Dr Lizzie Muller

Senior Lecturer, School of Design

Bachelor of Arts, PhD (UTS)
Email: Lizzie.Muller@uts.edu.au
Phone: +61 2 9514 8751
Fax: +61 2 9514 8787
Room: CB06.06.10 (map)
Mailing address: PO Box 123, Broadway NSW 2007, Australia

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Biography

Lizzie is a curator and writer specialising in interaction, audience experience and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Lizzie’s primary research interest is the audience experience of art, particularly media art, science/art collaborations and participatory and interactive artworks.  Her audience-centred approach has led her to investigate the field of participatory design from a curatorial perspective. She has adapted many tools and techniques from this field for creating and curating art.

Her work with audience experience extends to the fields of preservation and archiving, particularly the possibilities for experiential documentation and oral histories of media art. Lizzie also has a special interest in creative practice-based research and particularly in reflective curatorial practice.

As Head of Interdisciplinary Design in the Design School she has developed large-scale teaching initiatives, including the Interdisciplinary Design Labs – an annual series of experimental studios that engage students from all design disciplines in real-world research projects and industry and community partnerships. She directed the Design School’s first Design Thinking Camp: The Designer as Explorer, which took 350 first year students, and 20 staff to Cockatoo Island for 3 days in May 2011. Lizzie also runs a Masters studio in New Technologies in Museums and Exhibitions, and an undergraduate subject in creative technologies and speculative design.

Recent curatorial projects include Awfully Wonderful: Science Fiction in Contemporary Art (opens external site) curated in collaboration with Bec Dean at Sydney’s Performance Space (April/May 2011). Awfully Wonderful investigated the way that artists create “speculative objects” that help us understand scientific, technological and social change, and prepare for possible future scenarios. See ABC TV’s coverage of the exhibition (opens external site).

In 2010 Lizzie co-curated The Art of Participatory Design (opens external site) with Lian Loke, a programme of creative research projects that accompanied the 2010 International Conference of Participatory Design for which she was Art Chair. In 2008 she co-curated Mirror States  (opens external site) a major exhibition of interactive installations, with Kathy Cleland (Campbelltown Art Gallery, Sydney and MIC Toi Rerehiko, Auckland). With George Khut, she was co-convener of the year-long interdisciplinary research project Thinking Through the Body (opens external site) funded by the Australia Council’s ArtLab.
In 2009 Lizzie was Visiting Fellow at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Media.Art.Research. In 2007 she was researcher in residence at the Daniel Langlois Foundation (opens external site) in Montreal. Between 2004-2006 Lizzie was founding curator of Beta_space; a dedicated venue for exhibiting “prototypes” of interactive artworks at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

Between 1999 and 2004 Lizzie was Digital Arts Producer for the Junction Art Centre (opens external site), Cambridge, UK during which time she commissioned and produced a number of art works, including performances, interactive installations and public art. In the field of funding and policy development Lizzie has worked for the National Endowment of Science Technology and the Arts (opens external site) and for Arts Council England (opens external site).

Research supervision: Yes

Publications

Book Chapters

Muller, E. 2011, 'Learning from experience: A reflective curatorial practice' in Candy, L. & Edmonds, E. (eds), Interacting: Art, Research and the Creative Practitioner, Libri Publishing, Faringdon, Oxfordshire, U.K, pp. 94-106.
View/Download from: UTSePress

Muller, E. 2010, 'An interview with Raquel Ormella' in Reuben Keehan (ed), Raquel Ormella:She Went That Way, Artspace Visual Art Centre, Sydney, Australia, pp. 29-38.

Muller, E. 2010, 'Oral history and the media art audience' in Dekker, A. (eds), Archive2020: Sustainable archiving of Born-digital cultural content, virtueel-platform, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, pp. 6.1-6.10.
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Muller, E. 2006, 'George Khut - It's all about you' in Ivanova, A (eds), Strange attractors : charm between art & science, Novamedia, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 41-44.
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Journal Articles

Dovey, K.A. & Muller, E. 2011, 'Dangerous Learning in Edgy Contexts: Creativity and Innovation in the South African Arts Domain', International Journal of Lifelong Education, vol. 30, no. 5, pp. 613-629.
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Edmonds, E.A., Bilda, Z. & Muller, E. 2009, 'Artist, evaluator and curator: three viewpoints on interactive art, evaluation and audience experience', Digital Creativity, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 141-151.
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Jones, C. & Muller, E. 2008, 'Between real and ideal: Documenting media art (David Rokeby)', Leonardo: Art Science and Technology, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 418-419.
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Muller, E. & Edmonds, E.A. 2006, 'Living laboratories for interactive art', CoDesign: International journal of co creation in design and the arts. Speacial issue on interactive art collaboration, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 195-207.
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Edmonds, E.A., Muller, E. & Connell, M. 2006, 'On Creative Engagement', Visual Communication, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 307-322.
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Conference Papers

Muller, E., Ride, P., Stern, N., Kwastek, K. & Salter, C. 2010, 'A-X: Audience Experience in Media Art Research', ISEA2010 RUHR, 16th International Symposium on Electronic Art, Ruhr, Germany, August 2010 in Proceedings of the 16th International Symposium on Electronic Art, ISEA2010 RUHR, ed Funke, J., Riekeles, S., and Broeckmann, A., Revolver Publishing, Berlin, pp. 310-315.

Muller, E. & Bawa, M. 2010, 'Evaluating First Year Experiences in Design Education using 'First Year Attributes'', 13th Pacific Rim First Year in Higher Education (FYHE) Conference, Adelaide, June 2010 in 13th Pacific Rim First Year in Higher Education Conference Proceedings 2010, ed Thomas, J., QUT, Brisbane, pp. 1-5.

Muller, E. & Loke, L. 2010, 'Take Part: Participatory methods in art and design', Participation: The Challenge - Participatory Design Conference 2010, Sydney, November 2010 in Participation: The Challenge - Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2010, ed Bodker, Keld, Bratteteig, Tone, Loi, Daria, Robertson, Toni, Association of Computing Machinery, New York, pp. 283-284.

Muller, E. & jones, c. 2009, 'An Indeterminate Archive for David Rokeby's Giver of Names', Re:Live Media Art Histories, Melbourne, Australia, November 2009 in Re:Live 3rd International Conference on Media Art Histories, ed Cubitt, S. and Thomas, P., University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 114-119.
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Edmonds, E.A., Bilda, Z. & Muller, E. 2009, 'Artist, Evaluator and Curator: three viewpoints on Interactive Art, Evaluation and Audience Experience', Completing the Circle Symposium, British Computer Society, London, January 2009 in Completing the Circle Symposium: Creative Evaluation and the Digital, ed Stephen Boyd Davis & Ralph Nuhn, Lansdowne Centre for Electronic Arts, Middlesex University,, London, UK, pp. 13-28.

Muller, E., Turner, G.A., Khut, P.G. & Edmonds, E.A. 2006, 'Creating affective visualisations for a Physiologically interactive artwork', International Conference on Information Visualisation, London, England, July 2006 in Information Visualization, ed Banissi, E; Burkhard, RA; Ursyn, A; Zhang, JJ; Bannatyne, MWM; Maple, C; Cowell, AJ; Tianm, GY; Hou, M, IEEE Computer Soc, Los Alamitos, USA, pp. 651-657.
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Muller, E. 2006, 'Engaging with experience', Engage, Sydney, Auustralia, November 2006 in Engage: Interaction. Art and audience experience, ed Muller, E; Edmonds, E; Turnbull, D, CCSPress, Sydney, pp. xvii-xxi.
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Muller, E., Robertson, T.J. & Edmonds, E.A. 2006, 'Experience Workshops', Australian Computer Human Interaction Conference, Sydney, Australia, November 2006 in Proceedings of "The object of interaction - the role of artefacts in interaction design" OZCHI 2006, ed Simpson,M, ACID, Brisbane, Australia, pp. 1-5.
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Muller, E. & Edmonds, E.A. 2006, 'Living Laboratories: Making and Curating Interactive Art', ACM SIG International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, Boston, USA, August 2006 in ACM SIGGRAPH 2006 Art gallery, ed Mitchell, B., ACM Press, NY, USA, pp. 160-163.
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Kan, M.M., Robertson, T.J., Muller, E. & Sadler, K.A. 2005, 'Designing a movement-based interactive experience using empirically derived personas and scenarios', Dicennial Aarhus Conference Approaches to movement-based interaction, Aarhus, Denmark, August 2005 in Proceedings of the workshop: Approaches to movement-based interaction, ed Larssen, A; Robertson, T; Brereton, M; Loke, L; Edwards, J, IDWoP, Sydney, Aust, pp. 16-20.
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Khut, P.G. & Muller, E. 2005, 'Evolving Creative Practice: A Reflection on Working with Audience Experience in Cardiomorphologies', Vital Signs, Melbourne, Australia, September 2005 in Vital Signs: Creative Practice and New Media Now, ed Anastasiou, P; Trist, K; Smithies, R, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 21-28.
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Costello, B.M. & Muller, E. 2005, 'Understanding the Experience of Interactive Art: Iamascope in Beta_Space', Interactive Entertainment, Sydney, Australia, November 2005 in Proceedings of the second australasian conference on interactive entertainment 2005, ed Pisan, Y;, CCS Press, Sydney, Australia, pp. 49-57.
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Costello, B.M., Muller, E., Amitani, S. & Edmonds, E.A. 2005, 'Understanding the experience of interactive art: Iamascope in Beta_space', Interactive Entertainment, Sydney, Australia, November 2005 in Proceedings of the second Australasian conference on Interactive entertainment, ed Pisan, Yusuf, Creativity and Cognition Studios Press, Sydney, Australia, pp. 49-56.
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Other research activity

Dean, B. & Muller, E. 2011, 'Awfully Wonderful: Science Fiction in Contemporary Art', Performance Space, Sydney, http://www.performancespace.com.au/2011/awfully-wonderful-science-fiction-in-contemporary-art/.

Muller, E. & Cleland, K. 2008, 'Mirror States', Campbelltown Arts Centre and MIC Toi Rerehiko, Campbelltown, Australia.
View/Download from: UTSePress

Muller, E. 2010, 'Media Art Theory and Practice, Critical Writing, 2005-2009', RealTime, Open City Inc, Sydney.
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Muller, E. 2010, 'Systems Aesthetics, Catalogue Essays, 2007-2010', Artspace; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.
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Reports

Muller, E., Jones, C. 2008, 'David Rokeby, The Giver of Names Ô++ Documentary Collection', Daniel Langlois Foundation, Montreal, pp. np-np.

Muller, E. 2008, 'Towards an Oral History of New Media Art', Daniel Langlois Foundation, Montreal, pp. np-np.