Category Archives: faculty

The following candidates are slated to present for the week of June 11-15, 2012.

Ms. Post will give a lecture on Tuesday, June 12 from 2 – 3 pm  in JO 4.122 (note room change) entitled Resistance to Flow / Subject to Change.

Linda Post explores how perception and individual position can be examined through experiential video installations, sound works, media sculpture and photography.  Often in site-specific projects, a choreography of the everyday emerges as simple everyday actions are performed and systematized.  Her projects have been presented at various venues including MOMA, the Sculpture Center, PS.1 Contemporary Art Center and the Hirshhorn Museum.

There is an “urgent need to find new ways to connect the arts and design with science and engineering,” Dr. Roger F. Malina’s writes on the official blog of the National Endowment for the Arts in his article Making Science Intimate: Translating and Integrating the Arts and Humanities with Biology and Medicine.

Dr. Roger Malina

“My body doesn’t care which governmental or private organization funded or provided the source of my body’s health and healing,” writes Malina. “It doesn’t care from which sub-discipline or branch of the tree of knowledge the expertise was derived. My body lives in an inter-connected web of personal and social relations, biological, physical, and ecological systems. Yet to function, we fragment knowledge and the civic space into organizations with boundaries.”

Malina is an advocate of the “STEM to STEAM” movement which seeks to integrate the arts, design, and humanities with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education.

Dr. Roger F. Malina is Distinguished Professor of Arts and Technology and professor of physics in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

A physicist and astronomer by training, Malina is also president of the Association Leonardo in France, which fosters connections among the arts, sciences and technology. He was principal investigator for NASA’s Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer satellite at UC Berkeley. His work is focused on connections among the natural sciences and arts, design and humanities.

Speaking at his recent investiture about why he came to campus, he said, “We face problems today that leave no choice but for the sciences and the arts and humanities to work together. UT Dallas is taking the lead in creating innovative connections.”

Former Dallas Museum of Art Director Bonnie Pittman responds to the post with her perspective. Pittman is currently working with UT Dallas to initiate new ways of connecting the science, art, and health care institutions in Dallas.

Two nursing education research projects developed by the Institute for Interactive Arts and Engineering (IIAE) at UT Dallas in collaboration with the UT Arlington College of Nursing have received national and state recognition this spring.

One project — “Can Game Play Teach Student Nurses How to Save Lives?” — has been named a 2012 Computerworld Honors Laureate. This game-based simulation uses 3D infant patients in a synthetic environment to give undergraduate nursing students virtual clinical

One project — “Can Game Play Teach Student Nurses How to Save Lives?” — has been named a 2012 Computerworld Honors Laureate.  This game-based simulation uses 3D infant patients in a synthetic environment to give undergraduate nursing students virtual clinical practice opportunities.  The project was funded through a UT System Transforming Undergraduate Education grant. It will be recognized for its applications of information technology to promote positive social, economic and educational change at the Computerworld Laureate Medal Ceremony and Gala Evening on June 4 in Washington, D.C.

A second research project, NursingAP.com, tied for first place as Best Demonstration Project at the “Innovations in Health Science Education” conference sponsored by the University of Texas Academy of Health Science Education. The recognition is voted on by attendees at the conference, which is sponsored by the six health science campuses within the UT System.

A project called “Can Game Play Teach Student Nurses How to Save Lives?" uses 3D infant patients in a synthetic environment.

NursingAP.com is a blended-learning website that incorporates interactive technology and virtual environments to assist graduate students seeking nurse practitioner degrees and certifications. The project started with neonatal nurse practitioner (NNP) curriculum.   The project is funded by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration.

NursingAP.com affords students opportunities to practice the knowledge acquired through lecture material through the use of interactive modules and a 3D virtual Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The components of the NNP curriculum are presented through lecture notes with embedded media, and a variety of other multimedia forms, including videos, interactive games, simulations and virtual equipment demonstrations.  Students can practice clinical skills in the virtual NICU, an immersive environment where 3D patients present medical conditions covered in lecture content.

The project gives undergraduate nursing students virtual clinical practice opportunities.

Both projects are research collaborations between Dr. Marjorie A. Zielke, in Arts and Technology assistant professor and the associate director of IIAE, and Dr. Judy LeFlore, professor at the UT Arlington College of Nursing.  “These continual awards reinforce the deep talent of our student developers,” Dr. Zielke said.  “I also think we need to give a great deal of credit to our strong collaboration with the UT Arlington College of Nursing.”

“I am particularly proud of the scope of the recognition we are receiving from international conferences to internal recognition by the UT System Health Science campuses,” Dr. Zielke continued.

At the Computerworld awards dinner, the UT System project will be presented with a medallion inscribed with the program’s mission statement, “A Search for New Heroes.”

“The Computerworld Honors program was especially competitive this year, as more than 500 IT initiatives were nominated for their innovation and benefit to society,” said Julia King, executive editor of events for Computerworld.

These new honors are just two of the several awards received by IIAE projects over the past two years.  The UT System project also received a first place award for Emerging and Innovative Technology and Methods at the 2011 International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH). The simulation was used in a randomized, controlled study designed to compare the clinical application of undergraduate nursing students using a virtual clinical experience compared to students receiving the same pediatric respiratory content in traditional lecture format. Results of the study were published this spring in Simulation in Healthcare, the journal of the Society of Simulation in Healthcare.  Another project, The First Person Cultural Trainer (FPCT) won first place in the government category of the Serious Games Showcase at the Interservice/Interindustry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in Orlando in December 2011.  Earlier in 2011, FPCT earned first-place in the Innovations in DoD Gaming Competition at the 2011 Defense GameTech Users’ Conference also in Orlando.

For years, UT Dallas has sought to fuse its long-held strengths in technology with the creativity of the arts and humanities. That philosophical blend is embodied by a new professor who is a champion for interdisciplinary academics.

Dr. Roger F. Malina

Dr. Roger F. Malina is a physicist, astronomer and executive editor of Leonardo publications at MIT Press. He serves in two of the University’s schools, as a distinguished professor of arts and technology in the School of Arts and Humanities, and as a professor of physics in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

“We face hard problems in society today where we have no choice but for the sciences and the arts and humanities to work together. UT Dallas is taking the lead in creating innovative connections,” Malina said.

In partnership with Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology in San Francisco, Malina and UT Dallas’ Arts and Technology program are starting a project on campus entitled “Leonardo Initiatives.” Leonardo publishes journals, books, websites and projects on evolving digital platforms that aim to document and disseminate information about interdisciplinary work.

Malina is executive editor of Leonardo publications at MIT Press.

The first Leonardo Initiative at UT Dallas is currently under way with the publication of the e-book Arts, Humanities and Complex Networks. This project documents the work of 25 researchers whose work explores the meaning and application of the science of complex networks as it relates to art history, archeology, visual arts, the art market and other areas of cultural importance.

The texts in the publication come from researchers, information designers and artists whose work has been presented at the Leonardo Days at the Network Science conferences, the High Throughput Humanities conference and in the Leonardo Journal.

The e-book is augmented by an ATEC web companion, which hosts papers, presentations, and reader commentary and discussion.

Malina is a former director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence (OAMP) in Marseille, and a member of its observational cosmology group, which performs investigations on the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

He is also a member of the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Study (Institut Méditerranéen de Recherches Avancées, IMERA), an institute he helped to organize. IMERA seeks to contribute to trans-disciplinarity between the sciences and the arts, placing emphasis on the human dimensions of the sciences.

Malina was also a member of the jury for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge 2011, which awards a prize to those who create strategies with potential to “solve humanity’s most pressing problems.”

Malina’s specialty is space instrumentation. He was the principal investigator for the NASA Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer satellite at the University of California, Berkeley. The satellite was the first orbiting observatory to map the sky in the extreme ultraviolet band. The team at UC Berkeley had to invent new cameras, telescopes and data analysis techniques to accomplish the task. The team was one of the first university groups to take over operation of a NASA satellite and operate it from a university with teams of students.

For 25 years, Malina has been involved with the Leonardo organizations, which his father founded in 1967. Malina earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972 and his doctorate in astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley in 1979.

An anonymous gift in February 2010 created the Arts and Technology Distinguished Chair he holds at UT Dallas.

The following candidates are slated to present for the week of March 5-9, 2012. All presentations will be held in the ATEC Conference Room (ATEC 1.606).

Mr. Gresham-Lancaster will give a presentation on Monday, March 26 at 3:30 pm in ATEC 1.606 entitled Sonification: Finding the Sound and Music which is Within the Data.

Scot Gresham-Lancaster is a composer, performer, instrument builder and educator with decades of professional experience. His recent work is for IMéRA in Marseille France on 2nd order sonification of data sets. As a member of the HUB, he is one of the early pioneers of “computer network music” and cellphone operas. He has created a series of “co-located” international Internet performances with remote dancers and musicians. An acclaimed pianist and guitarist, he also often performs with instruments of his own design. He has worked with major Silicon Valley firms developing audio for games and interactive and online consumer products.  He is an expert in 21st century educational technology and techniques.

Mr. Gresham-Lancaster was a student of Philip Ianni, Roy Harris, Darius Milhaud, John Chowning, Robert Ashley, Terry Riley, “Blue” Gene Tyrany, David Cope and Jack Jarrett among others. He has been a composer in residence at Mills College. At STEIM in Amsterdam he worked on developing new instruments for live performance of electroacoustic music. He is an alumnus of the Djerassi Artist Residency Program. He has toured and recorded as a member of the HUB and Room, Alvin Curran, ROVA saxophone quartet, The Club Foot Orchestra , and NYX. He has performed the music of Alvin Curran, Pauline Oliveros, John Zorn, and John Cage, under their direction, and worked as a technical assistant to Lou Harrison, Iannis Xenakis and David Tudor among many others.

Mr. Kim will give a lecture on Tuesday, March 27 at 2:00 in ATEC 1.606 entitled Media Conditions of Successful  Ecology, Citizen Journalism and the Emerging Public Spheres.

Nakho Kim is currently a doctoral candidate of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests are in participatory citizen journalism, as an aspect of civic communication empowered with media technologies. Specific interest areas include citizen journalism practices, data journalism and media ecology modeling.

For several years, he has been developing and managing Madison Commons, a civic journalism project which aims to bridge various information needs of the local community. His dissertation in works builds an agent-based model of a simulated community to explore how we could use emerging media to bridge different communication networks and build a better public sphere.

Students, staff and faculty are invited to candidate presentations for various faculty positions in Arts and Technology. Candidates will offer a presentation based upon their individual research interests.

The following candidates are slated to present for the week of March 19-23, 2012.

Dr. Schich will give a lecture on Monday, March 19 at 3 p.m. in ATEC 1.606 entitled Visualizing the Ecology of Complex Networks in the Arts and Humanities.

Across several centuries the arts and humanities have accumulated large amounts of structured data, in the form of indices, inventories, catalogs, and databases. In addition more and more such structured data is published in places such as the Linked Open Data cloud or Freebase.com; extracted from unstructured sources such as Google Books or JSTOR; or accumulated by crowds in services such as Flickr or Facebook.

Meanwhile the multidisciplinary fields of complexity science in general, and complex network research in particular, provide more and more methods and tools that allow us to explore these data beyond the traditional limits of reference catalogs, printed books, or database interfaces. As a consequence, we are presented with an extraordinary chance to make significant progress in a key mission of the arts and humanities, namely to uncover the morphology, ecology and evolution of cultural artifacts, understanding meso- as well as global-scale phenomena that characterize the complex system of culture.

Making use of this situation, my talk analyzes, visualizes and explains structured data collections ranging from simple bibliographies to complicated research databases as networks of complex networks between objects, persons, locations, time ranges and events. Introducing a quantitative hermeneutics approach the presented work complements and bridges both traditional arts and humanities scholarship as well as modelling and simulation in complexity science.

Maximilian Schich is an art historian currently working as a Visiting Research Scientist at the Center for Complex Network Research at Northeastern University in Boston. In 2007, he received his Ph.D. with a thesis on ‘Reception and Visual Citation as Complex Networks’. Besides, Maximilian looks back at over a decade of consulting experience, working with (graph) data in art research – within Projekt Dyabola, Bibliotheca Hertziana (Max-Planck-Institute for Art History), the Glyptothek, and Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich.

His ongoing post-doctoral work on ‘Complex Networks in Art History and Archaeology’ has been funded by the Special Innovation Fund of the President of Max-Planck-Society and Prof. Albert-László Barabási in 2008, and since April 2009 by German Research Foundation DFG. Maximilian is an Editorial Advisor at Leonardo Journal (MIT-Press).

Ms. Hannah will present a lecture on Monday, March 19 at 4:30 p.m. in ATEC 1.606 entitled Performative Experiments: Aesthetic Interventions in the Philosophy of Scientific Instruments.

Dehlia Hannah is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy at Columbia University completing a dissertation titled Performative Experiments: Contemporary Art and the Aesthetics of Scientific Experimentation. She is a graduate of Smith College, where she studied philosophy and chemistry, and holds a Certificate in Feminist Inquiry from the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Columbia University. Her dissertation brings together the philosophies of art, science and technology to examine the scientific experiment as a formal practice in contemporary art and the use of scientific technologies and materials as new artistic media.

Ms. Drum will present a lecture on Tuesday, March 20 at 10:30 a.m. in ATEC 1.606 entitled Documentary in the Age of New Media.

Meredith Drum creates cinema projects as linear screenings, interactive exhibitions and mobile media walking tours. Her work has recently exhibited at a range of venues including the Bronx Museum of the Arts; Anthology Film Archives; Participant Inc.; Shelia C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons; Fales Library at NYU; Artport Projects at Focus 09 during Art Basel; Cinema Planeta Environmental Film Festival, Mexico City, Mexico; and Museo Valenciano de la Ilustración y la Modernidad, Valencia, Spain.

Additionally, her work has been published online on the New York Times magazine and Good Magazine. Recent grants and residencies from the NY State Council on the Arts and Free103point9; the Experimental Television Center; the Bronx Museum of the Arts; the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts; HASTAC; and ISSUE Project Room have provided support for her practice.

Dr. Fishwick will present a lecture entitled Building Digital Worlds: Explorations in Modeling and Simulation on Thursday, March 22 at 3 p.m. in ECSS 2.102, Texas Instruments Auditorium.

To understand the world around us, we build models. At one time, these models were made of wood, plastic, and metal and then we progressed into a digital era where our models became computer programs. Interestingly, though, the vestiges of the older analog models are still with us, except that they exist in the human-computer interface to a lower-level digital substrate. I’ll cover research in model design and execution in our laboratory, and emphasize the importance of treating simulation models as language artifacts. When treated as such, models take on a variety of forms usable by scientists, engineers, artists, and educators. I’ll also cover the relevance of modeling and simulation within our Digital Arts and  Sciences programs, the field of Aesthetic Computing, and the State of Florida’s Commission on Hurricane Loss Projection Methodology.

Paul Fishwick is Florida Blue Key Distinguished Professor of Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), and Director of the Digital Arts and Sciences Programs at the University of Florida.  Fishwick obtained the PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986, and has delivered fifteen international keynote addresses. He is a Fellow of the Society for Computer Simulation (SCS), and has over 200 refereed technical publications.

The Graduate Student Association of the School of Arts and Humanities invites graduate students to attend the fourth annual symposium, “RAW: Research, Arts, Writing,” to be held on Saturday, March 24 from 9 a.m. to 5:45 p.m. in the Jonsson building.

The RAW Conference provides a friendly forum for graduate students from UT Dallas and other institutions to present their research and take questions from the audience about their work.

The conference also provides an excellent opportunity for students to explore and discuss a broad range of scholarship growing out of interdisciplinary approaches in the humanities.

Several Arts and Technology and Emerging Media and Communication faculty will join colleagues in the School of Arts and Humanities as panel moderators.

Dr. Benjamin Alpers, Reach for Excellence Associate Professor in the Honors College and Associate Professor of History and Film and Video Studies at the University of Oklahoma, will deliver the conference keynote address on The Future of the Humanities.

This is the first year the RAW conference will feature a keynote speaker.

The conference program and a full schedule of events is available is available on the RAW website.

There is no charge to attend the conference.

A catered lunch may be purchased in advance for $10. Pay online and make your lunch reservation. Remember to bring your printed receipt with you on the day of the conference.

For more information, visit the RAW Conference website or contact the Graduate Student Association.

Students, staff and faculty are invited to candidate presentations for various faculty positions in Arts and Technology. Candidates will offer a presentation based upon their individual research interests.

The following candidates are slated to present for the week of March 5-9, 2012. All presentations will be held in the ATEC Conference Room (ATEC 1.606).

Dr. Palmer will present a talk on Tuesday, March 6 at 2 p.m. in ATEC 1.606 entitled The New Spaces of News Media: A Regional Government’s Experiment with In-House Journalism.

Erik Palmer researches visual communication and new media, and teaches in the Department of Communication at Portland State University. He holds a doctoral degree in journalism from the University of Oregon.

Dr. Warren will present a lecture on Wednesday, March 7 at 3:30 pm in ATEC 1.606 entitled Missing Bodies, Missing Voices: Sexual Violence in Documentary Film.

This talk analyzes the history of feminist documentary filmmaking by considering two recent attempts to document violence against women in Mexico and the former Soviet bloc.

Both Senorita Extraviada (2001) and The Price of Sex (2011) struggle to represent the new forms of political, economic, and sexual violence shaping women’s lives. Although they deploy familiar documentary strategies, such as talking heads and voice over narration, these films ask us to listen in new ways to the stories they reveal. How should we attune ourselves to voices on the border of life and death?

Shilyh Warren completed her doctorate in the Graduate Program in Literature at Duke University. She currently teaches film studies at North Carolina State University. She publishes essays on women’s cinema, and is at work on a manuscript titled, The Feminist Real, Then and Now, about the desires and practices of feminist cinema and criticism.

Mr. Hicks will present a lecture on Thursday, March 8, 2012 at 10:00 am in ATEC 1.606 entitled Two Views of Scientific Practice.

Dan Hicks is finishing his Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, with a Graduate Minor in Gender Studies.

His dissertation combines social and political philosophy with philosophy of science, arguing that the science and values debate — which is usually construed purely epistemologically — should be construed in terms of the interactions between science and other goal-oriented socially organized practices.

He has published articles in Hypatia and Philosophy of Science.  Prior to coming to Notre Dame, he earned a M.S. in Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Mr. Kazemzadeh will present a lecture on March 8, 2012 at 4 pm in ATEC 1.606 entitled From Walls to Walkways, From Facts to Fields: Apophenia, DIWOD, Open Src Everything, the Post Nomadic Community and Syncretic Methods for Exploring and Representing Consciousness.

Max Kazemzadeh is an Assistant Professor of Art and Media Technology at Gallaudet University (one of two federal universities in the US and the only all deaf university in the world), who uses a syncretic approach to investigate connections between art, technology, and consciousness through experiments and interactive installations.

Kazemzadeh is pursuing a Ph.D. with the Planetary Collegium at the University of Plymouth in the UK. His work over the last ten years focused on how constructed, semi-conscious interfaces influence human interaction.

Kazemzadeh has exhibited internationally, given performances, served on panels, curated exhibitions, organized conferences, given workshops, received grants, and written articles in the area of electronic and emergent media art.