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Dr. Donna Leishman
Born 30/03/76
Synopsis of Research Interests
Key words: Responsive Moving Image, Animation, Experimental
Narratives, Folklore, Comics.
My work is a combination of critical writing and
practice-led research in digital art with a particular interest in the
intersection of narrative with internet based interactivity. Themes in the
research include developing and exploring the role of the participant in these
exchanges, developing a canon of practice that gives equal weight to this
relationship along side the visual language and structural concerns. Others
are: the avant-garde nature of the Net practice as fostered in its inception
circa 1990 how this holds forth in the ever-increasing commercialisation of the
internet. What stories are being told and what possibilities the genre offers
us culturally; reframing history, using folkloric traditions, global and meta
archetypes. Donna's doctoral thesis (2004) explores and illustrates the
particular resonance found when teaming this folkloric content with
contemporary technologies.
Employment
2004 (Aug) – Pres Lecturer
/ Course Leader BA (Hons) Illustration, Deputy Head of Media Arts & Imaging
at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee.
2004 – Pres Specialist
speaker in New Media MPhil Glasgow School of Art.
2000 –
2004 (June) Part-Time
Lecturer in Visual Communication, Glasgow School of Art.
2001-3
Job-share Course Director BA (Hons) Illustration.
2000 –
Pres Principle
of 6amhoover.com
2000 Bullseyeart,
New York, Flash for TV developer, Flash Animator.
1998 –
Pres Freelance
Web Designer, Animator and Illustrator
1998 –
1999 BlackID,
Glasgow, Web designer, Flash Animator.
Education
Oct 2004 Ph.D.,
Department of Visual Communication
Glasgow School of Art / Glasgow University.
Dissertation: Creating Screen-Based Multiple State Environments:
Investigating Systems of Confutation.
(Director: Paul Stickley MPhil RCA)
Dec 1999 MDes.,
Department of Visual Communication
Glasgow School of Art / Glasgow University.
Dissertation: Does Point and Click Interactivity Destroy the Story?
(Supervisor: Nicholas Oddy RCA)
June 1998 BA
(Hons) Illustration and Printmaking, Design School
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art/ Dundee University.
Dissertation: Fitter Happier More Productive: Primitivism and Graphitti.
(Dissertation supervisor: Richard
Carr)
Artworks
(Forthcoming) Aug 2008 ALT-W Retrospective, Deviant: The
Possession of Christian Shaw (Installation), CCA Glasgow.
May 2008 Contemplating
Flight launch of a new interactive project Electronic
Literature Organisation: Visionary Landscapes Conference.
Vancouver USA.
Jan 2008 Illustration
for The fairy Tale of the Wise Old Man by Eugen Lewin Dorsch (1923) for
a Jack Zipes collection of fairytales from the Weimar Republic, re-edition by
Caseroom Press
2008 (forthcoming) Not
Love Birds, print design. Cut paper puppet for Crankbunny hardback
publication ISBN pending
May-Aug 2007 Avis
Ana interactive project (work in progress) Six Cities Design Festival
Keynote exhibition, by invitation longlist of 104 to 34. Lighthouse. Music by
Daniel Padden.
Dec 2005 Matryoshka:
Revisiting Rosebud Series nesting dolls. Invited group-show with David
Sherry, Kate Davis, Swedish Design collective DEFRYA, and the Belfast based
product designer Johanna Van Daalen.The Lighthouse, 70 Mitchell Street,
Glasgow.
Oct 2005 Commissioned Illustration ZOOROOM
- A room with a zoo. Curated by the Randy Knott of the IAMSTATIC
collective. The exhibition showcases the print work of over 40 international
designers and artists thematically linked around entrapment and extinction.
Resistor Gallery, 284 College St. W2nd PL, Toronto.
Feb - Mar 2005 Deviant:
The Possession of Christian Shaw. Scottish Show Comes Home, group show, The
Lighthouse, 70 Mitchell Street, Glasgow.
Oct - Nov 2004 Solo
Show of 6amhoover.com. Installation / exhibition of online artworks at The
Lighthouse, 70 Mitchell Street, Glasgow, UK.
Sept 2004 The
Bloody Chamber & Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw, work
In Progress. The Scottish Show supported by The Lighthouse & the Scottish
Executive, DesignersBlock , New Oxford Street London.
Apr 2004 The
Bloody Chamber & Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw, The
Scottish Show supported by The Lighthouse & the Scottish Executive, Studio
Zeta, Via Friuli, Milan.
May 2003 The
Bloody Chamber PlayEngines: streaming worlds, Digital Arts & Culture
conference 2003, Melbourne, Australia.
May 2003 The
Bloody Chamber Finalist in the Barcelona Online
Flash Film Festival: Interactive Section.
Apr - May 2003 Boston
Cybertarts Festival: Video Edit of The Bloody Chamber, M.I.T Media wall,
Boston MA, USA.
Sep
2002 Red
Riding Hood Re-Animate Web Festival, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Apr - May 2002 Glasgow
Art Fair - CCA: Hypnogogia: Two Waking Dreams Interactive Art by
Crankbunny & 6amhoover. Music by Stuart Braithwaite and John Cummings of
Mogwai, UK.
Oct 2001
Angel
Interceptor Meta Metier - UKINNY, Parsons New School, New York, USA.
Apr - May 2001 Angel
Interceptor Boston Cybertarts Low Bandwidth Festival, Boston MA, USA.
Nov 2003 Little
Red Riding Hood Exposition with musicians Funkstorung, by STOF, Deventer,
Holland.
Jun - Sept
2002 Little
Red Riding Hood Web Racket, DeCordova Museum Boston, USA.
Feb 2002 Little
Red Riding Hood TechnoPoetry Festival - Georgia Tech, USA.
Nov 2001 6amhoover.com
Net.art exhibition, Irish Museum of Modern Art, by Arthur X. Doyle (spoof)
Publications
/ Conferences
May 2008 The
Aesthetic of Dissonance within 6amhoover.com Electronic Literature
Organisation: Visionary Landscapes Conference. Vancouver USA.
2008 (forthcoming) Will
Internet Art Ever Grow Up? Essay in Cross Media Communications: an
Introduction to the Art of Creating Integrated Media Experiences. New York:
Delmar Cengage Learning.
April 2007 Harnessing
disorder and disaster in responsive narrative systems. European design Academy.
Spring 2006 Extensive
interview and review in TIR WEB The Iowa Review Web, an online publication
specialising in electronic literature, experimental writing and art and
critical essays.
Spring 2006 Online
review of Jason Neilson(heliozoa.com) for TIR WEB.
April 2005 What
is Interactivity? Flash In The Can: Design and Technology Festival, Toronto
Canada.
April 2005 Invited
panelist on the FITC Story – Narrative Design Panel. Flash In The Can:
Design and Technology Festival, Toronto Canada.
May 2004 On
The Horizon (International Journal) - ISSN: 1074-8121. Special Issue on
Games, Simulations and Interactive Media in Learning Contexts.
Paper title: Visual Literacy and Learning: Finding some
online territories for the slow learner.
Oct 2004 Textual
Play: Women's Work in Literary Hypermedia, presented by Stephanie
Strickland, Cynthia Lawson and Margie Luesebrink, virtual collaboration by 6amhoover.
Society for Literature & Science Annual Meeting, Duke University, NC, USA.
Aug 2003 Invited
chair of the readings session at the ACM Hypertext 03 Conference, curated
artists: Prof. Simon Biggs, Talan Memmott, John Cayley and Noah Wardrip-Fruin,
Nottingham, UK.
Apr 2001 CADE
Postgraduate forum. Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, UK.
Jan 2001 Red
Riding Hood. Hypertext, Narrative, Flash, Time, Boston MA, USA.
Awards
May 2008 Media
Show Bursary. Electronic Literature Organisation: Visionary Landscapes
Conference. Vancouver USA.
2007 Avis
Ana: School of Media Arts & Imaging award from research fund.
May 2003 The
Bloody Chamber (interactive) streaming media section winner of the
Australian Centre for the Moving Image PlayEngines Exhibition Prize and
acquisition to the public programs permanent collection.
2003 Full
Alt-W Production Grant.
2002 New
Project Bursary - CCA for Hypnogogia, Scottish Arts Council.
Artworks
featured in:
June 2008 http://www.ciac.ca/magazine
Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw . Presented by Jan Baetens professor
at the Institut d'ˇtudes culturelles de
l'Universitˇ de Louvain,
Belgique, and also a writer),
Aug 2005 FlashGoddess.com
Sept 2003 Featured
artist on Tekka, see: http://www.tekka.net (Volume 1 no.3).
Mar 2001 Interviewed
for Histories of Internet Art: Fictions & Factions, University of
Colorado.
2001- pres
Design
Week, The Herald, Create Online, Computer Arts, The Scotsman, The Guardian, Desktop
Magazine (AUS), The List.
| Project Reviews: |
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“Leishman’s rendition
of Red Riding Hood is inundated with hybridizations of the traditional
fairy-tale narrative: the wolf pre-existing as a picture in her diary,
as a dealer at the "flesh market", an angel which does not
stop to rescue her. However, once she has eaten the wolf she is pregnant
with herself. Redridinghood from a feminist perspective? From the perspective
of Flash rhetoric, in any case an impressive piece that doesn't lack
taci elements.” |
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