Creative Technologies@ the school of creative arts

Brian Bridges BA MPhil (Dub.)

Lecturer in Creative Arts/Creative Technology

Brian Bridges is an experimental composer whose work spans the fields of spatial sound-based installations, audiovisual pieces and electroacoustic and instrumental music.

Brian’s pieces have been programmed at festivals and events in the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Cuba, China and Ecuador and he is a founder-member of the Spatial Music Collective, a Dublin-based organisation which has presented regular performances of new electronic, electroacoustic and instrumental music since 2006. A particular interest of Brian’s is microtonal music – music which uses pitch intervals which are smaller than the distance between the black and white keys on a musical keyboard.  His multi-movement Angels at the Shotgun Wedding (2007/8) combines twenty-three electric guitars and electronics in dense microtonal layers to explore how these sound masses stick together and split apart. His sound-based installation Spectral Space (Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin, 2009) explored the effects of spatial placement on the perception of microtonal sound clusters.

Following early experiments with analogue synthesisers, Brian studied for his BA at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He continued his studies at Trinity College Dublin on the MPhil programme in Music and Media Technologies, where composition teachers included Donnacha Dennehy, Roger Doyle and Jürgen Simpson. In 2005 and 2006, he was awarded Irish Arts Council funding to study with Glenn Branca (NYC) and Tony Conrad (Buffalo, New York).

Brian is currently completing a PhD under Victor Lazzarini at the Music Technology Lab, NUI Maynooth, where, in a coincidental link with Derry, he received funding from the John and Pat Hume Scholarship. At the University of Ulster, he is a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Institute and has particular interests in the creative applications of knowledge drawn from research into auditory perception.  Other interests include American experimental music and the early New York Downtown scene.

Brian’s main teaching areas include electroacoustic composition, sound and perception, interactive music and media systems and desktop audio production. He also produces electronic and industrial music and still indulges his synthesiser habit on occasion.

Personal website: http://www.brianbridges.net

Mark Cullen MDes

Lecturer in Design & Creative Technologies

Mark has been involved with and indeed obsessed with technology since the late 80s where he dabbled in bedroom games development and the then fledgling multimedia environments on the Spectrum and Commodore 64 computers.

Following his studies in graphic and product design, and advertising in college, he was employed as an Assistant Art Director at O’Sullivan Ryan advertising where he was introduced to television advertising and a blossoming computer animation scene. This introduction led him again to college, to study animation in both the classical and computer disciplines. While studying he had the opportunity to go back to his first love, games development, and with some fellow enthusiasts, set up Torc Interactive Ltd.

To move closer to the bulk of the still bedroom based development team he moved north again to Derry where he completed a masters in 2000. This complete, he took up a part-time lecturing post at the University of Ulster in computer animation. Torc Interactive Ltd. secured substantial funding in late 2000 and it was time to move out of the bedroom and into the real world. Torc Interactive Ltd. changed its name to Instinct Technology Ltd. and the emphasis moved from games development to middleware development. The team worked with industry giants such as AMD, ATI, nVIDIA, Havok and Ageia to name a few. Mark worked on all aspects of games development while at the company as the small team size enabled cross-discipline creativity. After seven years as Director and Senior Artist at the company, Instinct Technology Ltd. was split in two to form another company, Darkwater Studios. In 2006 he decided it was time to move on and develop his skills further, taking up a post on The Digital Human Project at the University of Ulster in the School of Creative Arts. He retained a non-executive director’s role until the winding down of Instinct Technology Ltd. in 2009.

Mark has worked in a freelance capacity with many influential companies throughout his career, including Diageo, Eircom, Heineken, EyespyFX and Outsourced Insight, and he has been involved in development across all aspects of design and multimedia. He has been involved in training both professionals and students in the use of 3d Studio Max and digital visualisation, and has taught these disciplines in the Letterkenny Institute of Technology, and the North West Regional College and where he is now based at the School of Creative Arts.

Mark regularly exhibits artworks in local galleries and shops in his local area. He continues bedroom development on personal projects until the wee hours of the morning and stays abreast of the latest developments in creative technology, animation and design at all times. In his dwindling-by-the-project spare time he likes to record music and regularly gigs in local pubs and clubs.

Personal website: http://www.manifestcg.com

John Harding BSc. (Hons)

Creative Technologist

John is a graduate of both the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC), Queens University Belfast and the Times Higher Education Award winning institution; Teesside University. John is heavily involved in a diverse range of emerging technologies and research including: Developmental Psychoacoustics, Electronics, New Interfaces for Musical Expression, Visual and Audio Programming, Sound Synthesis and Signal Processing and Trajectory-based Spatialisation.

Beginning as an underground DJ some ten years ago in Northern Ireland, John has progressed to be a proficient performer and a capable producer. Recently completed production work for David Lyttle and the phenomenal twelve year old Andreas Varady is quickly achieving recognition.

Paul Moore

Professor of Creative Technologies, Head of School

Having worked as a senior manager in the further education sector Professor Moore joined the University of Ulster in 1999 and has since been active in the development of the creative arts/industries policy in the university becoming head of the School of Creative Arts in 2008. He was awarded a personal chair in 2009 becoming Professor of Creative Technology at the Magee campus.

His research is focused on both the creative industries and the ways in which theory and practice can be brought together in training and education. He has published widely in a range of journals and his own practice is in the area of sound art. He has produced a number of commissioned gallery exhibitions in Coventry, Belfast, Lough Neagh, the Void Gallery Derry and, most recently, the National Gallery in Namibia.

His consultancy work in the creative industries has been based largely in Africa and he has a number of roles in South Africa and Namibia, assisting in the development of creative learning hubs. He has fronted a number of creative arts training initiatives in Namibia sponsored by the Netherlands Institute for Southern Africa. He was a visiting professor at Cityvarsity College in Cape Town and was an honorary research fellow with the University of Coventry.

He was chair of the Visonic Arts group in Belfast and is the Ofcom Content Board member for Northern Ireland. From 1995 to 2004 he was also a board member of the Northern Ireland Film and Television Commission. He was a member of the Digital Britain Working Group on Digital Participation (2009) and was a member of the UK Digital Participation Consortium. He also chairs the NI Media Literacy Hub and wrote the Digital Participation Plan for NI which was launched in March 2010. In his spare time he is a freelance broadcaster with BBC Radio Ulster and has written and presented a range of documentaries for BBC national radio.

Tel: +44 (0)28 71675133

Greg O’Hanlon M.Phil

Course Director, Lecturer in Creative Technologies, Hacker

Greg O’Hanlon’s creative career started at the age of 13 when he came upon a double tape deck and LP player. Following some experimentation, primarily inspired by boredom, he soon discovered he could use the equipment to produce pause-button mixtapes; creating extended loops/phrases and mixes by recording and re-recording music parts multiple times, editing them together using a pause button. A drum kit soon followed and there was little peace for the next number of years.

After a false start in Mechanical Engineering, he was keen to return to music production and has since worked extensively in the US and Europe in a variety of technical and creative roles. Hailing from a long tradition of engineer-types, his passion for production has led him to consider in equal measure the internals of the tool/s in question and the art of composition, design and production.

In 2000 Greg grew tired of commercial music production and returned to university to complete a Masters Degree in Music & Media Technology at Trinity College Dublin. Graduating with a 1.1 two years later, Greg then moved into the area/s of event and multimedia production. The following three years were spent largely on the move with several tours, large audio-visual installations and corporate work.

Joining the School of Creative Arts in 2005, Greg is currently involved in interdisciplinary research and development in the areas of interactive applications, design, the internet, information aesthetics and education. Greg also teaches across a number of subjects including audio/image production, new media and programming.

Greg O’Hanlon is the Director of the Imagine Create festival – a biennial event which brings together world leading artists, developers, academics and business leaders. More information on the 2011 event will be available shortly.

Personal website: http://www.greg.io

Tel: +44 (0)28 71675529