Celebrating Women in Technology @ The Royal Institution
March 6th Genevieve was invited to give a lecture at the Ri on our work, specifically “The Art of Computer Science” project.
For those of us of a certain age the CHRISTMAS LECTURES were an integral part of Christmas Kids TV viewing. Amazing science, engineering and maths experiments. The Ri has a wonderful archive of the Christmas Lectures available here. For Genevieve to be invited to give a lecture in the same famous auditorium was a great honour. (She was rather over excited). Genevieve said that one of the most interesting things about being in the theatre was how intimate it feels given the capacity of the theatre is 440 in total and 210 at the event. The intimacy of the theatre made it feel more familiar even with its great history.
During the day there were speakers from Thomson Reuters, Accenture and Hertfordshire University talking about career histories to wearable tech. Genevieve was the closing keynote with a few live demos and a performance from [arra]stre Big Data. The live demo of the data visualisation with the Kinect was fun, especially with audience joining in. From making dataviz angels to one girl, a gymnast, even performing a backflip. AMAZING! Though RISK ASSESSMENT was flashing before Genevieve’s eyes… For all those teachers out there you will understand exactly what she was feeling.
Genevieve’s talk started with a little bit about her own history and exposure to computer science / technology. With references to the BBC Micro, Dragon 32 and Amiga Computers, she then went on to talk about her passion for Computer Science and her interest in Bio Medical Engineering. See her blog post about her Spinal Cord Stimulator Implant.
This passion for all things tech is what made Genevieve successfully develop and continue to produce The Art of Computer Science. The project is supoorted by the follwoing organisations: Arts Council England – Grants for the Arts and Google’s RISE Award for Computer Science Education. The first part of this project being about readysaltedcode’s work and [arra]stre,classical ballet, including a short explanation of the next ballet -[data]storm. Genevieve introduced the project, specifically the ballet, talking about the technology, programming languages and why the project came about. Towards the end of the lecture there was a live demonstration of the Kinect and a short section of the ballet. Genevieve’s vision and passion for creative computer science education seems to be endless. The Celebration of Women in Technology project was funded and supported by the following organisation: Ernst & Young, Mobile Technology.
All of the code and data visualisations are available online at www.artofcs.org, www.arrastre.org or GITHUB.
“Use your dreams in a unique way“
” how great the session was and how unusual it was to see dance and computing.”
” inspirational to see that you can combine your interests with technology”
Image(s) copyright: The Royal Institution photographs by Tim Mitchell