DemTech's people

DemTech was an interdisciplinary collaboration based at Queen Mary, University of London, led by performance artist Lois Weaver and researcher Ann Light of the School of English and Drama, Pat Healey of the Department of Computer Science and Gini Simpson, then Director of Digital/Media Arts at SPACE, London, an arts and education charity.

Patrick G.T.Healey is Professor of Cognitive Science and leads the Interaction, Media and Communication Group and Augmented Human Interaction Laboratory in the Department of Computer Science at QMUL. Digital technologies provide uniquely flexible media with the potential to transform human communication. They offer new ways to capture, modify and project communicative actions (e.g., words, gestures and expressions). This creates the potential for new forms of mutual-engagement and new forms of ‘language’ or communicative conventions. Pat's research applies models of human communication - drawn mainly from Psychology and Sociology - to understanding these processes. It uses technology both as an experimental tool for the study of interaction and as an application area for testing and developing theories of interaction.

Ann Light was a part-time senior research fellow in the Drama department at Queen Mary University of London at the time of the project. She is Reader in Interaction, Media and Communication at Sheffield Hallam University. She is primarily interested in the social impact of technology and the politics of participation in design, explored in a range of projects including DemTech, Fair Tracing, and Practical Design for Social Action. She helps run a charity on using ICT for cultural exchange between Africa and Europe and works one day a week on organisational development with Flow Interactive. She taught educational drama before turning to interaction design research.

Gini Simpson was the head of SPACE Media Arts and is now Business Development Manager: Arts and Culture at the Innovation Unit at Queen Mary, University of London. SPACE is an arts and education charity based in Hackney, East London. Founded by Brigit Riley in 1968, SPACE innovates and supports the provision of contemporary arts activity in London and provides gallery, public art and training specialisms as well as studio provision across London. This has included working with award winning artists, street gangs from Bow and in patients at a London psychiatric hospital. Previous to this, Gini worked for DDB Advertising and Magic Lantern productions iTV. She has produced art events nationally and internationally, including the production of the first New Media marquee and field at Glastonbury Festival. Artistically, she has shown work at the Venice Biennial, (Italian Pavilion) and produced the first interactive film shown at the Berlin Film festival (2000). She is a co founder of Mad Chicks and works extensively with Mad Pride, a mental health civil rights movement.

Lois Weaver is a performance artist, director, writer, teacher and curator with twenty years professional experience. She was co-founder of Spiderwoman Theatre and the WOW Theatre in New York and Artistic Director of Gay Sweatshop Theatre in London. She has been a performer, director, and writer with the Split Britches Company since 1980. Her interests include performance and human rights and performance and technology. Lois was Director for PSi12 Performing Rights, an international conference on the themes of performance and human rights and for East End Collaborations, an annual platform for live artists. Lois's touring performances include Dress Suits to Hire, What Tammy Needs To Know and Diary of a Domestic Terrorist. Lois is a graduate (Theatre Arts and Education) of Radford University and now lectures as Professor of Contemporary Performance Practice at Queen Mary, University of London.

Other credits in the project include:

Artists: Ambient Information Systems, Loraine Leeson, Stacy Makishi, Lois Weaver

Exhibition: Gini Simpson, Jim Prevett, Fiona Fieber, George Unsworth of SPACE

Our specialists and participants, especially Vi Davis, Clodagh Miskelly, Tim Jones, the Sundial Centre, and S-AGE, The Space Age Sirens, AGLOW, The Geezers Club and The Sharp End

Stills: Phil Viner, Ann Light, Flip Wibbly Jelly

Video recordings: Phil Viner, Louisa Pearson, Rebecca Collins

Video production: Phil Viner

Website Design: Publications and Web Office, Queen Mary, University of London