A seminar series surveying University of Sydney research on vision across the humanities and sciences.
Vision Cultures brings together scholars from across the University of Sydney to survey the many vision cultures that co-exist in the world today. It will present researchers investigating the questions of why and how we see, what is seen, and who does the seeing. The presentations will arc across the sciences and humanities, and will cover topics such as the art and science of colour, the importance of First Nations knowledge systems, contemporary cultures of surveillance, and the physiology and psychology of perception.
Each of the series presenters will be asked:
What is "vision", according to your research and the broader field in which you work? How has this understanding changed over time, and what are the future directions for research on this topic? What are the most important cultural, social or technological forces shaping this research?
As part of the Power Institute’s philanthropically funded Visual Understanding Initiative, the series aims to build a network of ideas and people who can help us better understand what it means to see in the 21st century.
Series convened by Mark Ledbury and Nick Croggon, as part of the Visual Understanding Initiative.
More about the Visual Understanding Initiative
Events
Upcoming
A presentation about underwater robotic systems by Alexandre Cardaillac, and the challenges of seeing in extreme environments.
People
Alexandre Cardaillac
Alexandre Cardaillac received his PhD in engineering with the Department of Marine Technology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, as part of the Applied Underwater Robotics Laboratory. He is now a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Australian Center For Robotics at the University of Sydney and the ARIAM Hub where he studies underwater perception and how it can be used to improve the autonomy and situational awareness of underwater vehicles. His work focuses on combining visual and acoustic data to create hybrid representations of underwater environments.
Daniela Helbig
Daniela Helbig is Senior Lecturer in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. She received her MSc (Physics) from Free University Berlin, and her PhD (History of Science) from Harvard. A historian of technology and media, her research explores the roles of technology in historical practices. Her work has focused on notions of memory and experience in aviation research in Weimar- and Nazi Germany, and on transformations of historiography through remote sensing and geospatial representation technologies from the early twentieth century into the present.
A lecture from psychology professor Irina Harris about the limits of conscious perception.
People
Irina Harris
Irina Harris has a BSc (Hons) in Psychology from UNSW, a Masters of Clinical Neuropsychology from Macquarie University and a PhD in Medicine from the University of Sydney. She is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney, where she studies vision and memory using a combination of cognitive experimentation, neuroimaging and brain stimulation, and she has a long-standing interest in how we perceive objects and how attention (and failure of attention) shapes our perception. She was the recipient of three fellowships and several grants from the Australian Research Council that supported her research on the cognitive and neural mechanisms of object perception.
Past
Colour Science
A lecture on the psychophysics and physiology of colour by vision scientist Paul Martin, with a response by artist Madeleine Kelly.
People
Paul Martin
Paul R. Martin received his PhD in Physiology at the University of Sydney in 1986. Following postdoctoral work in Germany, in 1992 he joined Faculty at the University of Sydney. From 2003 to 2009 he was Director of Research at the National Vision Research Institute of Australia and Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He took up his current appointment as Professor of Experimental Ophthalmology at the University of Sydney in 2010.
Madeleine Kelly
Madeleine Kelly (b. Freising, Germany, 1977) arrived in Australia in 1980 and is a visual artist of Australian and Peruvian descent who primarily works in painting. Her work engages with human encounters with ‘nature’ and elemental forces. Bringing together figuration and abstraction, her practice is a mixture of the cosmic and the material that explores the many, often ineffable, points of contact between people, animals and plants such that the material world is transformed in rich and absorbing fantasy. Madeleine majored in Fine Art at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, in 1999, and her practice-led PhD was conferred by the same institution in 2013.
People
Mark Ledbury
Mark Ledbury is the Power Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Sydney, and the Director of the Power Institute. He took his degrees at the University of Cambridge and the University of Sussex, and his first academic post was as lecturer in Cultural History at the University of Portsmouth. He then moved to the University of Manchester where he was lecturer in Art History, until he joined the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts, in 2003. As Associate Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark, he oversaw the expansion of the research program?s ambition and reach. He devised, planned and ran workshops, conferences and partnerships and worked to develop and oversee a lively residential scholars' program. As Director of the Power Institute, Professor Ledbury ensures that the Power furthers its research and public engagement mission through talks, conferences and the support of research and publications.