3DXLab Director

John's academic research work explores arts-led and design-led modes of visualising complex scientific and biomedical data. John's research investigates the application of creative practice, technical innovation and immersive platforms to new data visualisation challenges. Areas of research include 3D virtual world design, 3D computer animation, VFX, 3D biomedical visualisation & Animation and reflective practice.

Senior Software Engineer

Conan is an ex-game programmer and educator with over 20 years’ experience developing and teaching real-time software engineering for computer graphics, simulation, and interaction, across various hardware platforms and modalities.

Senior Software Engineer

Rob is a computer engineer with extensive experience in immersive display systems, computer graphics and embedded systems. He has designed and created applications for VR, XR and immersive display rooms, as well as installing and maintaining these systems in galleries and museums around the world.

Post-doc Research Fellow

Having an extensive research background in biomedical science at the University of Melbourne and a longstanding interest in the visual arts, Andrew works as a postdoctoral research fellow and lead pre-rendered content developer at 3DXLab. Andrew specialises in developing creative solutions to complex visualisations in addition to carrying out roles in the lab’s interactive VR content development. 

Research Officer

Kate uses visual language to transform complex scientific concepts for a general audience. Kate is a trans-disciplinary researcher working at the interface of art and science, using storytelling to bring together the historically segregated fields of technology, art and science.

Post-doc Researcher - Research Officer

Hao completed his PhD from UNSW Art & Design with his research topic focusing on the use of Virtual Reality technologies in artist's creative practice in making art museum installations. He has a former background in industrial design and interaction design, and, in animal science at bachelor's level.

Immersive UX Researcher

Dr Rebecca Green is a Visual Communication researcher and an experienced graphic designer, comic artist and illustrator.  Her research has demonstrated that different aesthetic styles can dramatically change the way viewers receive visual messages.

Affiliated staff

Andrew is a senior lecturer in immersive design at UNSW. He has a background in art history and museums and his work focuses on applications of real-time immersive and reconstructive technologies to cultural heritage visualisation.

Affiliated staff

Grant Stevens, Deputy Head of School (Art) at UNSW Art & Design, is an artist and academic with expertise in contemporary art practice and theory. His teaching, research and practice focus on the relationships between photography, moving image, and digital media.

Affiliated staff

Luc Betbeder-Matibet is a nationally recognised subject matter expert in eResearch, Research Data Management practice and shared computational infrastructure services for researchers. He has held director-level roles for 15 years in higher-ed ICT and eResearch. Luc is the Director Research Technology Services at UNSW, a shared services function that he established which is responsible for Research Computing and Research Data. He is Vice-President of AeRo(Australia's eResearch Organisation and eResearch Australasian peak Annual Conference), an Adjunct in UNSW Faculty of Medicine Centre for Big Data and has been a Visiting Scientist with the Visual Analytics Team in CSIRO Data61. Recently Luc has been working with colleagues to regularly count how much Research Data there is in Australia.

Affiliated staff

Teresa’s research focuses on information processing and narrative sensemaking in immersive environments. Her research takes a neuroscientific and phenomenological approach which starts with the user’s perception and sensemaking and leads back into narrative composition and story. 

Affiliated staff

Simon is a team leader of multimedia and immersive technologies at UNSW.

Affiliated staff

Joe is a specialist of multimedia and immersive technologies at UNSW.

PhD Candidate

Benjamin’s work examines the tacit ‘know-how’ knowledge of expert Virtual Reality environment designers and builders. He uses close examination of his own practice making VR worlds in conjunction with interviews with other virtual environment experts to reveal insights about the blend of explicit and tacit knowledge that underpins the expertise of VR environment designers.

Thesis title: Ways of making ‘Unreality’: A practice-based exploration of the tacit dimension in building virtual reality environments

Tacit knowledge is a term coined by scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi to describe the largely inexpressible intrinsic knowledge that professional practitioners bring to a task, often as a result of substantial experience (Polanyi, 1958, 1966). The process of building immersive VR 3D real-time environments is a creative and involved practice that is deeply imbued with a blend of tacit and explicit knowledge. However, even though creative professionals are extensively deployed in the design and construction of such virtual environments and there is a long history of experimental creative arts approaches pushing the boundaries and subverting the conventions of VR, beyond the typical 'how-to' presentations of industry conferences the expertise of these creatives is relatively underexamined. There is currently a gap in the field regarding how the expertise and experience that forms artists and designers’ tacit knowledge contributes to the construction of these virtual places, including how such know-how interplays and connects to their explicit skills and knowledge. 

My exploration of the forms of knowledge involved in building VR environments undertakes a systematic examination of VR environment designer processes through personal making, critical reflective practice, and a series of semi-structured interviews with leading makers and subsequent analysis. The primary goal of this research is to investigate the factors through which artists and designers contribute to the creation of VR environments. 

The contribution to knowledge of this research is both these first-person accounts of VR environment production, and the derived themes that together offer a mapping of the tacit-knowledge and explicit/technical knowledge that creative practitioners utilise when creating VR environments. 

PhD Candidate

Sarah’s work explores digital tactility and the relationship between physical and digital making processes, exploring how the nature of the medium impacts the forms of the creations. Using techniques such as 3d printing, hand-extruding, digital scanning and immersive VR, her work explores where these processes catch or break down, revealing the underlying structures.

Thesis title: Digital Drip: How a non-linear workflow between digital and physical artmaking can create artwork with a tactile aesthetic

This practice-based PhD research explores how disrupting conventional workflows between digital and physical tools can extend the expression of tactility in contemporary art. Both digital and physical space have different tactile capacities. Physical space offers direct tactile interaction with materials, while digital space offers methods of animation, immersion and manipulation of form. By adopting a non-linear iterative approach, the practice explores visualising these connections and contrasts between the digital and physical spheres.

PhD Candidate

Jane previously worked as a graphic designer and illustrator in the publishing industry, specialising in book covers. Her strangest job was designing and producing two 17 metre theatrical backdrops for Dame Edna’s penthouse in her stage production, Back with a Vengeance. She has also taught typography, design history and theory, and data visualisation for a number of years in higher education. Her art practice is multimodal, using a foundation of drawing and sculpture as exploratory tools for gaining insights into the more than human world.

Jane’s practice-based PhD investigates ways of embodying sensory experiences of the more-than-human world through translating analogue drawing and sculpture methods into 3D VR and MR environments. Jane aims to generate new insights around creative approaches to emotionally engage an audience by experiencing this ant’s world. Jane was recently a finalist in the Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize and the Ravenswood Women’s Art Prize. Both works featured insects.

PhD Candidate

SJ is a Nehiyaw and Eastern European multidisciplinary artist and Board-certified medical illustrator. Her PhD work looks at implementing generative art techniques in molecular animation while combining Indigenous ways of knowing and western scientific practice. 

PhD Candidate

Melody Owen is an ecologically minded conceptual multi-disciplinary artist and writer from Oregon in the Pacific Northwest of the USA. Represented by Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland, she holds an MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts, and an MA in Environmental Arts and Humanities. Her practice includes collage, curation, video, installation, and virtual worlds. Her current research is focused on exploring the philosophical field of zoosemiotics through virtual installations of 3D representations of bird song sound waveforms in social, creative, virtual worlds.

She has exhibited at the Portland Art Museum, Nine Gallery, PDX Gallery, the Art Gym, Reed College, and other locations and festivals in Portland, the United States, and internationally. She designed a 30-foot chandelier, modelled after the sound waveforms of endangered birdsong for the Nines Hotel in downtown Portland. She has participated in artist residencies in Paris, Quebec, Iceland, Switzerland, California, and her home state of Oregon.