Panelists: Baptiste Caramiaux, Sarah Fdili Alaoui, Victor Gonzales-Sanchez, Amy LaViers, Jean-Marc Matos, Jessica Rajko, Adam Russell, Sha Xin Wei


Baptiste Caramiaux

Baptiste Caramiaux is a CNRS research scientist at LRI (Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique), University Paris-Sud, and member of the Inria team ex)situ. He is conducting interdisciplinary research at the intersection of Embodied Interaction and Machine Learning in creative and artistic contexts such as Music and Danse. Baptiste holds a PhD from Sorbonne Université, completed at Ircam. Prior to CNRS, he was a research associate at Goldsmiths and a Marie-Skłodowska Curie research fellow at McGill University.


Sarah Fdili Alaoui

Sarah Fdili Alaoui is an assistant professor in interaction design and interactive arts at LRI-Université Paris-Sud. She is a dance artist, choreographer and Laban Movement Analyst. Before her current position, she was a researcher at the School of Interactive Arts+Technology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. She holds a PhD in Art and Science from University Paris-Sud 11 and the IRCAM-Centre Pompidou research institute. She holds a MSc from University Joseph Fourier and an Engineering Degree from ENSIMAG in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science and has over 20 years of training in ballet and contemporary dance. Sarah is interested in bridging scientific and experiential research in the movement based arts to radically alter and affect our understanding of movement, human knowledge and cognition. She brings dance and technologies together, collaborating with dancers, visual artists, computer scientists and designers to create interactive dance performances, interactive installations and tools for supporting choreography.
Website: http://saralaoui.com
twitter: @saralaoui
IG: https://www.instagram.com/saralaoui/


Victor Gonzales-Sanchez

Before I joined the faculty at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion in January 2017, I completed my PhD research in hand movement analysis at the University of Sheffield, UK. As part of my research on human movement I was involved with the Centre for Assistive Technology and Connected Healthcare (CATCH) and the Insigneo Institute for in silico medicine at the University of Sheffield. Some of my human movement research has been published in the Journal of Hand Therapy, Frontiers in Bioengineering, and the International Journal of Therapy and Rehabilitation. I have had the opportunity to present my research at the International Congress of Biomechanics, 2015, New Interface for Musical Interfaces (NIME) in 2017 and 2018, and the Sound and Music Computing Conference 2017 My current research is centred around music perception and interaction, aiming at understanding, through physiological, psychological, and mechanical approaches, how music influences the human body, and how the body influences what we perceive.


Amy LaViers

Amy LaViers is an assistant professor in the Mechanical Science and Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and director of the Robotics, Automation, and Dance (RAD) Lab. She is the recipient of a 2015 DARPA Young Faculty Award and 2017 Director’s Fellowship and was listed as a Teacher Ranked as Excellent, with Outstanding Distinction, in 2016. She is Co-founder and CTO of AE Machines, Inc., a start up developing flexible automation software, which won Product Design of the Year at the 4th Revolution Awards in Chicago, IL. She has forged interdisciplinary ties with the UVA and UIUC Dance Programs and the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, where she completed a Certification in Movement Analysis (CMA) in 2016. Prior to UIUC she held a position as an assistant professor for two years in systems and information engineering at the University of Virginia. She completed her Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering at Georgia Tech where she was the recipient of the ECE Graduate Teaching Excellence Award and a finalist for the CETL/BP Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award. Her research began at Princeton University where she earned a certificate in dance and a degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering. Her senior thesis earned top honors in the MAE department, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the Lewis Center for the Arts.


Jean-Marc Matos

Dancer, choreographer and artistic director of the K. Danse Company which brings together contemporary dance and digital arts. Trained at the Cunningham Studio in New-York, he has performed with David Gordon (Judson Church). He is interested in the impact of digital technology on society, in order to develop a meaningful relationship between dance and new media and explores choreographic composition and its links with computer sciences. His recent performances question the participatory role of audiences immersed in interactive environments. He. He has choreographed more than 45 pieces which have been presented extensively in France (Avignon Festival, the Pompidou Center, etc.) and in many countries (Europe, Central and South America, USA, Canada, North Africa, India, Pakistan). Recipient of a grant “projet Phare 2017” from la Diagonale Paris Saclay with the RCO project, recipient of the Residency program from the Bogliasco Fondation 2017 (Genoa Italy, New-York), recipient of the Open Art Pulsar Prize 2017 with the BodyFail project. Involved in several European projects Metabody, WholoDance. www.k-danse.net/en


Jessica Rajko

Jessica Rajko is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the liminal space between dance, bodies, wearable technology and haptic interfaces. She is a founding co-Director of the Arizona State University Human Security Collaboratory, a non-departmental collective of artists and scholars addressing complex problems affecting the security of individuals and communities, with a special emphasis on digital technologies and their uses. Considering issues such as digital civil rights and equity in tech, her research aspires to integrate intersectional feminist frameworks within all her practices.


Adam Russell

Adam studied philosophy at Oxford and Artificial Intelligence at Sussex, then spent some years working in the videogames industry on non-player character AI for interactive narrative. He shifted into more experimental practice with his award-winning interactive cinema feature Renga, and is currently pursuing a part-time practice-based PhD based in Cornwall, UK. His research concerns negative epistemology in digital interactions, centering around a new data model for nonlinear temporal markup. Adam remains engaged in artistic collaborations with various sculptors and choreographers, his eclectic range of work reflecting a nomadic attitude, underpinned by philosophical concerns.


Sha Xin Wei

Sha Xin Wei is Professor and Director of the School of Arts, Media + Engineering at Arizona State University.  He also directs the Synthesis Center for transversal art, philosophy and technology at ASU, and is a Fellow of the ASU-Santa Fe Institute Center for Biosocial Complex Systems.  Dr. Sha’s core research concerns a topological approach to poiesis, play and process.  His art and scholarly work range from gestural media, movement arts, and realtime media installation through interaction design to critical studies and philosophy of technology.  Trained in mathematics at Harvard and Stanford Universities, Dr. Sha has pursued speculative philosophy, experimental art, and visionary technologies that are reciprocally informed to equal depth and poetry.  In 2001 Sha established the Topological Media Lab as an atelier for the study of gesture and materiality.  From 2005-2013 as Canada Research Chair in media arts and sciences and Associate Professor of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montréal, he led the TML creating responsive environments for ethico-aesthetic improvisation. Sha has published in the areas of philosophy and media arts, science and technology studies, performing arts research, and computer science, including the book Poiesis and Enchantment in Topological Media (MIT Press).