Images courtesy of EVA London

Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA) hold international conferences annually. It is a community of academics and practitioners, which one of the organisers Emeritus Prof of Computing, London South Bank University, Jonathan Bowen has encouraged me to join and submit papers to present (if selected) at EVA London 2019. I plan to do this. Firstly with my MA research paper ‘Digital to Physical Built to Last: Will functioning digital art be part of our future cultural legacy’, and an introduction to my PhD project ‘Making the absent object present: Towards a holographic Museum of Modern Art (hMoMA)’.

It is indeed a small world. I was pleased to note that my MA Tutor Dr. Gareth Polmeer, now on the academic staff at the Royal College of Art, is one of the other people I know who is involved. Also Dr. Nick Lambert, Head of Research at Ravensbourne. I also noticed that Prof. Carla Gannis (Pratt Institute, New York) has presented in the past, who I met at the Lumen Prize, which is also promoted at the EVA conference, involving a fellow MA FAD graduate Jack Addis.

Conference themes

EVA London’s Conference themes include the use of new and emerging technologies in the following areas (to be broadly interpreted):

• Digital Art
• Data, Scientific and Creative Visualisation
• Digitally Enhanced Reality and Everyware
• 2D and 3D Imaging, Display and Printing
• Mobile Applications
• Museums and Collections
• Music, Performing arts, and Technologies
• Open Source and Technologies
• Preservation of Digital Visual Culture
• Virtual Cultural Heritage

I have highlighted my particular areas of interest for my PhD research.

This has been an important discovery for me, as Jonathan Bowen thinks it will be a supportive community for my PhD. Thank you Jonathan.

I am very excited to be starting my practice based PhD next month (Sept 2018) at Kingston University School of Art. It became real to me yesterday when I received a schedule of events for induction and workshops for the first year.

My research project is titled Making the Absent Object Present: Towards a holographic Museum of Modern Art (hMoMA). This builds upon my MA Fine Art Digital (Distinction) gained at the University of the Arts London in 2017, and my MA research paper Digital to Physical – Built to Last? Will functioning digital art be part of our future cultural heritage? An examination of built in obsolescence in digital art and implications for our cultural legacy (https://terencemquinn.com/2016/10/05/research-paper-digital-to-physical-made-to-last-will-functioning-digital-art-be-part-of-our-future-cultural-heritage/).

My PhD research supervisors at Kingston University are Associate Prof. Dr. Chris Horrocks, and Prof Felicity Colman professor of Film and Media Arts and Director of Research Programmes, and Development.

At the same time I continue in my role as Visiting Practitioner at University of the Arts London, in particular in support of MA Fine Art Digital at UAL Camberwell College of Art, and my involvement with UAL Digital Maker Collective and Tate Exchange. I am hoping that by starting my PhD part time it will allow me to be active at both UAL and Kingston Universities.

I plan to seek involvement in the recently formed UAL Institute of Creative Computing and with Kingston University’s Centre for Augmented and Virtual Reality Environments (CAVE). I am particularly interested in the application of Mixed Reality to my PhD research project and to engage and support other students in practice based research and making, using my extensive collection of 3D, VR, and MR development devices. These include headsets (HTC Vive, Vive Focus Developers Edition, Microsoft HoloLens Development Edition, and Occipital Bridge) and devices for volumetric capture (Depthkit and Occipital Structure Sensor), and later this year Lightform (AR Projection Mapping).

Mixed Reality Projection using Microsoft Hololens