The In-Between
I live most comfortably in the in-between: where seemingly disparate things intersect and remix. I love disciplines in their purest forms but am often much more interested in what happens when you force them together. An exploration between art and data once took me through museum economics research, for example. In this pursuit I built predictive mathematical models for art museum visitation and applied economic theory to art museums in order to evaluate the cultural, philosophical and political implications of their choices (Bachelor of Art, Economics).
Nowadays you can find me applying the skills I’ve collected (and the brand new ones I am working on) to points along a much more expansive gradient coloured by art, data, culture and technology. You’ll see that I use user experience research, design, content production and community building to navigate through the things I care about.
Intersections
Current and ever-changing intersections that guide the work that I do
Art + Data + Technology
How can technology and digital media make art and art museums accessible? How can open data play a part?
How can technology facilitate creativity and learning or enable creators?
How can design and data tell better stories?
Technology + Cultural Material
How can technology make immaterial culture tangible? How can we participate in our own cultural preservation?
Technology + Data + Culture
How does technology effect us as people, as a society and our culture? What does the data we leave behind in our digital trace say about our humanity?
Technology + Inclusion + Empowerment
How can we increase digital literacy and use technology to empower everyone across age, gender, race, and life circumstances? And what might happen if the people we empowered came together to work on the things that threaten us, like global health or environmental conservation? Art might be an integral part of this equation.
Previous Projects
Beautiful Data at Harvard’s metaLab
Selected to participate in a competitive program at Harvard’s metaLab in the summer of 2015 to develop art-historical storytelling through data visualization, interactive media, enhanced curatorial description and exhibition practice, digital publication, and data-driven, object-oriented teaching.
Local Linguist
An Android app which enables linguistics researchers to collect language samples in remote villages of Timor-Leste so that education resources for children can be localised to 30 languages within the country. A prototype of the app was produced at Random Hacks of Kindness with a team of developers, designers and linguistics researchers over a weekend sprint; we are working together to continue its development.
Educating, Learning and Researching with 3D Objects
A user experience designer for a platform to host, manage and publish 3D object data for online learning, virtual reality, augmented reality and 3D printing for research, education and learning.
3converge
A UX consultant at at an experience design agency for museum and education technology.
Museum Lab
Digital Engagement Manager at an incubator for experimentation in creative programming. The intention of the project is to provide students in the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Melbourne with experience in shaping and delivering programs and other creative content at the Ian Potter Museum of Art. MUSEUM LAB offers participating students hands-on experience in key areas such as event management, budgeting, audience development and arts management that can be used in a variety of professional roles in the Arts and creative industries.
CULTURREMX
The director of a community-based program for designers, artists, technologists and arts educators to engage with open art collections data.
Talks
3D Printing in the Arts
September 2015. Moderated a panel on 3D printing in the arts and museum sector. A panel of researchers, engineers, arts conservators, artists and makers came together for imaginative future scoping.
Working with OpenGLAM
February 2015. Discussed the joys and challenges of working with cultural collections and OpenGLAM at the University of Melbourne’s Research Bazaar. Spoke alongside Dr Heather Gaunt, the Curator of Academic Programs (Research) at the Ian Potter Museum of Art and Jason Benjamin, the Conservation Programs Co-ordinator of Cultural Collections Unit at the University Library. Guided researchers in how to use OpenGLAM to further their research in social history, embodied knowledge, politics and Antarctic exploration.
Interdisciplinary Art and Ownership in the Age of Digital Tools and Connected Networks
September 2014. A panel organised by Liquid Architecture and Media Lab Melbourne; hosted at the University of Melbourne discussing how digital tools and connected networks impact and facilitate interdisciplinary arts practice.Who owns uploaded art ownership? What does Free Libre Open Source (FLOS) mean for art making and composition? Fellow Speakers: Johannes Kreidler, Ross Bencina, Maize Wallin and Ben Kolaitis moderated by Richie Cyngler.
Future Now
July 2014. Panelist discussing what gallery spaces may look like in the future, how art might be experienced, and where it may be experienced as part of Nite Art at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). Panel provocation:
Art has long defied boundaries – bursting out from the institutional confines of the museum & gallery to appear in all manner of spaces, on all manner of platforms, in all manner of forms. So where are the new spaces for art? Are there any remaining places for art to go where it hasn’t boldly gone already? And are there any new ways for us, the audience, to experience & interact with (and participate in the making of) art? Does art need clearly defined arenas anymore? Do we, the audience, still need art to be framed by easily recognisable domains or are we open to encountering art in the most unlikely places?
Fellow Panelists: Jonathan Parsons, Artistic Director of Experimenta; Vasili Kaliman, Director of STATION Gallery; and Dr Isobel Crombie, Assistant Director of Curatorial and Collection Management at the NGV.
Museum Next
June 2014. Shared the communication, design and research approach to Float, a mobile app prototype at the University of Melbourne’s Ian Potter Museum of Art at Museum Next, Europe’s largest museum technology conference.
The slides for the presentation are here and the full text is over here.
Publications and Citations
Finkel, A, Harwood, A, Gaunt H & Antig J 2014, ‘Optimizing Indoor Location Recognition Through Wireless Fingerprinting At the Ian Potter Museum of Art’. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation, Busan, Korea. Available from: IEEE Xplore.
Sykes, E 2014, Experiencing Art Through Personal Response: Is a personal response mobile application effective in facilitating a meaningful experience for art gallery visitors? Master of Art dissertation, The University of Leeds.
Finkel, A 2013, Optimizing Indoor Location Recognition through Wireless Fingerprinting at the Ian Potter Museum of Art. Master of Computer Science thesis, The University of Melbourne.