Institute of Creative Technologies MSc student profile

Tove has an “avant garde” arts background with her active role in the performance, political action and squatting movement in Gothenburg in the eighties. As an experimental video artist Tove undertook any technical courses available, notably taking part in the Monitor Festivals at Frölunda Kulturhus. She also studied History of Ideology and Ideas at Gothenburg University. In 1989 Tove relocated to the UK, and she completed a BA (hons) in Fine Art/Combined media at Sheffield Hallam University in the early nineties. In her 15 years of experience as a freelance filmmaker and digital artist Tove found her focus in community arts, combining social development and creative civic change with artistic expression. Professionally she has often worked successfully with groups that are described as socially excluded or hard to reach. Tove has worked extensively with community cohesion and inter faith issues, carrying out research and practical workshops with a number of agencies and organisations. “I have a background in humanities and a strong interest in new technologies. I chose this Masters programme because I wanted an opportunity for intellectual challenge, for working with the latest technology and to take part in the most up-to-date discourse.” “I love being in a creative, encouraging environment, able to work closely with people who are leading authorities in their field and surrounded by artists and technologists from a wide variety of fields of expertise and from widely differing backgrounds. It is inspiring to operate in a truly trans-disciplinarian environment.” During her first year at the IOCT (Insitute of Creative Technologies) Tove engaged with leading academics taking part in spearheading new technologies. At the Faculty of Technology’sDepartment of Engineering she looked into the possibilities of using medical bodyscan imaging to design jewellery, miniaturising a physically accurate model of a person’s skull, using various recently developed Rapid Prototyping or Additive Manufacturing technologies. In the Interactive Media and Applications module Tove extended her understanding of conceptual design, programming implementation, prototyping and productions of interactive media. Using Flash and ActionScript 3 she produced the interactive piece ‘Drifter’ based on the Situationist ideas of Psychogeography and the dérive, the conscious drifting in the urban environment to explore unknown aspects of the city and of the mind. In the Faculty of Art and Design module The Nature of Creativity, Tove explored ideas around and concepts of creativity and the place of the creative person in the understanding of the millennial society. In her module report she focused on comparisons between classical structures of social class and the suggested role of the creative within company structures. She investigated the effects of power on cognition and concluded that experiences of power and powerlessness may affect creativity. Through the Institute of Creative Technologies module Performance Technologies, Tove explored the tension between collaborative input and artistic integrity in networked political performance art. Her developing piece “BIRTH LIFE DEATH“ focuses on the concepts of cross-cultural communication between individuals from cultures that are perceived producers of electronics and cultures that are perceived as users. Tove’s artwork investigates ethical issues around production environments and the issue of electronic waste through a narrative of individual contributing participants’ perception of the lifecycle of an electronic consumer product. She plans to begin exhibiting the piece in 2012. In the current year, Tove is focusing on advances in modern lens based media, holographic and lenticular technologies, 3D photography and the latest 3D video technology. With DMU’s Imaging and Displays Research Group (IDRG) she is developing a spearheading specialised course for TV and Film professionals wishing to enter the 3D marketplace. Tove’s MSc major project is looking at viewer experience: immersivity, intimacy and 3D space perception using 3D stereoscopic video and 3D binaural sound when recording out of the laboratory, “real life”, environments. “In the future I would like to continue my creative technologies work by taking opportunities to develop and share my creative work within ethically aware, creative and ambitious organisations, groups or environments. My time at the course has resolutely confirmed that I can work comfortably within a wide range of future technologies and I would cherish opportunities for genuinely challenging, boundary pushing and constructive work.”