Data Fellows Announced

Photo by Jon Aitken Layered Realities Watershed

SWCTN Appoints new group of Data Fellows

The South West Creative Technology Network are pleased to announce, after an extremely competitive application process involving a high volume of exceptional submissions, their 24 new Data Fellows. The fellowship is made up of 8 Academic Fellows, 8 from Industry, and 8 who are New Talent. Exploring dynamic and thought-provoking areas of data, find out more about them and their practices below:

ACADEMIC FELLOWS

  • Matthew Baker(Bath Spa) wants to explore the links between nature and human health. Investigating new technologies that will enable us to measure this shared experience and begin to explore the relationship between this and our mental and social health.
  • Merate Barakat(UWE) is working towards filling the gap of available design concepts, and computational tools to integrate acoustic sensory data into the architecture.
  • Conway and Young(UWE) are motivated by design’s critical, social and political potential. They are looking to research data literacy within a critically engaged art and design context.
  • Gianni Corino(Plymouth)
  • Dr. Hannah Little(UWE) specialises in digital communication, linguistics and cultural evolution. During her time as a fellow she will be looking to understand how we might go about communicating effectively but ethically about data rights to a diverse audience.
  • Pete Quinn Davis(Plymouth) will be using the fellowship to focus on how we can use scanned data to physically manifest, manage, direct and utilize, the unique potentialities of scanning technology.
  • Matthew Sergeant(Bath Spa) is a composer, theorist and senior lecturer in music at Bath Spa, through the fellowship he will be examining the objecthood of music in the age of big data.
  • Dane Watkins(Plymouth) Drawing curious creatures from organic and mechanical parts and attempting to capture them inside micro-controllers with binary outputs structure my exploration of the extensions of a data driven society whilst teaching interactive narrative and undertaking research into the value of playfulness in data collection.

Now onto the INDUSTRY FELLOWS:

  • Annie Blanchette(Devon) will be investigating the potential of playful participatory research approaches to challenge the objectifying tendencies of datafication in education.
  • Rupa Chilvers(Exeter) is a social scientist looking to explore how people working in health and care become aware of the value of data and its uses, and how playful interactions can support future engagement and trust in data.
  • Alex Hilson(Exeter) As a data fellow his research question investigates how transport data and models can be made accessible, helping people understand and take control of the environment that they live in.
  • Kathy Hinde(Bristol) works as an audio-visual artist and composer, creating installations that combine sound, sculpture, image and light.
  • Annie Legge(Bath) with a background in art, technology and the social sector, Annie will be using the fellowship to explore effective and inclusive community sense-making through system mapping.
  • Tomas Millar(Gloucestershire) is interested in identifying new or hidden data settings in architecture and enhancing existing dataflows in order to help architects better connect with participants downstream in the construction process including builders and end users.
  • Laura Sobola(Bristol) Having worked on several health tech projects, this fellowship will see her focus on how to make genomic data more accessible, understandable and useful for patients and medical professionals.
  • Corinne Stuart(Bristol) has a passion for working on new technologies and products. The fellowship provides an opportunity to investigate the environmental impact of data usage as a whole and who should take ownership for the effects.

And finally, our NEW TALENT FELLOWS:

  • Kat Anderson(Bristol) works as a visual artist. She is considering Black womxns’ bodies and minds as ‘data’ being ‘processed’, through white medical and penal institutions.
  • Tracey Bowen(Bristol) is a creative, producer, and musician, asking the questions, can data be a store of wealth? Will successive generations be able to inherit data and if so how do we shape the infrastructure we need?
  • Joyann Boyce(Bristol) uses data to create inclusive marketing campaigns and strategies. She will be investigating the relationship between data and bias.
  • Michelle Forrest-Beckett(Bristol) is looking at a Frankenstein like approach to the mattering of human-data communication, data-(dis)connections, data-disorientation, misinformation, and haunted-data, summoning a new form of data voice.
  • Natasha Nicholson(Devon) asks the question, do we need analogue communication spaces to thrive in the digital world and understand it?
  • Tessa Price(Cornwall) wants to explore ‘how can we use data from people’s life-stories to map and explore meaningful social connections?’ Are formulas for friendship something technology can inspire or influence?
  • Grace Quantock(Bristol/Cardiff) will focus her research on investigating how creative technologists can assess the impact of their data delivery methods and responsibly support more vulnerable groups to engage without overwhelm or re-traumatisation.
  • Eleanor Carbis(Cornwall) is interested in emerging social and global economies and what the future holds for heritage institutions and their collections.

Our first workshop is just around the corner at the beginning of April, we can’t wait to see what discussions open up within such an interesting field.

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