The fields of computer science and textile art have come together as part of the new Vice-Chancellor’s College Visiting Artist Fellows Scheme.
Dr Kirsty Darlaston, School of Art based textile artist and lecturer is collaborating with Professor Tom Gedeon and PhD candidates Dr Sabrina Caldwell and Martin Henschke in the information and Human Centred Computing research group as part of the scheme.
The collaborative research project brings together computer science research methodologies for measuring movement, with artistic and communications studies in embodied interactions with art. The collaborators will be exploring the manner in which viewers interact with images and artworks, using eye-gaze and gesture mapping technologies.
Dr Darlaston is enjoying the scheme which has allowed her the opportunity to integrate computer science technologies with art.
“We are looking at how people interact using their eyes, hands and bodies when viewing art. Asking questions like what gestures do people make when viewing art? How do their hands move when they describe an image? What do their bodies do? Where do their eyes travel?”
“To do this we are using artistic devices such as the ‘figure and ground’, the research will explore modes of viewing images between the highly figurative and the highly patterned.”
The Vice-Chancellors initiative was developed by the Australian National University in 2012 to encourage and celebrate interdisciplinary research. Each year six artists are funded to work collaboratively with researchers across a wide range of disciplines across the ANU to produce creative and experimental outcomes.
The research collaborations for the scheme will take place throughout the year and will conclude with an exhibition of all the fellows work in early 2015.
Artwork produced from the first round of fellowships is currently being exhibited at the Foyer Gallery at the School of Art.
These exhibitions are the first in what will become a regular program, bringing the results of the collaborations into public view with the aim of stimulating discussion about the multiple roles of visual arts and practice-led research at ANU and beyond.
Learn more about the Vice-Chancellor’s College Visiting Artist Fellows Scheme