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IEEE VL/HCC 2016 Keynote Speakers

David Dernie - Drawing and the Primacy of Expression

This keynote address explores the potential of drawing in contemporary practice as a vital form of creative visual thinking. It argues that drawing, in all its varied forms and diversity of techniques, remains fundamental to primacy of expression in design professions that are increasingly globalized and homogenized. Architects engage in drawing as an experimental process, in order to work through problems - they draw in order to discover. The visual language of architecture is not simply a medium of communication, or illustration, but a process of thought, a kind of visual intelligence. This talk addresses the ways in which the visual intelligence of drawing is embodied in physical materials and actions, and considers the ways in which expressive mark making will continue to make a distinctive contribution as technical capabilities respond to the human challenges of design.

David Dernie is an architect and academic: key to his work is the practice of drawing, and questions of materials, colour and representation in architecture. His work focuses on drawings and creative thinking at the early stages of architectural design. Previously Head of Manchester and Leicester Schools of Architecture, he became Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Built Environment at the University of Westminster in 2012. He was twice Rome Scholar in Architecture (1991-1993) and elected a Fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge (1999). He has lectured widely and exhibited his drawings internationally. In 2005 he curated and built the architecture section at the Prague international biennale for contemporary art and has consulted extensively in architectural and exhibition design. His published books include Architectural Drawing (2010) Exhibition Design (2006), Material Imagination (2005), New Stone Architecture (2003), Villa d’Este at Tivoli (1996) and Victor Horta (1995). Recent publications include: The Crystal Imagination, Architectural Research Quarterly; Elevating Mallarmé’s Shipwreck, in Buildings; Material Conditions of Drawing in Tracey; and Exhibition Design in Handbook of Interior Design. He has recently completed extensive revisions for the second edition of Architectural Drawing, a new monograph Material Imagination in Architecture, Routledge in 2016, and Walking:Reflections, a set of mixed media images to be published in 2016. He is currently completing work on Victor Horta and Belgian Symbolism (Thames and Hudson, 2018) and a set of related collages and parallel text with author Olivia Laing entitled Shipwreck.

Michael Kölling - Beyond Text: The Future of IDEs

Early programming education is undergoing substantial change: Once a discipline taught primarily at university level, most learners now encounter computer science – and especially programming – long before leaving school. At the beginning, attempts dominated using existing tools for teaching and learning at younger age groups. In the last few years, this has been replaced by widespread use of programming tools custom designed for young learners – both for organised teaching and for self study. In this talk, I will discuss this development, what it means for our teaching and for tool development, and present thoughts, ideas and predictions about the future of educational programming tools. Influences on general (professional) development environments are also discussed.

Michael Kölling is a Professor at the School of Computing, University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK. He holds a PhD in computer science from Sydney University, and has worked in Australia, Denmark and the UK. Michael’s research interests are in the areas of object-oriented systems, programming languages, software tools, computing education and HCI. He has published numerous papers on object-orientation and computing education topics and is the author and co-author of two Java textbooks. Michael is the lead developer of BlueJ and Greenfoot, two educational programming environments. He is a UK National Teaching Fellow, Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy, Oracle Java Champion, and a Distinguished Educator of the ACM. In 2013, he received the ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education. Michael is a founding member of 'Computing At School', a UK organisation furthering computing teaching at school level.