Drew Hemment, Founder & Creative Director at FutureEverything, will give a guest talk to the lab.
Creative and participative technology innovation: building trust in smart objects through Open Prototyping
A challenge facing the development of next generation IoT, AI and ML is trust in invisible agents. It can be difficult to see where data and algorithms originate from and so who is accountable then things go wrong. The talk will look at two important challenges: the design for legibility of data practices for citizens within the public domain, and possibilities of empowerment of citizens through access to data and data practices. Drew will introduce Open Prototyping, a framework and methodology to introduce art, creativity and public participation in technology innovation and demonstration, with a special focus on the smart home and consumer objects. The talk will present a number of current and recent projects Drew leads, including a major H2020 Citizens' Observatory, and work implementing citizen and artist led interventions in large scale initiatives including the Singapore Smart Nation programme, the UK's IoT Smart City demonstrator, and the EC IoT Large Scale Pilots.
About Drew
Dr. Drew Hemment is a Dundee Fellow, Reader at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, and Founder and Creative Director of FutureEverything. He is Project Lead/PI of GROW Observatory (2016-2019, H2020, €5.1M) and FAULT LINES (ACE Ambition for Excellence), and CI in WeObserve (H2020), CityVerve (IUK), Create IoT (H2020), Making Sense (H2020).
Hemment has curated the UK's digital arts festival since 1995, and was commissioned in 2015 by the Singapore Government to curate and present the flagship digital culture component of SG50, the 50th anniversary of the founding of Singapore. He has introduced art and design into the premier IoT and Smart Cities programmes in the UK (CityVerve), EU (IoT European Large-Scale Pilots Programme) and Singapore (Singapore Smart Nation Programme). He introduced data visualisation to the London 2012 Olympics (2012) and EUPORIAS EC Climate Services programme (2012-2015, FP7), through emoto as data artist, and Project Ukko as project director, respectively. He conceived and led Environment 2.0 (2006-09) and Open Data Cities (2009-12). His research has resulted in new policy and infrastructure, such as DataGM, the Greater Manchester Datastore.
His work has been covered by New York Times, BBC and NBC and recognised by awards from the arts, technology and business sectors, including the Lever Prize and Prix Ars Electronica. He is Editorial Board member for Leonardo journal of art, science and technology, and member of the Citizens' Observatories Community Activity of the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO) which is leading a worldwide effort to build a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). In 1999, he was awarded a PhD at Lancaster University, in 2009 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts.