Conferência de Encerramento – In conversation with Tony Brooks

Conferência

Anthony (aka Tony) Brooks is employed as a digital media interactive artist associate professor senior researcher under the CREATE department at Aalborg University (AAU) in Denmark. In CREATE, the vision is to utilize and investigate the interplay between creativity and technology for development of new growth areas in research and education directed towards the user or participants resulting in high quality and impactful human design centred technology research ( see – https://www.create.aau.dk ).

Brooks’ focus area is on his concept of a catalytic bidirectional cusp transcending applied digital media-art and sensor data mappings exploring interactivity in human performance exhibited as personalised experiences targeting new performers, audiences and participants in the arts and, through related method and apparatus, advancing inclusive wellbeing from untraditional interventions for patients in healthcare (re)habilitation. This focus has a view of impacting and inspiring both artists and healthcare professionals towards next-generation advancements across practices and educations and thus related vocations where traditional personal integrity associated to each person’s own position is maintained but an advancement through cross/inter/transdisciplinary collaboration is educated, explored, and potentialised.

Brooks is active as an international speaker promoting the power of digital media technology and the creative arts within his concept, and, specifically in his talks relating to healthcare, this is posit alongside his vision, and desire of realising (from a utopian perspective) “Probably the best (re)habilitation complex in the world” wherein artists and digital media-art are considered as integral in creating and researching alongside collaborative peers from within the fields of e.g. AI (ML/DL), IoT, HCI, …. and of course from healthcare. This complex resulting in new lines of thinking, educations, vocations and practices currently not existing.

His mature body of research and development, titled SOUNDSCAPES, reports on the work via approximately 250 publications, including eleven Springer published books, wherein his emergent intervention model resulting from his research is posit for third-party exploration to provoke critique and reflection towards improvements.

Tony’s first professional art works showcase was in 1979 at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in London. Since then his works have been presented, performed, and exhibited around various corners of the world e.g. leading MoMAs in Scandinavia; through Europe; as well as in Auckland, New Zealand; Seoul, South Korea; New York, USA; etc. Notable is that his works were featured in both the USA 1996 and Australia 2000 cultural events and scientific conferences supporting the Olympics and Paralympic Games.

He was the first artist in residence/opening artist at the Center for Advanced Visualization and Interaction (CAVI), located at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and this in 2002, resulted in him being a founder of the hugely popular Medialogy education, which is unique to AAU, within which he has been section leader, study-board member, lecturer, supervisor, and international student recruiter. In 2004 he founded the SensoramaLab underground multi-room research and education complex at the university’s Esbjerg campus, which focused upon Medialogy students and researchers, and their exploring of interactive digital media art and creative expression related to human performance, games, Virtual Reality, Virtual Interactive Space, and associated societal impact – especially within game creation, interacivity, art and technology, wellbeing, health, and (re)habilitation. Numerous successful spin-out student companies have been realised from the cojoined Medialogy and SensoramaLab initiative.

Recently, Leonardo, the International Society for Arts, Sciences and Technology (https://leonardo.info/), cited Brooks’ PhD in their LABS 2021 Abstracts Service database as being notable on topics at the intersections between art, science and technology. Tony, in citing Klee, illustrates in how he believes his work illustrates how “Art does not represent the visual world, it makes things visible” and likewise referring to Edison’s statement that ”Hard work and for ever sticking to a thing till it’s done, are the main things an inventor needs.”

….to this end, Brooks considers his work as ongoing as (forever) a work in progress.
Finally, it is appropriate to mention that since 2009, under the European Alliance for Innovation (EAI) where he is acknowledged as a research fellow, Brooks has steered the ArtsIT International Conference, which in November 2022 will be hosted in Faro at the University of the Algarve, Portugal – see https://artsit.eai-conferences.org/2022/).