The Digital Media programme hosts a diverse range of students, with an emphasis on originality and creative experimentation through new technologies.
This produces a vibrant group of open-minded researchers, representing various disciplines including art, computer science, film, media, design, engineering, and more.
Current Students | ||
ROMA BYER
Roma studied at Central School of Speech and Drama in London in the sixties. She qualified as a teacher of Speech and Drama. Roma then taught for a while in primary and comprehensive schools. She also worked for a while in the theatre and then got a job with the BBC. She then joined local radio when it was just starting up and produced and presented all kinds of programmes. She also worked freelance in London for Radio 4 in News and Current Affairs. Having left London, she bought a Uher and a reel to reel recorder and was able to produce freelance packages both broadcast and non -broadcast.
Roman started making video packages in the area of health related subjects and also resumed work as a reporter in Metro Radio. She was appointed as a part time Medical Television Producer working out of the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine and Dentistry at Newcastle University and also worked freelance in the Audio Visual Department of the University making programmes and packages with many different departments.
At the same time she was pursuing a parallel and complimentary career. She did a part time MA at Durham University in Counselling and on finishing the course, worked as a tutor on the Counselling Skills course for four years. She also started her own business, "On Speaking Terms", working with universities and businesses in the area, training in presentation, communication and media skills. Roman is looking forward to drawing these threads together on the Digital Media course.
KO LE CHEN
Originally from Taiwan, Ko Le came to the UK to study science as an undergraduate in Scotland in 2003. After finishing University she returned home and spent a year working for an experimental theatre group (Offpw) in Taipei. Being in the performance arts environment not only enabled her to engage in artistic practice but also introduced her to the fundamental skills in AV technology.
She is interested in the relationship between arts and science and her approach to understand the connection is by "making work". Digital video and hand-made electronics are the core materials she works with. She is also concerned with social norms and how they shape our lives.
HELEN COLLARD
Personal statement coming soon
PETER J. EVANS
“Everything moves, shifts – from place to place or time to time – the gradual transformation of matter into matter into matter. Thoughts become words, stones become water - decay of one forming the particles that make up the other”.
The backbone of my practice is a particular and meticulous way of drawing the world, seen as a series of interconnecting elements and hermenutically presented in diagrammatic form. These as drawings are attempts to mark out and describe the interactions between things, a line travelling on the paper being able to represent the path of a leaf in the wind or someone’s heart as they fall in love - both have a story, a path, a line they’ve travelled. These lines become both abstract and representational as although titles with my works function like keys they are only the way into a lexicon of meanings, which are left for the viewer to weave or unravel.
I try not to make art that describes a situation but to make art that in someway is that interaction and this is my main interest in the course, that of interaction. Not at this point, between audience and artwork as I’m not able to imagine how that might be possible without being formulaic, (and also being slightly attached to the concept of authorship!), but between disciplines and research, I’m interested in learning. How that received knowledge comes out in the work I’m not so sure of yet, but I want to know things, brainwave research, quantum, pcb electronics.
THOMAS GRAY
Since arriving in Newcastle in 2004, I have been keenly involved within the thriving art scene of both the university and the city itself, pursuing work experience and employment across the creative sector. I have undertaken several exciting roles within industry, including work as a 3D visualisation artist within a prominent regional architect’s firm, web designer and photographer for two emerging local businesses, video editor in several collaborative filmmaking projects and as a research intern for Broadcast Yourself, a gallery-based international group exhibition of video art at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle and Cornerhouse, Manchester. I have similarly applied myself to projects, exhibitions and voluntary work within the context of Newcastle University’s Fine Art degree programme. I continue to participate regularly in filmmaking projects with fellow students and strive to promote this work across both physical and virtual platforms of exhibition.
Within my private practice, I create film and sound installations which predominantly explore issues of place, familiarisation and memory, driven in part through my own visual experiences of being partially sighted. I endeavour to create innovative and dynamic environments which not only serve to investigate these themes, but evolve dominant modes of audio visual exhibition. My degree show, entitled ‘Pauses,’ comprised four films and sound, installed within a purpose-built space. Each film and sound piece extracted specific information and narrative from routes and journeys with which I had become familiar. Though each film and sound extract can be experienced holistically, the emphasis is upon creating niches within the space from which the viewer can begin a process of familiarisation; curved walls suggest that each film be approached, assessed and experienced individually, whilst fragments of sound allude to elements of hidden narrative.
I hope to explore these themes in greater depth within the context of the M.Res. programme; developing mobile digital artworks which cross traditional boundaries of exhibition, creating a malleable environment in which these issues can considered with a greater degree of freedom.
PETE HINDLE
I am deeply invested in using digital tools to make art as my personal practice, but I have also developed a parallel working practice as an arts facilitator, by working with the email group NewcastleGraft. To date, this facilitation has lead me to arrange events, courses, and research trips for the artists in that group, and future plans include a group show at a local gallery.
When not facilitating for the group in some way, my creations focus around the use of technology, and how that impacts upon people - often, people in the creative sphere. As such, I’m very interested in the use of infographics to make large datasets understandable without specialist training.
Something that makes any subject understandable without specialist training is humour. I try and keep elements of light-heartedness in my practice, especially things that are public-facing.
Over the duration of the course, I hope to work towards the learning objectives I’ve outlined above. As part of my longer term goals I want to make contact with other individuals who feel similarly passionate about using technology within, and to create, art. Finally, I’m hoping the process of the course will challenge and stretch me, in order to help me improve my working practice.
OLIVER MARCHANT
Oliver Marchant is a filmmaker, musician and a former graduate of Newcastle University in English Literature. Whilst at this institution he developed and cultivated an interest in documentary making and made “Journey To the Centre of Masculinity”, an experimental voyage to the core of the male psyche, as his final project.
At Culture Lab Oliver is looking to explore the relationship between sound and image, to seek new ways to redress the balance in the cinematic relationship between sight and sound. He is looking at ways in which sound can be elevated from merely supporting the image to a position of equality. He would like to explore the artistic possibilities of digital filmmaking and investigate the possibilities of truly interactive cinema. His research also concerns itself with seeking fresh ways of subverting filmic genres and expectations through non-linear narrative structures,
Oliver is looking to explore the notion of documentary as a multi-dimensional art form whilst considering the issues of truth versus beauty that the genre throws up. He is also interested in the possibilities of documentary as a patchwork collage of experiences that, in harnessing new digital technologies, can be presented in a range of fresh ways. He also will seek to question how elements of performance art can be incorporated into his digital practice.
Oliver is also interested in implementing sonic experimentalism into the world of electronic Pop with his group SDF
ANDREW NIXON
My aims for this period of study is to develop ideas and explore areas of Audio Visual performance and expression. I have been working in the creative industries for the last 8 years, 5 of which with my own business ‘Name’. My artistic practice has been focused on Audio Visual performance, quickly progressing from clubnights into bespoke audio visual works. I have also been part of a team curating AV events, commissioning new works from National and International artists, as well as organising other festivals and educational projects.
This artistic work has been combined with commercial design work, in all areas of digital media, including web design, graphic design, videography and motion graphics, creating a financial balance which makes a lot of the artistic work feasible.
I have a very strong interest in mass participation and interactivity, how can the audience become involved or immersed into the piece, how can technology provide direct connections, how can the artist tap into the wealth of connective technology that is carried by almost everyone nowadays.
In tandem to the above I am also very interested in how the technology can become invisible, or unrecognisable as a laptop for example. Can instruments be created specifically for AV performance so that the performance can become more of a show.
The common theme through a lot of my work is it feels personal and intimate, and I aim to continue this feeling.
ANDREA POZZI
I graduated as a video designer at Milan IED (Istituto Europeo di Design) in June 2007 I was trained on a three – year full time course as a professional specialised in the design and production of moving images. From September 2007 to July 2008 I performed first as a full time stager and then as a collaborator at the DB Media company where I worked on several types of institutional video production. I also worked as a free lance video maker, my last work before leaving for Newcastle was a promotional video project for a small ethnographic museum documenting old arts and craft of a village and surroundings in the territory of my hometown.
I think I am pursuing a more inspirational approach. So far, I have somewhat privileged the technological aspects of the video design, what I would like to do now is to broaden the conceptual dimension of visual communication, thus one of my exploration could be the identity in relation to the message that one wants to convey.
Virtually, there’s no area of video design I would set aside : from theatrical installation, to videoclip, to commercials, to educational messages or whatever other form of visual messages.
Anticipation is another aspect I find interesting for research, ie: what will be the evolution of the visual communication? will it progressively and massively reduce the space of written communication? Is this already happening?
Someone has said (I don’t remember the reference) : “visual communication is the opposite of knowledge, it is an enemy of ideas because it should dissolve contents and just create an aesthetic reaction”. I was quite impressed , not very persuaded and yet fascinated by this statement, well this is an area that I would like to discuss and explore.
Other fields of investigation for me could be the relation between creative freedom and market demand.
Beside that, as a foreign student, I am interested in gaining knowledge of other point of views.
JOSEPH SCULLY
I am a programmer and idea translator interested in concepts surrounding control, interface and connectivity. My background is in biology, IT, networking engineering and some web development. My initial interests in digital media came from the perspective of digital music production which increasingly required me to create interfaces and instruments to achieve what I wanted - this lead me to working with pure data and other languages. Since starting to programme I have garnered experience of physical computing and visual processing in addition to the audio and signal processing work where I began.
During my period of study I hope to expand on the technical aspects of my practice but primarily to find a place for my work in the world of digital media arts and give reason and critical validity to my process and output. I am interested in the application of the scientific process to my artistic practice and to finding new avenues for the involvement of digital media in society. Hopefully these new situations for the involvement of art/technology can reverse current trends which represent a distancing of society from science and the understanding of science. I am interested in communications technologies, visualisation of cultural data and gestural and tactile interfacing with technology and hope to involve some of these fields in my research.
ABRAHAM THOMAS
Personal statement coming soon