Mobile Art && Code

Director, An Introduction to Arduino Workshop (Friday)
http://www.lalyagaye.com/ – Lalya’s web site

Lalya Gaye is an HCI/interaction designer, researcher and teacher, trained in engineering, who works in multidisciplinary projects at the convergence of art, technology and design.

In her research, she is interested in the relation between people and new technologies, in the context of contemporary culture and society: how to design new technologies that can challenge and inspire people creatively, and what aesthetic activities people come up with when having access to them. This covers a broad range of interests, from mobility and urban space, to aesthetic computer-mediated interactions such as electronic music making or digital photography, to physical interfaces and the integration of technology into everyday environments, artefacts and behaviours, i.e. ubiquitous computing. Her research explores in particular the potentials of mobile and ubiquitous computing for everyday life aesthetic practices and creative behaviours, and builds on mobile music, locative media and physical computing projects. She approaches her research question with a combination of user-centred, body-centric and culturally grounded interaction design, of physical prototyping and of user studies in context.

She was until recently based in Göteborg, Sweden, where she worked as a freelance researcher after several years at the Viktoria institute, and teached interaction design at Master level at Chalmers University of Technology. She is currently based in Providence, Rhode Island, in the USA, and works as an adjunct faculty and artist in residence at the Digital+Media department at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). She is presently finishing her PhD thesis which she will defend at the University of Göteborg, and is part of an art, design and technolgy collective called Dånk!, in which she works on various projects centered around interactivity, urban space and audio experimentations, as well as co-organises the local Dorkbot-GBG meetings. She is also a permanent member of the steering committee for the International Workshop Series on Mobile Music Technology. She has presented her work at various international conferences, festivals and journals and regularly gives talks, workshops and lectures at universities, institutions and events worldwide.

Her teaching builds on the multidisciplinary nature of interactive media and ubiquitous computing, and aims – just like her research – at building bridges between science and design; art and everyday life; academia and pop cultures; science and design; technology research and aesthetic practices. At RISD, Lalya teaches courses in physical computing, mobile technologies, and interactive sound.