Ian Gwilt

Bio:

• Dr Ian Gwilt is a Professor of Design and Visual Communication at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. He holds an MA in Interactive Multimedia, conferred by the University of Balears (UIB) in Spain, and the Royal College of Art (RCA) London. He has a Phd from the College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales examining the theory and practice of mixed-reality art. In the last 15 years he has shown interactive installations and digital work at a number of international new media events, galleries and exhibitions. His own practice/research is concerned with augmented reality and locative media, the graphical user interface as creative/cultural artefact, and exploring new forms and contexts for information design and post consumption visual communication.

  2003 Bio:
  Ian Gwilt is an adjunct fellow in computer graphic design at Waikato University, School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, New Zealand, and a visiting lecturer in visual communications at the University of Technology Sydney, Department of Design Architecture and Building, Australia.

Custom Committee:

• SIGGRAPH 2001: n-space

Writings and Presentations:

• Title: New Interactions: Communities and Information
  Writing Type: Panel / Roundtable
  Author(s):
  • Ian Gwilt
  • Melinda Rackham
  • Paul Vanouse
  • Ernest Edmonds
  • Ted Selker
  
  Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2006: Intersections
  Abstract Summary:

  In coining the phrase “relational aesthetics,” the contemporary French art theorist and curator Nicolas Bourriaud attempted to define a trend in creative works that configures interactive scenarios in which everyday experiences are the catalyst for audience-driven participation. This panel explores how the tacit activities of urban living are being used to form the foundations for new types of interaction that exploit community life and information-rich environ­ments. Topics include how “relatio

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  Title: Interface as Image: Image Making and Mixed Reality
  Writing Type: Essay
  Author(s):
  • Ian Gwilt
  
  Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2004: Synaesthesia
  Abstract Summary:

  This paper will explore the use of the graphical user interface as art, product and inspiration, drawing on my own practice as a digital image maker and installation artist, and a theoretical investigation of digital image making in hybrid art practice. As the boundaries and reference points between physical and digitally grounded imagery become less defined, the possible duality and interplay for a com­ bined image space moves towards a seamless self-referencing and continuous activity. A visual feedback loop or strip, where the clues of originality become increasingly hard to differentiate and, perhaps, increasingly irrelevant, a state of “deterritorialisation.”1 Some thought will be given to examining the potential for mapping digitally ground­ ed imagery into both two- and three-dimensional physical space to create a mixed-reality experience and to what can happen when we extract the real-world metaphors from the digital environment and take them back into the physical world. Questions about the trans­ parency of the human/computer interface, and about just how trans­ parent we really want this to be, are also raised. What are we left with when we remove the content from the graphical user interface? What traces of human interaction (from the physical) become evident, and what are the “aid memoirs” we employ to assist us in navigation and colonization of the digital landscape?

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  Role(s):

  
  
  • Art Jury Member
  • Artist
  • Author
  • Committee Member