I'm hard to define: an (award-winning) artist, programmer, educator, and scientist. I’ve spent my life trying to bring these together. I am a techie creative: as passionate about IT, science and electronics as I am about creative expression and communication. I've lived and worked in a number of countries and now live in Coffs Harbour.

 

Thus, crossing disciplines has been fundamental in my life and my artwork dwells in their intersections. Inevitably, gender also intersects. I have often been a pioneer, such as in 3D computer animation (globally) and interactive multimedia art (within Australia). My creative digital work was internationally award-winning and has been exhibited in many countries. Several pioneering works are still exhibited today (the animated film Dream House created in 1984 and the interactive multimedia artwork Postcard From Tunis created in 1997). I contributed substantially to the development of the new media arts scene in Australia and to international explorations of gender and technology, such as in my landmark paper, Thinking of oneself as a computer, published in Leonardo in 1991. I received the inaugural Elektra Award for a woman with outstanding achievements in the area of new technology from Women in Film and Television (Australia) in 1997. In 1999 received a New Media Arts Fellowship from Creative Australia and went on to create several successful interactive multimedia works that were exhibited internationally.

 

In recent years I returned to working in the software industry and developed a new skill set, moving from screen-based works to physical computing: developing creative works using programmable microcontrollers (e.g. Arduino) and wearable electronics. In 2023 I studied fashion design and technology at TAFE and can now upcycle more competently and make my own clothes. Well, I have a very good foundation … My current challenge is to integrate these new skills and express them as sophisticated artworks with something to say.

 

During 2022 I worked at FourthRev, a global startup that integrates quality technology education with academic rigour, value & certification. I developed several data analytics courses and found data visualisation (helping data to tell its stories) to be especially compelling. I hope to integrate this with my creative practice.

Prior to FourthRev, I was at Chameleon Software for a number of years. My first task was to give the online help site a major makeover by developing most of its core learning content, including technical writing, graphics and animated explainer videos, for example the following:

I also designed and presented in-house and external training and worked on the Support desk, trouble-shooting solutions to customer issues.

 

Prior to Chameleon, I created content at Janison, a company, that designs and delivers cloud-based Learning Management Systems internationally, including NAPLAN. My work involved technical writing, infographics and diagram development and e-learning development. A particular focus was the the company's evolving help site.

 

And before Janison, I lectured in Media Design at James Cook Uni in Townsville. I taught a broad range of design subjects: interactive, web, graphic, animation, publication and information design. I remained an Adjunct Lecturer at JCU until early 2018.

 

It was in Townsville that I started learning electronics and exploring the creative, educational and communicational possibilities of Arduino-based responsive objects. My first project was The Shrimp in 2014, a piece of wearable electronics art (an interactive dress) that I created at my ZigZag Electronic Lab residency. I've put some of my electronics projects online, including an interactive traffic light badge with multiple applications.

 

I also developed a series of greeting cards and prints, using Photoshop and Illustrator.

 

As the interactive diagram at the top suggests, I occupy an intersection of at least four disciplines: design, IT, art and science. This has not always been easy, as these areas have often been considered to be quite separate from each other.

I am comfortable with technology and love learning about it and writing code – building solutions and resolving software bugs – especially when there's an interactive and/or animated, audiovisual outcome. I love to learn and have high-level communication skills in many media forms. I also love creative work: everything from developing solutions for design problems to creating solo or collaborative artistic works. My tecnical and scientific training forms a lifelong foundation to all this.

I'm experienced with integrating these disciplines in projects that combine, for example, design and IT, or science and communication. I have worked alone, collaboratively or as a project manager. Having taught at a range of levels, studied and supervised PhD students, I have developed skills in research, grant writing, communication, pedagogy, online education and clear, coherent writing and presentation skills. More generally, I can capably produce many forms of communication: written, verbal, visual, audiovisual, interactive, and so on.

I returned to industry in 2015 after a number of years as an academic and designer/artist in the digital media/new media area. I have also worked in hospitals and the IT /media industries in a number of cultures: Australia, America and the Middle East.

I originally trained as a biochemist before retraining in IT in 1979 when this was a small and relatively unpopular field (so uncool I daren't mention it at parties!). Later, I linked programming with creative work and, as mentioned, was again amongst international pioneers, this time in 3D computer animation, digital art and interactive multimedia. I have participated in periods of tremendous IT growth, which show no signs of slowing down.

In the 90s I became interested in what is now called User Experience, linking integrationism, a theory of language and human communication, with human-computer interaction. My internationally successful CD-ROM, Postcard From Tunis, artistically expressed integrationist theory and extended it into human-computer interaction, as my PhD thesis explains. I continue to be involved with this challenging theoretical approach. Later, I designed, created and programmed an interactive artwork Postcards From Writing to offer an accessible introduction to and experience of the theory. I was awarded a New Media Arts Fellowship from the Australia Council in 1999.

Other projects included teaching myself to write apps: my app proof of concept visualises Year 7 math using chocolate. In 2013 I created an exhibition with two others, On Medication, that investigated the experience of being on medication. And as part of coming to grips with the tropical experience, I wrote a paper studying creativity in the tropics and made an animated web work where I visualised encounters with a number of tropical hazards, such as cyclones and stingers.

Previous artworks include Ephemeron, an interactive audiovisual sculpture, collaboratively-developed with artists in four countries as part of eMobilArt. A much earlier work, Dream House, was a pioneering 3D computer animated film, the first Australian entry selected for SIGGRAPH (1984) in the USA.

 

A selection of my creative work can be accesed via the Works link at the top of the page. Selected pieces of writing are accessed via the Writing link.