Ghislaine Boddington

Ghislaine is an artist-curator, researcher and director, a specialist in body responsive technologies and immersion experiences. She is recognised as an international pioneer, having strongly advocated the use of the entire body as a digital interaction canvas for over 25 years. From a performing arts background, Ghislaine has directed numerous international projects, creating unique convergences between the physical body, telepresence, motion capture, robotics, wearables, sense/gesture tech and virtual worlds. Her work examines the representation of our physical selves and our identities in virtual environments and the hyper enhancement of our human senses through the digital transmission/reception of body data, such as touch, motion, biofeedback and gesture. She has created live links between thousands of participants/audiences across the world for educational, performing arts and creative industries usage since the mid-nineties. She developed co-creation methodologies for these connected immersive experiences, experimenting with the hyper-enhancement of our senses. Recent installation works include the direction of ‘me and my shadow’ (National Theatre 2012) and ‘Collective Reality – Experiencing Togetherness’ (Nesta’s FutureFest 2016). She regularly curates, from Gender Mayhem (ICA, 1993-95), Virtual Incarnations (Dance Umbrella / ICA 2000-02) to international programmes such as ‘Future Physical’ (2002-04) and ‘Robots and Avatars – our colleagues and playmates of the future’ (2009-12). Recent curations include ‘Future Love’ (Nesta’s FutureFest 2016) and ‘The Games Europe Plays’ (EUNIC London 2016). A Reader in Digital Immersion at University of Greenwich, she is researching what she calls “The Internet of Bodies”, the evolution of our future multi-selves through tele-intuition, deep body connectivities (sensors/implants) and the rapid blending of the virtual/physical. Ghislaine has keynoted and presented in over 30 countries, surviving two TedX presentations. She is regularly featured on TV, radio and in the press, giving thought shifting inputs to BBC Business World and the New Scientist among others. She consults into creative Industries sector on creative innovation and futures, most recently (2016-2017) as Creative Director for the new Plexal Innovation Centre (Here East, Olympics Park London) and for composer-songwriter Imogen Heap and the development of her Mycelia Platform (2017). You can catch Ghislaine co-presenting bi-weekly for BBC Click (BBC World Service Radio). In 2017, Ghislaine was awarded the IX Immersion Experience Visionary Pioneer Award by Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) for her longterm innovative work in digital arts, and in particular her “passionate and inspirational engagement towards embodied intelligence”. She is the Guest Editor for a 2019 issue of ‘AI & SOCIETY’ on body technologies, Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication (Editor-in-Chief: Karamjit S. Gill) Ghislaine is a co-curator of Nesta’s FutureFest 2018 and is curating the FutureFest Forward series around the festival. More details about Ghislaine's work can be found here: http://www.bodydataspace.net/ https://www.womenshiftdigital.com/