team

Petra Gemeinboeck

Project Lead

Petra Gemeinboeck is an artist and researcher whose creative practice seeks to trouble and expand our relations with machines by exploring questions of embodiment, agency, and performativity. She is ARC Future Fellow and Associate Professor at Swinburne University, Melbourne, where she leads the ‘Human-Robot Experience (HRX)’ project. At the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Petra leads the FWF PEEK project ‘Dancing with the Nonhuman’. Petra's publications span across electronic art, feminist theory, and human-robot interaction forums. Her exhibitions include the Ars Electronica Festival, Linz; Internat. Triennial of New Media Art at NAMOC, Beijing; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane.

Rob Saunders

Co-investigator

Rob Saunders is Associate Professor in the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS). His research explores the role of intrinsic motivation, emergent languages and physical embodiment in the computational modelling of creative processes, individuals and societies. His collaborative robotic art practice provides a platform for knowledge mobilisation by materially engaging audiences in questions of machine creativity. He is a founding member of the Association of Computational Creativity.

Audrey Rochette

Research Associate / Dancer

Audrey Rochette is an interdisciplinary choreographer, performer and movement analyst with a strong interest in the dialogue between the body and technology. Her works have been shown in various venues and festivals in and outside Montreal. As a performer, Audrey danced for many choreographers and interdisciplinary artists, including the company kondition pluriel, which works at the crossroads of media arts and performance. Master student at University of Quebec in Montreal (UQÀM), Audrey is involved in various academic and research-creation projects, notably Machine Movement Lab (Petra Gemeinboeck), DESSAIM (David St-Onge and Hélène Duval) and Movement Observation-Analysis (OAM) (Nicole Harbonnier and Geneviève Dussault).

Adam Nash

Composer

Adam Nash is a composer and multi-disciplinary digital artist based in Melbourne, whose works, rooted in post-convergence, use the web, game engines, virtual environments, generative programming, AI, and live performance. His works have been showcased at prestigious venues and festivals worldwide, including the Venice Biennale, ISEA, SIGGRAPH, the National Gallery of Victoria, and the National Portrait Gallery of Australia. Nash co-founded Wild System, focusing on AI-driven performances that intertwine virtual environments with natural systems and robotics. He has been shortlisted for the National Art Award in New Media and has been an artist-in-residence at various institutions. Nash collaborates with artists, integrating motion capture with real-time 3D audiovisual spaces, and was an Associate Professor at RMIT until 2021.

Felix Palmerson

Dancer

Felix Palmerson is an emerging contemporary dance performer, teacher, and choreographer. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance Performance from Queensland University of Technology in 2017. After initially training in Melbourne, Felix returned to the city in 2020 to explore installation work, multidisciplinary practice, and bio-art. She has performed and choreographed for international festivals and Australian events, including ELEKTRA, Ars Electronica, and the Commonwealth Games. Felix has also worked as a freelance dance artist for various projects and been involved in administration, producing, dance photography, tutoring, and social media curation. Her diverse experience has nurtured a passion for research and the arts.

Arabella Frahn-Starkie

Dancer

Arabella is a dancer, based in Melbourne, who has worked with a range of artists across dance, visual art, music and film. She has performed in the works of Rebecca Jensen, Katie Lee, Jo Lloyd, Siobhan McKenna, Sandra Parker, David Rosetzky, Lee Serle, Judith Walton, and Petra Gemeinboeck. Notably, in 2019, Arabella travelled to Venice as part of the Biennale College program, to perform works by Trisha Brown and Alessandro Sciarroni at the Venice Biennale. Arabella is a founding member of the collaborative group Polito, who perform improvised techno and dance across various venues and contexts in Melbourne.

Siobhan McKenna

Dancer

Siobhan, a Melbourne-based choreographer and dancer, holds a BFA in dance from VCA (2016). The journey she has undertaken as an artist over the last six years includes experience performing in other's work, creating her own work and both teaching and participating in various workshops and residency programs. She has showcased her award-winning choreography internationally and at Australian festivals like Dance Massive. Siobhan has established ongoing relationships with major Melbourne companies, including Temperance Hall, Lucy Guerin Inc., and Dancehouse. Her practice explores ways of incorporating dance, sound and language together to expand and question the relationship between the three mediums.

Steph Hutchison

Research Associate

Steph Hutchison is a choreographer, performer, and artist-researcher based in Brisbane, AU. Informed by her collaborations with motion capture, animation, and robotics, her dance practice often generates dialogues with digital technologies and systems. Steph is a dance academic and leader for the Experimental Creative Practice research theme of the Creative Lab at the Queensland University of Technology. Her current research builds upon her Physical Thinking Prototypes for constructing dancing bodies and ways of thinking in the digital age. As leader of the Ars Electronica Futurelab Academy at QUT (2017 & 2018), she used this methodology to shape embodied experiences.

Roos van Berkel

Co-investigator

Roos van Berkel is a dancer and choreographer based in Amsterdam, working on the intersection of dance and technology. The core of her work lies in systematically observing and choreographing movement for the human and non-human body, while questioning relationships that revolve around similarity and difference. Roos has shown her work at various contexts that bridge art and science such as E-Pulse, STRP, Discovery festival and the Imaginary exhibition. Other festivals include Gent Light Festival, Museum Night Amsterdam and different theatres in Hungary and Romania. Since 2009 she lectures at the Academy for Theatre and Dance and Eindhoven University of Technology.

Marie-Claude Poulin

Co-investigator (2019–21)

Marie-Claude Poulin is trained in dance and kinanthropology at the Université du Québec à Montréal and holds an MA in Choreography at the Inter-University Center for Dance in Berlin. Between 1985 and 2000, she has taught in the field of somatic education and has worked as a performer, notably with choreographers Benoît Lachambre and Meg Stuart. In 2000, she co-founded the digital performance group kondition pluriel. Her works have been presented at numerous festivals and institutions, such as: ISEA (Nagoya, Helsinki and Essen), Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie – ZKM (Karlsruhe), Transmediale (Berlin), CYNETart (Dresden), the Mois Multi (Quebec City) and the Museumsquartier Wien (Vienna). Since 2013, she is a lecturer at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.

Rochelle Haley

Co-investigator

Rochelle Haley is an artist and Senior Lecturer at University of New South Wales, School of Art & Design Sydney. Her practice is engaged with painting, drawing and choreography to explore relationships between moving bodies and physical environments. Working with dancers, her painting installation and performance works explore intersections between colour, gesture and light, discovering harmonies between audiences, performers and architectures. Haley is currently developing a new choreographic performance commission, A Sun Dance, for the National Gallery of Australia in early 2024; the work also serves as a key case study for the Australian Research Council funded project, Precarious Movements: Choreography and the Museum.

Tess de Quincey

Choreographer (2015–20)

Tess is a dancer, choreographer and director who explores the body as a changing entity – an environment within the more-than-human environment. Opening sensorial communication to an interweaving of complexity, the body is inhabited and danced by different places and forces. What language arises in the atmospheres both internal and external to the body, and what is it that we share?

Grounded in Body Weather practice, founded by Min Tanaka and his Mai-Juku performance group with whom she was a dancer 1985-1991 and a history in Europe, Japan, India and the UK, Tess introduced Body Weather into Australia in 1989.

Linda Luke

Dancer (2015–20)

Linda Luke has worked across multiple platforms in the performing arts industry for the past 20 years: as a performer, choreographer and director. In her work she aims to deepen sensitivity and excavate the subtle undercurrents we experience in relationship to self, each other and the external environment. Linda is invested in exploring ideas around diminishing the ‘human-centric’ and focussing on the rich diversity of non-human elements that exist in our environment. Linda's practice is grounded in the methodology BodyWeather. Linda has been a dancer for BodyWeather Sydney based dance company De Quincey Co since 2004 and has performed in numerous productions for the company (2005 – 2021).

Lesley van Hoek

Software Developer

Software developer, researcher and artist in creative technology with strong interest and experience in real-time computer graphics, interactive audiovisual art installations, generative art, computational creativity, games, XR and AI. My work lies at the intersection of science, art and technology.