Dew Harrison

Digital Media and Technologies for Virtual Artistic Spaces

Dew Harrison is a Professor of Digital Media Art and works as the Associate Dean for Research and Postgraduate Study at the University of Wolverhampton, School of Art and Design, where she is also the Director of CADRE, Centre for Art, Design, Research and Experimentation. She is a researcher and practitioner with a BA in Fine Art, an MA in Contemporary Art Theory, an MSc in Computer Science and a PhD from the Planetary Collegium, CAiiA, in Interactive Art. Her practice undertakes a critical exploration of Conceptual Art, semantic media and intuitive interfaces where she often works collaboratively and considers virtual curation a form of art practice. She continues to show her work internationally, most recently two of her Digital Action Painting series were exhibited at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Poland, and has over 50 publications to date spanning digital art, consciousness studies, interactive games, art history and museology. Dew Harrison (University of Wolverhampton, UK)

Crossing Over: Oscilllations between the Virtual and the Real

At CADRE, the Centre for Art, Design, Research and Experimentation sited in the School of Art and Design at the University of Wolver Hampton, there are a number of projects in the process of exploring ways of bridging the virtual to the real world. This work includes that carried out on our Second Life (SL) Island, Kriti, concerning forms of creative practice, and also the collaborative Shift-Life project and the longitudinal Deconstructing Duchamp research study. The latter two projects have an investment in applying animal/human-like behaviours to virtual objects to reveal their inter-relationships, and also any social behaviours which might occur, in accordance with mixed reality interventions. This paper then, will give an overview of a cluster of art practice-based research activities in place at CADRE, with the understanding that the interests of each project may just converge at some future stage on Kriti Island.

Shift-life interactive art: mixed-reality artificial ecosystem simulation

This article presents a detailed design, development, and implementation of a Mixed Reality Art-Science collaboration project which was exhibited during Darwin’s bicentenary exhibition at Shrewsbury, England. As an artist-led project the concerns of the artist were paramount, and this article presents Shift-Life as part of an ongoing exploration into the parallels between the nonlinear human thinking process and computation using semantic association to link items into ideas, and ideas into holistic concepts. Our art explores perceptions and states of mind as we move our attention between the simulated world of the computer and the real world we inhabit, which means that any viewer engagement is participatory rather than passive. From a Mixed Reality point of view, the lead author intends to explore the convergence of the physical and virtual, therefore the formalization of the Mixed Reality system, focusing on the integration of artificial life, ecology, physical sensors, and participant interaction through an interface of physical props. It is common for digital media artists to allow viewers to activate a work either through a computer screen via direct keyboard or mouse manipulation, or through immersive means. For “Shift-Life” the artist was concerned with a direct “relational” approach where viewers would intuitively engage with the installation’s everyday objects, and with each other, to fully experience the piece. The Mixed Reality system is mediated via physical environmental sensors, which affect the virtual environment and autonomous agents, which in turn reacts and is expressed as virtual pixels projected onto a physical surface. The tangible hands-on interface proved to be instinctive, attractive, and informative on many levels, delivering a good example of collaboration between the arts and science.

Creative Approaches to Exploring the Interstice between the Virtual and the Real

The creative application of digital technologies is accelerating as artists, designers and technologists continue to experiment and explore ways to create new aesthetic fields, semantically enhanced communication and innovative relations between people and machines. Our virtual worlds meet the real material world through the interdisciplinary research of computer scientists, digital media technologists, artists, designers and culture theorists. This paper will explore ways of bringing the virtual to the real through a range of differing conceptual positions and research approaches while demonstrating the creative interplay of variable media and online platforms for producing liminal works which cross the boundary between the analogue and the digital. The intent is to provide insights and examples of creative practice employing new technologies in innovative and unusual ways to generate exciting new work and offer new pathways for digital media research and development. The paper will present relevant theoretical frameworks and examples of current practice in the area of digitally enabled transitional spaces for artists, theorists and curators, as well as researchers working both in the field and beyond to those working with new technologies, social media platforms, and digital/ material culture.