Digital perspectives: The art and science of visualisation and visual practices (Keynote)

Digital perspectives: The art and science of visualisation and visual practices.

Two events exploring cutting-edge digital visualisation and digital arts practice to communicate research to new and expanded audiences. The keynote and showcase draw upon data-driven visualisation projects, emerging technologies, and interdisciplinary arts practice. Be inspired by our keynote speakers and our diverse showcase exhibitors.

Register separately for the Keynote and the Showcase.

The Keynote

• Dr. Drew Berry, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.
• Steve Bennett, open data specialist.
• Philip Kent, University Librarian and Executive Director of Collections, University of Melbourne.

Keynote speakers

Drew Berry is a biomedical animator who creates beautiful, accurate visualisations of the dramatic cellular and molecular action that is going on inside our bodies. Beginning his career as a cell biologist, his raw materials are technical reports, research data and models from scientific journals. As an artist he works as a translator, from abstract and complicated scientific concepts into vivid and meaningful visual journeys. Since 1995 he has been a biomedical animator at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Australia. His animations have exhibited at venues such as the Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, the Royal Institute of Great Britain and the University of Geneva. In 2010 he received a MacArthur Fellowship “Genius Grant”.

Steve Bennett has worked in and around government and academic data sharing for almost a decade. This included time at the Australian National Data Service, teaching mapmaking to early-career researchers at the University of Melbourne, working on the geospatial data portal National Map, and recently managing open data at the City of Melbourne. He co-founded Open Knowledge Melbourne (a Meetup group for free sharing of information of all kinds), created the Open Council Data standards, and has won several prizes at GovHack, an annual competition to create interesting and useful things with open data. Steve will take you on a map-based journey through some of the visualisations he's attempted, to communicate data to different audiences. He'll show the tools, the challenges, the numerous ways that a visualisation can fail - and just occasionally how it can go right.

Philip Kent is the University Librarian and Executive Director of Collections at the University of Melbourne.

This event is followed by the Digital Perspectives Showcase from 3.30 - 5.00pm.  Over refreshments view a range of diverse projects showcasing digital visualisation and representation, over two floors of the Digital Studio, Arts West.  A separate booking is required for the Digital Perspectives Showcase.

Image credit: Dr. Drew Berry, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research