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Tel: +612 9514 4633 (AH +612 9310 1169)
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video

CURRENT RESEARCH
Storing and retrieving audio-visual digital media files using information and communication technologies employing text-based indexing systems is problematic. Structurally, the complexities of language as a semantic system do not serve well the complexities of the motion picture document, encountered in the contemporary setting.
The objective of this research is to propose more effective and affecting means by which creators and audiences can store and retrieve the video files with which we work, communicate and entertain ourselves, increasingly each day.
Mnemovie is an investigative hypervideo system for exploring design options for interactivity with digital motion picture files (video). I have employed practice-based research using the Mnemovie custom-designed software tools to enable novel applications of this approach to Human Computer Interaction (HCI) design.
The interactive principles based on gesture were incorporated into seven experimental interactive models, three of which were subsequently developed for initial user experience testing and evaluation. We compared interaction with each of the systems across three groups of video file users, from expert to non-expert, to be able to understand their preference for each Model and define the different dimensions of the actual user experience. These findings and the subsequent development of persona scenarios will inform the design of hypervideo systems and the implications this has for continuing interaction design.

PROFILE
Mike Leggett has been working across the institutions of art, education, cinema and television with media since the early-70s. He has film and video work in archives and collections in Europe, Australia, North and South America and has practiced professionally as an artist, curator, writer, director, producer, editor, photographer, teacher, manager, administrator and computer consultant. He has curated exhibitions of interactive multimedia for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney (Burning the Interface also seen during 1996 in Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne); the Brisbane International Film Festival; the 5th International Documentary Conference, Brisbane; and Videotage Festival of Video Art, Hong Kong. He completed in 2000 an interactive multimedia prototype, (PathScape), on landscape and identity for the Australian Film Commission.
Mike Leggett writes and lectures about media art, contributing to journals (Leonardo; Continuum) , magazines (World Art), online ‘zines (FineArt Forum), and is a regular correspondent for the Australian contemporary arts newspaper RealTime. He writes and speaks primarily about productions and exhibitions that extend the potential of the newer media technologies.

AWARDS
Australian Postgraduate Award (2004-7); Artist-in-residence, Bundanon Trust, Nowra. (2003)

GRANTS
UTS Vice-Chancellors Travel Award (2007)

Research travel grant, New Media Fund, Australia Council for the Arts (1999).

PathScape project (1998 – 2001) interactive prototype investment grant from the Australian Film Commission.

RECENT CONFERENCES
KMS Models for Video Files using Visual Mnemonics. Creativity & Cognition Conference CC07, Washington DC, USA. (2007)

Meta-design Approaches to Indexing Audio-visual Media. Speculation and Innovation: applying practice led research in the Creative Industries (SPIN 05). Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. (2006)

Hypermedia for Portable Video Players (PVP). Proceedings of Third International Conference on Computer Graphics, Imaging and Visualization (CGIV 2006), Sydney, Australia. with Amitani, S. (2006)

The Bairdboard Bombardment: a Decade of Engagement. Engage: Interaction, Art and Audience Experience, ACM Symposium, UTS Sydney. (2006)

Generative Film : analogue to digital migrations. Third Iteration - third international conference on generative systems in the electronic arts 2005, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. (2005)
 ‘Losers and Finders: Indexing Audio-visual Media’ paper. ;’PathScape: Indexing Audio-visual Digital Media’ poster demonstration. Creativity & Cognition Conference, London (2005)

Proximity Interface and HCI’. BEAP04 Biennale of Electronic Art Perth (2004)

‘PathScape prototype – audio-visual indexing in a landscape’, 18th CHArt Conference, British Academy, London (2002)

‘Drawing the Thread’ to International Drawing Research Institute Conference, COFA, UNSW. (2001)

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Strangers on the Land: Place and Indigenous Multimedia Knowledge Systems, in Place: Local Knowledge and New Media Practice, eds. Butt, D., Paul, N., Bywater, J., Cambridge Scholars Publishing,Newcastle on Tyne, England (in press). with Dyson, L. (2008)

Generative Systems and the Cinematic Spaces of Film and Installation Art. Leonardo 40.2, MIT Press. (2007)

Image Con Text (1978-2003) : Film/Performance/Video/Digital. Experimental Film and Video: an Anthology, ed Hatfield, J. John Libbey Publishing, UK. ISBN 0 86196 664 3 (2006)

Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Practice-based Research. Convergence: the International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. Vol 12 N3 p 263-269. Sage Publications, London & New Delhi. (2006)

 ‘Indexing Audio-visual Media: the Pathscape prototype’ Memory & Cognition (ed John Sutton) SCAN online Journal V2 N2 (2005)

‘Software Imaging Synthesis’ Photofile No. 68 (2002)
‘The Speed of Light’ (editorial) ‘Thinking Imaging Software’; editor, Photofile No.60 (2000)

 ‘Electronic Space and Public Space: museums, galleries and digital media’; Continuum V13 No2 (1999)

‘Burning the Interface’ catalogue; (curator, editor and writer 1996)


Creativity & Cognition Studios, Sydney Hub

Mike Leggett's Home Page
http://www-staff.it.uts.edu.au/~mleggett/LeggettW.htm