David Rokeby


	Content Interaction design for full body engagements, complex systemic dialogues between group of machines and users, designing controls from coercive to inexact, interfaces and man-machine systems as experiences, motion tracking with live video analysis, feedback loops. Participant Profile This workshop is designed for artists and designers who want to explore the design of artistic interactive environments. The workshop gives to each participant a unique opportunity to discuss his/her personal project with David Rokeby, a recognised artist and adviser in the field. Participants should have good knowledge of digital production techniques with basic skills in interactive design. Classroom The workshop classroom is fully equipped with 10 Apple computers, AV devices (videocamera, videoprojectors), LAN and Internet access,... Participants with personal laptops and AV digital toys are encouraged to bring them. Public Event : Theatre Marcelis, XL, 14 Dec, 20:00 The workshop will be closed with a public event on sunday 14, 20:00 at Theatre Marcelis, Ixelles. David Rokeby will do a conference, and in agreement with the participants will present key ideas from the workshop.


	softVNS presentation and users' meeting: 11 DEC 03, 16h00-18h30, Centre Dansaert softVNS is David Rokeby's realtime video processing software, the toolbox that he developed and uses for most of his installations. softVNS is available to other artists and developers, and all interested persons will be able to discuss with David Rokeby about it. David Rokeby The Canadian artist David Rokeby (1960) has been creating interactive sound and video installations since 1982. His work directly engages the human body or involves artificial perception systems and intends to explore time, perception, issues of digital surveillance and the relationships between humans and interactive machines. In 1982 Rokeby started developing Very Nervous System, a real time motion tracking system, which monitors the user's action via video camera, analyses the data in the computer and responds to the interactor's input. On the basis of this system - which is also used in music therapy applications and as an activity enabler for victims of Parkinson's Disease - Rokeby created several interactive installations with real-time feedback loops using video cameras, image processors, computers, synthesizers, and sound systems. David Rokeby is a technological philosopher In his work he is keenly aware of the ambiguous and irresolvable nature of humanity and its relationship to the absolutely arbitrary space of binary information.


	He is interested in the way humans and machines mutually influence each other. His recent works engage in a critical examination of the differences between human and artificial intelligence. The Giver of Names (1991-) and n-cha(n)t (2001) are artificial subjective entities, provoked by objects or spoken words in their immediate environment to formulate sentences and speak them aloud. David Rokeby is widely acknowledged as a pioneer in interactive art and an innovator in interactive technologies. He has achieved international recognition as an artist and seen the technologies which he develops for his own work given unique applications by a broad range of arts practitioners and medical scientists. > Rokeby's best known work, Very Nervous System (1986-90) premiered at the Venice Biennale in 1996, won the first Petro-Canada Award for Media Arts (1988). > Watched and Measured (2000) was awarded the first BAFTA award for interactive art from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. > Guardian Angel (2001) received the award for best installation at the Images Festival (Toronto) in 2001. > Rokeby has three times been honoured with Austria's Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction (1991, 1997 and 2002, Golden Nica). Rokeby recently received a Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts from the Canadian Government.


	Links: David Rokeby on http://homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/home.html iMAL : http://www.imal.org REGISTRATION IS CLOSED! Sorry, we are full... This workshop is made possible thanks to the support of the Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds. In 2003, iMAL is supported by the Communauté française de Belgique and the City of Brussels.