research

artworks

events

people

courses

people : cema staff

staff
members

postgraduate
students

visitors
and artists in residence

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dr. alan dorin

alan's interests are primarily in the philosophy and application of the principles of artificial life, in particular self-assembly and ecosystem simulation, to generative electronic art. His formal background is in Computer Science and Interactive Media Art but his work-related interests include history, biology, philosophy and photography. He spends his time away from computers racing bicycles and climbing mountains.

e: aland @ csse. monash. edu. au
w: www.csse.monash.edu.au/~aland
t: +61.3 9905.3576
f: +61.3 9905.5146

mr. troy innocent

troy has been exploring new aesthetics enabled by computers since 1989. Deconstructing and understanding the endemic properties, language and nature of the digital realm is the underlying theme of his work in digital games, computer animation, installation art, interactive media, synthetic images and sound.

dr. jon mc cormack

jon's research interests include evolutionary music and art, nature-inspired synthesis methods, artificial life, computer graphics, cybernetic interfaces and the theory and philosophy of generative systems. He is also an electronic media artist, with his artistic practice and research mutually informing each other. Please see his web site for further information.

mr. peter mc ilwain

peter is a composer specialising in computer and electro-acoustic music. He has a wide range of musical and artistic interests that include writing works for traditional ensembles, film and music theatre, computer music and installation art. His research interests include, sound spatialisation, nodal networks and granular synthesis. Peter is Lecturer in Composition in the School of Music - Conservatorium where he heads the Sonic Art Group.  He is also the current President of the Australasian Computer Music Association (ACMA).

mr. stewart haines

stewart is an interaction designer and software engineer with expertise in virtual world development using the Torque Game Engine. This development work includes integration of database, server and client technologies for persistent virtual worlds, and web development using php, mySQL and CMS, including strategies for locative and mobile media.

dr. oliver bown

ollie is an electronic musician and researcher interested in dynamical system and artificial life approaches to musical performance, creativity and the co-evolution of software and creative practice. He is working as RA on the Computational Creativity and Ecosystems project at CEMA. He recently completed a PhD at the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London on biocultural co-evolutionary models associated with the evolution of human musical behaviour. See his website for more information.

e: ollie AT icarus DOT nu
w: www.olliebown.com
t: +61.3 9905.8471
d: 2008-2009

mr. aidan lane

aidan is spending his time at CEMA writing Nodal. This is a realtime, interactive software application for generating and composing music. The user composes by configuring a network of virtual nodes and connections that transfer musical information between them. Aidan is also implementing a system for realtime video capture to be used in interactive art.

dr. taras kowaliw

taras's research involves the use of bio-inspired techniques to understand and emulate biological design; he also pokes around in machine learning, pattern recognition, and human-computer interaction. Formally trained in mathematics and computing, Taras also has strong interests in visual and digital art.

people : cema postgraduate students

mr. ben porter

ben is currently undertaking a PhD, in which he is applying theory from biological developmental systems to the domain of generative systems and computer graphics. His research interests include generative systems, procedural graphics, physics and physical simulation, mathematics, and artificial life.

mr. greg paperin

greg's primary research interest is in the application of artificial life techniques to questions in complex systems research. In his current PhD research he is investigating the role of extrinsic disturbances and phase changes in the evolution of natural and artificial complex systems. Greg's other research interests are structured methods and good practice of software systems engineering. He is co-supervised by CEMA staff.

e:gpaperin AT infotech DOT monash DOT edu DOT au
w: www.paperin.org

ms. jenny kashmirian

jenny is a phd candidate in the faculty of information technology. She is co-supervised by CEMA staff.

people : cema visitors, former staff and students

dr. alice eldridge

alice is working as RA on the Design For Nature project at CEMA. This is pretty exciting as it is perhaps the only RA position in the world which unites her practical interests in (musical) improvisation and theoretical fascination with evolutionary and adaptive systems.

former staff
e: alice. eldridge @ infotech. monash. edu. au
t: +61.3 9905.8471
d: 2007-2008

dr. palle dahlstedt

palle constantly tries to do everything at the same time: develop new ways of improvising synthesized sounds; program autonomous generative music systems; make intelligent tools for composers and humbly understand the creative process through self-inspection. At CEMA he tries to develop a tree-based generative representation for music and graphics, to be used in numerous successful artworks in the future.

dr. mitchell whitelaw

while visiting CEMA Mitchell is writing about, and experimenting with, generative and data art, transcoded audiovisuals, and other creative forms that deal with the abstract structures and capacities of digital media.

mr. nicholas sandow

nick is developing a number of CEMA projects that involved the realtime display of dynamic systems using game engines. This includes the development of realtime simulation using the Torque Game Engine (TGE) including subsystems within TGE such as terrain generation, a UT2004 development environment for exploring multiplayer audiovisual performance, and a Linux development environment for gumstix and other small computing devices.

mr. paul harrison

paul is a PhD candidate at CEMA. His research interests include texture synthesis, tiling patterns and numerous philosophical concerns.

mr. yossi landesman

Yossi Landesman is a Master of IT student researching interactive sonic ecosystem models using nature-inspired communication methods.

mr. wei wu

wei is a Masters candidate at CEMA. His masters thesis introduces a technique for utilizing tiles to generate textured and populated landscape and terrain models.

gordon monro

gordon monro has been working on audio-visual
pieces where a single underlying process generates both sound and image. He is visiting to familiarise himself with the work being done at CEMA on generative systems in art.

visitor
a: Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Australia
d: November 2006
w: www.gommog.com

paul brown

paul* has painted some large acrylic on canvas images of his cellular automata work. The exhibition, titled Some From 4^16, was exhibited at the conclusion of his visit.

* and celeste

visitor
a: UK / Australia
d: December 2005 - February 2006
w: www.paul-brown.com

gregor sarrazin

during his time at CEMA, Gregor developed a number of on-line systems to form part of the new CEMA web pages. In particular, Gregor developed a data base of CEMA events, activities and publications using the MySQL database with a php front-end. With authorization, people are also able to edit entries directly via the web. Gregor also developed dynamic web pages for CEMA Pipe Club and Cinematheque, along with a processing system for ordering proceedings from the Iteration conferences. He also helped with rendering on The Deep.

student visitor
a: Berlin, Germany
d: September - December 2004

jens schroer

during his stay at CEMA, Jens developed TerraNova. TerraNova is a virtual, realtime, 3D artificial life environment populated by agents that used a Zeroth Level Classifier System. The agents were free to move around and find food in their world. The main emphasis of this project was to investigate artificial life and learning processes in a simple way using classifier systems.

student visitor
a: Fichtenwalde, Germany
d: March - July 2004

manuela stark

manuela was involved in ongoing research and development of a MySQL database system incorporating a catalogue of resources relating to generative art, artists and their research. In addition, she developed a web-based interface to the database allowing database entry, searching and modification.

student visitor
a: Berlin, Germany
d: October 2003 - February 2004 (internship)

sam woolf

whilst at CEMA, Sam worked on a generative soundtrack making program. The program works by providing an interface through which the user can allocate descriptive keywords to specific parts of the movie timeline which are then automatically entered into Lycos's multimedia search engine, and corresponding sound files are retrieved from the WWW. The program explores the relationships between words, images and sound, and aims to promote serendipitous correlations between sounds found through chance and evocative film moments.

visitor
a: COGs, Sussex University, UK
d: August 2003

richard brown

during Richard's artist-in-residence period at CEMA he produced, The Preservation of Entropy, a time-based installation work on decay and energy. This is presented in six cabinets each containing a glass vessel and a monitoring computer. Each vessel contains three metals immersed in a chemical fluid. Over time the metals slowly transform and generate electricity. The computers trace the electricity over time, whilst a time-lapse webcam captures the visual changes making the hidden processes visible to the viewer. This installation was exhibited in the Faculty Gallery of the Faculty of Art and Design.

visitor
a: UK
d: April - July 2001
w: www.mimetics.com