KMDI Speaker Series: Design for Creativity | Creative Designs

Presented By: Dr. Ali Mazalek

Abstract: Dr. Ali Mazalek has spent over 15 years trying to get digital technologies to fit better into her physical world and life, rather than letting them drag her into the pixelated depths of her computer screens.  At the same time, she has a deep interest in how computational media can support and enhance creative practices and processes, supporting new forms of expression and new ways of thinking and learning. Drawing from and building on theories of embodied cognition, she believes the key to design for creativity is in the way computational media can engage our minds and bodies together. In this talk, she’ll provide some perspectives on the emerging fields of tangible and embodied interaction, and highlight work from her lab that supports creativity  and expression across the physical and digital worlds, for art and  science disciplines alike.

Bio:
Dr. Ali Mazalek is Canada Research Chair in Digital Media and Innovation and Associate Professor in the RTA School of Media at Ryerson  University. She is also Associate Professor and Director of the Synaesthetic Media Lab at Georgia Tech, where she was formerly Director of the Graduate Program in Digital Media. She works at the  forefront of trends in computing and interaction design that support a tighter integration of the physical and digital worlds. Mazalek designs and develops tangible and embodied interaction systems that enable humans to
be more creative across both science and art disciplines. Her Synaesthetic Media Lab is a playground where physical materials, analog sensors, and digital media happily co-exist and come together in novel
ways to support creativity and expression.