Smart art at the School of IT
5 June 2008
 |
Dr Keith Nesbitt's "Abstract Trains of Thought" will feature in the new IT art exhibition. |
The line between science, art and technology is blurred in a unique exhibition to open at the University next week.
The exhibition, titled Visual Connections at the School of IT, opens in the ultra-modern Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp-designed School of Information Technologies building on Tuesday, 10 June 2008. It includes pieces by both scientists and artists, all of whom are connected to the School of IT at the University of Sydney.
Some works in the exhibition are images of Information Visualisation - the science of taking large amounts of information and rendering them into two and three-dimensional surfaces to make maps and pictures of abstract data. Other pieces cross the line between art and science, exploring on canvas the issues of visual connection and the way technology has helped us make useful connections in an age of data deluge.
"Whether we deal in stocks, biology, medicine, sociology, politics, literature, marketing, engineering, industrial design or ecology, we all seem to be striving to find knowledge in a vast unmapped sea of data," says Professor Peter Eades, who helped organise the exhibition and is the Chair of Software Technology at the School of IT.
According to Professor Eades, Visual Connections explores the way we digest data in a world that is rich in information and explores the natural extension of information technology into art.
"Artists have had a long tradition of exploring and communicating in visual ways," says Professor Eades. "The information they seek to express ranges from unspoken emotions to cold logic, from the perceptual to the cognitive. So there is a connection between these artists and these scientists who visualise information."
Professor Eades says that many techniques and tools classically used by artists - such as spaces of points, lines and surfaces, colours, symmetries, enclosures and connections - are now used algorithmically by computer scientists.
Artists whose works are exhibited in Visual Connections include:
- Keith Nesbitt, who graduated with a PhD from the School of IT in 2003; his thesis gave design principles for multisensory information display. He is now a Senior Lecturer in the School of Design, Communication and Information Technology at the University of Newcastle.
- Tim Dwyer, who graduated with a PhD from the School of IT in 2005. His thesis synthesised and analysed pictures of financial and biological systems in two and a half dimensions. He now works for Microsoft Research in Seattle.
- Seok-Hee Hong, a Senior Lecturer and ARC Research Fellow at the School of IT. Her research covers the visualisation and analysis of large and complex networks, including the theory and practice of graph drawing.
Visual Connections will show in the Exhibition Space on Level Two of the School of IT Building, the corner of City Road and Cleveland Street, University of Sydney, until 24 June, 2008. (Enter via Cleveland Street).
The exhibition is open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. Admission is free and all are welcome.
Contact: Katrina O'Brien
Phone: 02 9036 7842