Computer Supported Cooperative Work (1989 – 1996)

After graduating with a Computer Studies degree from Loughborough University in 1988, I worked for a large computer company. I then returned to Loughborough in 1989 to work as a researcher with my final-year project supervisor Professor Stephen Scrivener. My main research topic was Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), although my interests expanded to include Virtual Reality (VR) and the analysis of sketching behaviour. In 1993 I moved with Professor Scrivener to the School of Art and Design at the new Derby University, and it was there that I began to explore my interests in computers and art.

I then left full-time research in 1996 in order to focus on commercial web design activities, first with Headland Multimedia and then, from 2000, with my own company, Cuttlefish Multimedia. Although no longer an active researcher during this time, I continued to develop my art practice and had my first of many gallery exhibitions in 2000.

Digital Art Systems (2006 – )

I re-engaged with the research process in 2005 in order to properly explore some of the ideas that had been developing in my artwork. This led to me undertaking a part-time MA in Digital Art at Camberwell College of Arts between 2006 and 2008, where I studied and developed my Autopoiesis artwork. In 2010 I began a practice-based PhD at De Montfort University in Leicester, initially with Professor Martin Reiser and then with Professor Ernest Edmonds. I completed my thesis, entitled From Connected Digital Art to Cybernetic Ecologies, in 2018.

I had continued to successfully run Cuttlefish during my studies – albeit with a reduced role from 2016 – and eventually stood down as a director in 2020. This now gives me more time to focus on my research and art practice.

In 2016, I became a Visiting Research Fellow in the Institute of Creative Technologies at De Montfort University and an International Professor in the School of Art and Design at Guangdong University of Technology in China. I am also a member of the EVA London conference organising committee, on the editorial board of the Springer Series on Cultural Computing, on the panel of the ACM Lifetime Achievement in Digital Arts Award and a Fellow of the British Computer Society.