educated and curious population can play in addressing 21st century social, biomedical, and cultural challenges through design. The focus in my creative practice is in collaborative, transdisciplinary projects, crossing boundaries between science and design. Informed by an established design research practice, I strive to develop and deliver impactful, relevant, and challenging learning experiences that enable young creative practitioners to harness transdisciplinary approaches to create positive change nationally and internationally in science, society, and beyond.

I draw on Beat Hächler’s 2015 concept of ‘social scenography’ to develop the potential of the social aspect of communication design, extending the focus from environments, installation, and projections onto all participants. In this way, scenographic means are used to enhance the social, interactive, and communicative dimension of design outcomes, making an exhibition, performance, or installation into a social, performative space. My transdisciplinary creative practice uses light and movement realised through custom built hardware and software, to explore ways in which biomedical data can be understood through the felt experience alongside the intellectual. Scientific and creative arts ways of knowing are combined in a spectacular, fun, and scientifically rigorous way. This is achieved through bringing data science and immersive spatial interaction design together with ‘invisible’ aspects of science such as molecular science and microbiology.

I have developed my creative practice through focusing on how biomedicine, genetics, and Artificial Intelligence can be investigated through creative and emerging technology that materialises scientific data, methods, and practice, frequently bringing experience design, scenography, and immersive design together. As part of this I have established collaborations nationally and internationally. I have initiated, led, and made a significant contribution to projects within Wellington such as LUX, Wellington’s Summer City Festival, and most recently the CubaDupa Festival. These have massive social, cultural, or economic impact within and beyond Wellington.

I am interested in ways in which creative approaches to the world around us can facilitate deeper interest in and knowledge of science. For example, The UNCANNY VALLEY OF BREATH employs human breath to explore the differences in human and AI speech understanding. BIOLUMENLAB, an immersive environment brings science together with creative technology, art and design, to explore genetics and DNA. As 2019 Artist in Residence at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB) in Spain, I have been collaborating with scientists to create an immersive installation for the St Pau Modernista in Barcelona, Spain. I am a senior lecturer at the school of design. I specialise in teaching honours level students creative practice research and courses that cross disciplinary boundaries.

My track record of experience and success - or the track record of experience and success of the creative or artist that I will partner with

I am designing and installing an immersive installation UNCANNY VALLEY OF BREATH to highlight biases in AI for the exhibition BIAS opening in October 2021. I received a New Zealand Government award in 2020 to develop BIOLUMENLAB, which combines science with creative technology, art, and design to introduce concepts behind DNA and allow people to discover ways in which genetics and our environments play a part in shaping who they are.

I was the 2019 Artist in Residence at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB) in Barcelona, Spain. At the IRB I have been collaborating with several leading biomedical scientists and research groups exploring data derived from stem cell organoids, yeast cultures, Advanced Digital Microscopy and the Synthesis and Structure of Peptides and Proteins to create an immersive installation for the St Pau Modernista complex in Barcelona, Spain. I have exhibited in New Zealand, Spain, Australia, USA, Norway, and Ireland and showed ‘Tangled’ at the Prague Quadrenial in June 2019, where I ran a masterclass, gave a public talk, and exhibited in a European Grant project; ‘Emergence: Costume, LIVE!’

My creative practice has included exhibitions at NORDES, in Oslo, New Zealand's LUX Festival (2015–18) and 2012s International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA). I have co-authored a chapter in a book, which offers critical reflection and contextualisation of my creative practice. I am a senior lecturer at a Wellington school of design.

Describe the experience you have had working with children or young people, teaching or facilitating creative processes

In my teaching practice I have designed and developed courses that focus on Paola Antonelli’s notions of adaptability and acceleration, the ability to negotiate change and innovation through an ‘elastic’ set of design tools, methods, and approaches. This is reflected in the courses that I coordinate and have developed, assignments that are set, the associated learning outcomes, and learning activities that are developed. With the aim of enabling students to engage with communication design’s place in the world, through developing critical and contextual thinking alongside developing specialist, technical, and conceptual fluency as future thinking ‘elastic’ designers, my current teaching includes a course focusing on designing for festivals and events. In this course students work across disciplines in a real world, deadline driven project that utilises environmental and experiential design practices, scenographic design practice, and human centred design to respond to specific events and the people that attend them.

Tasked with developing a creative response to thematics of specific festivals or events, students explore a process of iteration, prototyping, and testing to validate how their design responses might work with the different audiences of a festival, during different times of day and within the technical parameters of a festival that goes for two or more days. Students are asked to explore how their designs can be realised using co-design and collaborative interdisciplinary practices and within a design practice that puts people’s experiences at the core of the design response. To do this, students need to understand the festival or event; demonstrate design opportunities and limitations in regard to technical and health and safety requirements, materiality, and production process; and create a formal presentation and proposal that is evaluated for creative excellence and appropriateness for specific festival themes, by festival directors, technical managers, and creative directors.

Learning activities include site visits and mapping, using service design tools such as journey mapping and persona development, rapid prototyping and critiques by festival directors, visiting industry specialists, activities relating to theoretical and practical frameworks, development of prototype, proof of concepts, presentation, and proposal development and the realisation of final design response for the festival or event; a peer review and a reflective document that critically reflects on the process, methods, and final outcome of the design response ‘in action’ at the festival. Successful learning has been demonstrated through the innovative outcomes of these courses and has seen students participate in projects for CUBADUPA, Taupō winter festival, Taranaki Festival of Lights, Coastella and Wellington’s Summer City Gardens Magic events and LUX festival. In a previous life I worked as an art teacher in high schools and intermediate schools and worked with learners from ages 10 to 19.

Why I want to be part of the Creatives in Schools programme and how my involvement will link to my creative practice

The unique environment created through being surrounded by hands-on experimentation, coupled with immersive creative technology, allows students to get ‘hands on’ to explore scientific, creative arts, and technological concepts. Through actively learning, using, and creating, combining life sciences technologies and creative arts as student’s medium, we create a kinaesthetic learning environment that moves science from the theoretical to the tangible. This in turn allows students to creatively tackle ways of coming to grips with the ‘big ideas’ surrounding them in the 21st century. Importantly through introducing the creative arts into STEM education. S.T.E.A.M. offers an integrated pedagogical approach that emphasises the value of creative arts alongside science and technology.

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