Professor of Digital Media Art with research interests in Concept-based art, consciousness studies and interactive/participatory installations working across real and virtual spaces.
Special Issue on Arts, Aesthetics, and Performance in VR and Telepresence, PRESENCE: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments 26(2), MIT Press , 2017
This article presents a detailed design, development and implementation of a Mixed Reality Art-Sc... more 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 on-going exploration into the parallels between the non-linear 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 formalisation 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 to activate their work, 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.
Background: Generalisation of findings is an important aspect of research and essential for evide... more Background: Generalisation of findings is an important aspect of research and essential for evidence-based practice. While generalisation is common in quantitative research, there is a lack of generalisability in qualitative research. This paper presents the experience and challenges faced by the Designing for People with Dementia (MinD) project in meeting the requirements to strengthen the generalisation of findings on the lived experience of people living with dementia and their engagement to co-create designs to empower their everyday living. Methods: Polit and Beck (2010)’s strategies to generalise qualitative findings were applied: (1) replication in sampling; (2) replication of studies; (3) meta-synthesis of findings; (4) reflexivity and conceptualization; (5) immersion with the data; and (6) thick description. Results: While it is possible to increase the generabilisabilty of qualitative evidence through the replication of the sampling to attain a large, heterogeneous sampl...
Background: Generalisation of findings is an important aspect of research and essential for evide... more Background: Generalisation of findings is an important aspect of research and essential for evidence-based practice. While generalisation is common in quantitative research, there is a lack of generalisability in qualitative research. This paper presents the experience and challenges faced by the Designing for People with Dementia (MinD) project in meeting the requirements to strengthen the generalisation of findings on the lived experience of people living with dementia and their engagement to co-create designs to empower their everyday living. Methods: Polit and Beck (2010)’s strategies to generalise qualitative findings were applied: (1) replication in sampling; (2) replication of studies; (3) meta-synthesis of findings; (4) reflexivity and conceptualization; (5) immersion with the data; and (6) thick description. Results: While it is possible to increase the generabilisabilty of qualitative evidence through the replication of the sampling to attain a large, heterogeneous sampl...
Concerns the synthesis of new media art theory, digital technology and conceptual art in practice... more Concerns the synthesis of new media art theory, digital technology and conceptual art in practice-based research. Harrison questions the validity of (and offers alternatives to) lens and screen-based media as the basis for teaching digital media theory to new practitioners.
Technoetic Arts: a Journal of Speculative Research, 2007
Abstract This paper is presented as a performance between the two authors who are discussing the ... more Abstract This paper is presented as a performance between the two authors who are discussing the notion of'daydreaming'as a transitional space between their research interests in dreams and the semantic associations of conscious thought. The first half ...
Abstract: Shrewsbury Museum Service invited Dew Harrison to create a work relating to Charles Dar... more Abstract: Shrewsbury Museum Service invited Dew Harrison to create a work relating to Charles Darwin for the bicentenary of his birth in the UK town. Her research is practise-led and uses computer technology to interlink series of related thoughts and ideas, in multimedia form. Texts, images, animations and sounds are networked into one overarching 'concept'. The complete concept is then exhibited as a looped projected film or interactive screen work offering a contemporary understanding of a complex issue. She had ...
2012 International Conference on Cyberworlds, 2012
The artist and principal author has been creating art works in multimedia through the semantic as... more The artist and principal author has been creating art works in multimedia through the semantic association of ideas into concepts, as a means of exploring the efficacy of hypermedia for a conceptual art practice. This is particularly evident in the developments apparent in the ongoing ‘Deconstructing Duchamp’ project, where ‘flocking’ behaviours have been applied to Duchampian digitised items to observe the familial relations within, and key to his work, at play. Following this project, a second work ‘Shift-Life’ has proceeded to further develop the idea of allotting animal-like behaviours to digital objects synthesised by voltage and silicon, giving them the appearance of possessing basic intelligence. By observing their response to our physical interactions we can glean a better understanding from their inter-relationships, of a complex conceptual framework. While Marcel Duchamp offered the art world one of the most complex and formative pieces of art ever, initiating the shift of values from aesthetics to idea, Charles Darwin developed the theory of evolution, the ‘big’ idea of survivability through adaptation. Shift-Life was created as part of the national Darwin 200 project for the international bicentenary in 2009. It is a complex system of virtual life-forms struggling to survive in an environment made volatile through human interaction. Central to this installation work is the artificial life ecosystem as a self-sustaining, self-reproducing equilibrium of creatures and plants living in it. The general behaviour of each organism was more sophisticated than for the Duchampian creatures in that they were equipped for survival strategies and the reproduction of progenies. An exposition of the Shift-Life program is therefore presented followed by reflection on both projects and future directions for this collaborative research where potential emergent behaviours are concerned.
Special Issue on Arts, Aesthetics, and Performance in VR and Telepresence, PRESENCE: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments 26(2), MIT Press , 2017
This article presents a detailed design, development and implementation of a Mixed Reality Art-Sc... more 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 on-going exploration into the parallels between the non-linear 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 formalisation 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 to activate their work, 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.
Background: Generalisation of findings is an important aspect of research and essential for evide... more Background: Generalisation of findings is an important aspect of research and essential for evidence-based practice. While generalisation is common in quantitative research, there is a lack of generalisability in qualitative research. This paper presents the experience and challenges faced by the Designing for People with Dementia (MinD) project in meeting the requirements to strengthen the generalisation of findings on the lived experience of people living with dementia and their engagement to co-create designs to empower their everyday living. Methods: Polit and Beck (2010)’s strategies to generalise qualitative findings were applied: (1) replication in sampling; (2) replication of studies; (3) meta-synthesis of findings; (4) reflexivity and conceptualization; (5) immersion with the data; and (6) thick description. Results: While it is possible to increase the generabilisabilty of qualitative evidence through the replication of the sampling to attain a large, heterogeneous sampl...
Background: Generalisation of findings is an important aspect of research and essential for evide... more Background: Generalisation of findings is an important aspect of research and essential for evidence-based practice. While generalisation is common in quantitative research, there is a lack of generalisability in qualitative research. This paper presents the experience and challenges faced by the Designing for People with Dementia (MinD) project in meeting the requirements to strengthen the generalisation of findings on the lived experience of people living with dementia and their engagement to co-create designs to empower their everyday living. Methods: Polit and Beck (2010)’s strategies to generalise qualitative findings were applied: (1) replication in sampling; (2) replication of studies; (3) meta-synthesis of findings; (4) reflexivity and conceptualization; (5) immersion with the data; and (6) thick description. Results: While it is possible to increase the generabilisabilty of qualitative evidence through the replication of the sampling to attain a large, heterogeneous sampl...
Concerns the synthesis of new media art theory, digital technology and conceptual art in practice... more Concerns the synthesis of new media art theory, digital technology and conceptual art in practice-based research. Harrison questions the validity of (and offers alternatives to) lens and screen-based media as the basis for teaching digital media theory to new practitioners.
Technoetic Arts: a Journal of Speculative Research, 2007
Abstract This paper is presented as a performance between the two authors who are discussing the ... more Abstract This paper is presented as a performance between the two authors who are discussing the notion of'daydreaming'as a transitional space between their research interests in dreams and the semantic associations of conscious thought. The first half ...
Abstract: Shrewsbury Museum Service invited Dew Harrison to create a work relating to Charles Dar... more Abstract: Shrewsbury Museum Service invited Dew Harrison to create a work relating to Charles Darwin for the bicentenary of his birth in the UK town. Her research is practise-led and uses computer technology to interlink series of related thoughts and ideas, in multimedia form. Texts, images, animations and sounds are networked into one overarching 'concept'. The complete concept is then exhibited as a looped projected film or interactive screen work offering a contemporary understanding of a complex issue. She had ...
2012 International Conference on Cyberworlds, 2012
The artist and principal author has been creating art works in multimedia through the semantic as... more The artist and principal author has been creating art works in multimedia through the semantic association of ideas into concepts, as a means of exploring the efficacy of hypermedia for a conceptual art practice. This is particularly evident in the developments apparent in the ongoing ‘Deconstructing Duchamp’ project, where ‘flocking’ behaviours have been applied to Duchampian digitised items to observe the familial relations within, and key to his work, at play. Following this project, a second work ‘Shift-Life’ has proceeded to further develop the idea of allotting animal-like behaviours to digital objects synthesised by voltage and silicon, giving them the appearance of possessing basic intelligence. By observing their response to our physical interactions we can glean a better understanding from their inter-relationships, of a complex conceptual framework. While Marcel Duchamp offered the art world one of the most complex and formative pieces of art ever, initiating the shift of values from aesthetics to idea, Charles Darwin developed the theory of evolution, the ‘big’ idea of survivability through adaptation. Shift-Life was created as part of the national Darwin 200 project for the international bicentenary in 2009. It is a complex system of virtual life-forms struggling to survive in an environment made volatile through human interaction. Central to this installation work is the artificial life ecosystem as a self-sustaining, self-reproducing equilibrium of creatures and plants living in it. The general behaviour of each organism was more sophisticated than for the Duchampian creatures in that they were equipped for survival strategies and the reproduction of progenies. An exposition of the Shift-Life program is therefore presented followed by reflection on both projects and future directions for this collaborative research where potential emergent behaviours are concerned.
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