TOM CHATFIELD
Tom (@TomChatfield) is a British writer and commentator. The author of five books exploring digital culture – most recently How to Thrive in the Digital Age (Pan Macmillan) and Netymology (Quercus) – his work has appeared in over a dozen territories and languages.
Tom is a fortnightly columnist for the BBC, TED Global speaker, international commentator and broadcaster, and has worked as a writer and consultant with some of the world’s leading technology firms.
He completed a doctorate at St John’s College, Oxford, before moving to London, where he lives with his wife and two cats.
ODETTE TOILETTE
Scent-lover Odette Toilette (aka Lizzie Ostrom) has since 2010 hosted events and experiences that turn the discovery of fragrance upside down. From a make-your-own Lickable Perfumes masterclass at Somerset House, to a perfumed walking tour at the Tate, smell-infused ghost story evenings and a collaboration with the Royal Observatory Greenwich on the smells of outer space, no theme is too strange to form the basis of an unusual night out. She is also co-founder of ode, a fragrance product designed to support older people living in care, and is co-host of the Life in Scents podcast. www.odettetoilette.com
Sniffing out a story. Why is olfaction is overlooked as a creative starting-point, and how we can we have fun making narratives out of scent? Odette shows you how to use your nose more.
TOM ARMITAGE
Tom Armitage is a technologist and designer based in London. He makes tools, toys and art out of hardware, software and the network; he likes to think with his hands. He's worked on everything from a large-scale website to aggregate UK schools data to giant, multi-part games that span a Parisian art gallery; from bridges that talk on Twitter and cities that speak over SMS to laser-cut sculptures of actors’ movement. He runs a personal weblog at infovore.org.
Tom will be talking about making new things out of things that already exist. And not necessarily the most beautiful or advanced, but mining the readily-available and slightly out-of-date for new surfaces, platforms, and materials to design with.
Tom has recently been working with research and design studio Pan on Hello Lamp Post - an experimental, city-wide platform for play which won Bristol’s first ever Playable City Award.
INGRID MURPHY
Ingrid is an artist and educator based both in Cardiff and France. She is Subject Leader for Artist, Designer: Maker at Cardiff Metropolitan University, this subject explores the synergies between traditional making skills and new technologies.
Ingrid is a recipient of the Creative Wales Award, which enabled her to explore how emerging technologies can influence how we conceive, make and perceive crafted objects. A traditionally trained ceramicist and closet geek, Ingrid now makes interactive ceramic objects, attempting to animate the inanimate.
DR KAREN GULDBERG
Dr Karen Guldberg is Senior Lecturer in Autism Studies, University of Birmingham. She is also Director of the Autism Centre for Education and Research (ACER) and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Karen is passionate about exploring ‘best practice’ in educational interventions for children. She has a strong interest in how children learn and in the training needs of practitioners and carers.
She also specialises in researching teaching and learning related to technology enhanced learning environments for children with autism. Her work involves exploring the use of robots in the education of children with autism and the development of virtual environments with intelligent agents. She currently leads a project exploring how to embed
technologies for children with autism in schools and the curriculum.
NICK FORTUNGO
Nick Fortugno is a game designer and entrepreneur of digital and real-world games based in New York City, and a founder of Playmatics, a game development company. Playmatics has created a variety of games including the CableFAX award winning Breaking Bad: The Interrogation, the Corporation of Public Broadcasting educational game HD LAB, and the upcoming iOS game Shadow Government. For the past ten years, Fortugno has been a designer, writer and project manager on dozens of commercial and serious games, and served as lead designer on the downloadable blockbuster Diner Dash and the award-winning serious game Ayiti: The Cost of Life. Nick is also a co-founder of the Come Out and Play street games festival hosted in New York City and Amsterdam since 2006, and co-creator of the Big Urban Game for Minneapolis/St. Paul in 2003. Nick teaches game design and interactive narrative design at Parsons The New School of Design.
Nick will be joining us by video conference and will be talking about learning as experimentation, and that means both as failure and as play. Games figure into this very well because games create environments where experimentation is encouraged, where failure is low-cost and motivating, and where challenges can be adapted to the exact skill level of the user. To explore this, I’ll look at Ayiti: The Cost of Life, Meerkatcher (another Playmatics game), FoldIt, and other game-learning tools.
ALISON NORRINGTON
Alison is Founder/Chief Creative Director of storycentralDIGITAL and storycentralLABS, a bestselling author, playwright, journalist and transmedia producer, educator and PhD researcher in transmedia storytelling & audience behaviours.
Alison works with producers, brands, publishers, broadcasters, studios and theme parks globally, advising on transmedia strategic planning, incubating new entertainment IP, story architecture and consults on cross-platform implementation and techniques.
She featured on the BAFTA Guru series, is transmedia masterclass trainer for the EUROVISION Academy, web-series judge for Banff World Media Festival and a member of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
NICK TANDAVANITJ
Nick has worked with Blast Theory since 1994. In this time, Nick has focused on creative approaches to computing; contributing to the group’s unique mix of skills in structuring interactivity and narrative. This has led to particular skills in 3D modelling, technical design & programming for interactive installations and web based artwork. He studied Art & Social Context at Dartington College of Arts from 1990-1993; collaborating for 2 years with Alison Cannon on a number of videos and performances. In 2003, Nick became an Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham undertaking a nine month programme of research into artistic, social and gaming applications which use mobile technology. Nick has also contributed to a number of academic papers for with the Mixed Reality Lab.
Nick will be presenting a a number of key projects by Blast Theory that take different approaches using technology to create new forms of performance in the city.
Why not come along to our meeting on Wednesday evenings and see how you can get involved! Click here to view our calendar.
