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Professor Jeffrey Shaw

Professor Jeffrey Shaw is regarded as one of the key international researchers in the field of interactive digital cinema. Professor Shaw is a foundation Professor for Media Art at the University of Art and Media Karlsruhe and the foundation Director for the Research Institute for Visual Media at ZKM, Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe. Under his direction the Research Institute for Visual Media has become, alongside the MIT Lab, USA, the GMD, National Research Centre for Information Technology, Germany and KTH, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, one of the world's premier research institutes in the field of interactive digital cinema. In both roles Pofessor Shaw has initiated and supervised some of the most important international research projects in interactive narrative forms including: the European Union's eRENA, 1998, and eSCAPE, 1999, projects and the Skoda/Volkswagon Pavilion, 2000. In addition he has commissioned a number of ground breaking research projects in the field for example, The Tree of Knowledge, 1998, by Bill Viola (the world's leading video art researcher) and Sonomorphosis by Bernd Lintermann.


Current Research Projects:
T-Visionarium (with Dr Dennis Del Favero, Professor Neil Brown, and Professor Peter Weibel). This project is an extended virtual environment which delivers spatialization of an algorithmically organised database of forty global satellite television stations. Funded by the ARC, a prototype was exhibited at European Cultural Capital Lille, Euralille, Lille during 2004.

240 x 360 Degree Digital Video Camera for Interactive Immersive Visualization Research Applications. This project sees the development of the world's first panoramic 360 degree video camera recording directly to hard disk. Funded by the ARC.

Advanced Visualisation and Interaction facility, Scientia facility, UNSW (with Dr Dennis Del Favero) This project sees the development of the world's first 360 degree panoramic stereoscopic projection environment, providing a visually seamless interrelationship of real and virtual space, shared by both machine agents and humans, deploying a multi-viewpoint stereoscopic projection over the entire circumference of a cylindrical screen twelve metres in diameter and four metres high. Funded by UNSW.


Current Research Publications:
Brown, N., Del Favero, D., Shaw, J., Weibel, P. (2003) "Interactive Narrative as a Multi-Temporal Agency", Future Cinema: The cinematic imaginary after film, Ed. Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel. MIT Press, Massachusetts.


Current Research Grants:
ARC Discovery Grant, Australian Research Council, The Reformulation of Narrative in Digital Cinema through Integration of Three Models of Interactivity, 2002-2004.

ARC Discovery Grant, Australian Research Council, Interactive Narrative as a Form of Recombinatory Search in Cinematic Transcription of Televisual Information, 2003-2005.

ARC Project Linkage Grant, Australian Research Council, Reformulating museological narrative using three models of cinematic interactivity, 2004-2005.

ARC Federation Fellowship, Australian Research Council, Navigable cinematic systems. The reformulation of cinematic narrative and the development of next generation interactive technology in new media, 2003-2007.

ARC Research Network Seed Funding, Interactive Digital Media Matrix. 2004.

ARC Linkage Infrastructure Grant, Australian Research Council, 240 x 360 Degree Digital Video Camera for Interactive Immersive Visualization Research Applications, 2004.


Further details: www.jeffrey-shaw.net

Research Expertise
Professor Shaw is currently an ARC Federation Fellow and Director of the iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research at UNSW. His research has set benchmarks for the use of digital media technologies particularly in developing the multi-modal agency of interactive narrative in the fields of: Navigable Cinematic Systems; Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality; Immersive Visualisation Environments; Interactive and Intelligent Interface Design; Algorithmic and Reactive Software. His experimental research to date has focused on the demonstration of the participant's ability to influence events in a cinematic narrative by variations in patterns of spatial navigation. This has been undertaken in demonstrators such as ReconFIGURING the CAVE (2001) and Eavesdrop (2004). The former delivers animation of real-time agent formations, articulated to their interaction with participants, by means of algorithmically defined behavioural matrices which locate the agents within the stereographical environment. The latter delivers the navigation of complex video narratives by the participant's engagement with the interactive environment.
Professor Shaw has provided world leadership in the field through his founding Directorship of the ZKM Institute for Visual Media, the largest institution of its kind dedicated to the research, production, and presentation of creative work in the domain of immersive digital interactivity. Shaw's research outcomes range across technological and creative innovation. These include: a history of milestone software and hardware design, such as the patented interactive orientation device The Panoramic Navigator (International Patent PCT/EP99/08078); the curation of cutting-edge international research projects utilising interactive narrative forms such as the European Union's IST long-term research projects eRENA (1998), and eSCAPE (1999) (with Professors Benford and Sunblad), the ArtIntAct and ZKM Digital Arts series, and Future Cinema: the Cinematic Imaginary After Film, the most comprehensive survey exhibition (ZKM) and book publication (MIT Press) to date of international interactive cinema research; and research and development of advanced distribution multi-user interactive artistic demonstrators such as Web of Life (2003) commissioned by the Aventis Corporation.

Qualifications
Postgraduate Diploma (Visual Arts) St Martin's School of Art, United Kingdom, 1966

Current Appointment
Director, iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research, The University of New South Wales, 2003. ARC Federation Fellow, appointed 2003

Employment History
2001-2002 Adjunct Professor and Co-Director, Centre for Interactive Cinema Research, The University of New South Wales
1992-2002 Foundation Director and Professor, Institute for Visual Media, the ZKM, Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe
1992-2002 Professor, HfG, University of Design, Karlsruhe

Publications
Significant Publications (1999-2004)
Exhibitions, New Media and Interactive Cinema Projects
1. Place-Ruhr 2000. Vision Ruhr. Industrial Museum, WIM, Dortmund, Germany.
2. Reconfiguring the Cave 2001. Vision and Reality. Louisiana Museum for Modern Art, Humlebaeck, Denmark.
3. The Web of Life 2002. Multimedia Art Asia Pacific Festival. Art Museum of China Millenium Monument, Beijing, China.
4. Cupola 2003. Cultural Capital of Europe 2004. Eurolille, Lille, France,
5. Eavesdrop 2004. Brisbane Festival. The Block, QUT, Brisbane, Australia; Melbourne Festival, ACMI, Melbourne, Australia.
Exhibition and Book
6. Future Cinema 2003. ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany; InterCommunication Centre, Tokyo, Japan; KIASMA, Helsinki, Finland.
Shaw, J. Ed. Future Cinema. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.

Career-best Publications
Exhibitions, New Media and Interactive Cinema Projects
1. The Legible City 1989. ARTEC 8. World Design Expo, Nagoya, Japan.
2. The Virtual Museum 1991. Ars Electronica. Lendesmuseum, Linz, Austria.
3. EVE (Extended Virtual Environment) 1993. MultiMedial 4. ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany.
4. PLACE- A Users Manual 1995. Trigon-Personale 95. Neue Galerie, Graz, Austria.