Talks by Roma Patel and Khaled Bachour

Roma Patel - Immersive and digital scenography in theatre for early years

Over the last decade immersive theatre has been shown to be the fastest growing forms of theatre for adults, yet there still much to be done in children's theatre, as it lags behind. My research investigates the role that digital technologies and open-source electronics can practically play in the creative process of designing scenography a ‘live’ form that requires full participation from both the performer and audience. Early investigations of the data from The Runaway Hare a devise performance at Lakeside Arts Centre demonstrate that this format provides more agency to the performer and audience and can help in pacing the story. It also raised questions - how to better motivate and engage very young audiences in digital scenography within the limited time frame of a performance? How the combination of the free play and storytelling can allow for a hybrid form of playing in theatres?

Khaled Bachour - Interval-Valued Sensory Evaluation for Customized Beverage Product Formulation and Continuous Manufacturing

This catchy-titled talk will present the recent work we have done in collaboration with Cranfield University exploring the use of a continuous manufacturing system for customized beverage production. Continuous manufacturing is a manufacturing paradigm where ingredients are mixed, processed and output “on the fly”, as opposed to the traditional processes where the products are manufactured in batches. We are particularly interested in the customizability of beverage products and are currently in the process of mapping consumer preferences of orange-flavoured beverages with manufacturing parameters used in a continuous manufacturing system. The mapping would be used to create a consumer-centred control interface for customized product manufacturing. This talk will be an overview of the main challenges we face and where we currently are in the process.