Art
gallery gets £5 million boost
A new contemporary art gallery in Colchester has moved a step closer
with the announcement that £5 million of lottery funds has been earmarked
for the project.
The £12 million gallery will help to make Colchester the cultural
centre of East Anglia, and could become home to the University's
Contemporary Latin American Art Collection.
Possible locations for the new gallery are being explored, but it is
intended to identify a site on the east side of town.
The gallery is a joint venture between Colchester Council, Essex County
Council, the University and Firstsite, based at the Minories. All the
partners will need to invest capital into the scheme, and other
fundraising sources are also being explored.
The project will be delivered by Firstsite, providing high quality
facilities for presenting new art and showcasing established contemporary
artists. It will develop Firstsite's strong reputation as a pioneer in the
integration of exhibition and education programming, including an
interactive art discovery area. Screening facilities, an art and craft
shop and a restaurant are also planned.
The funding announcement by the Arts Council of England marks one of
its biggest Capital Programme payouts. A feasibility study will now be
undertaken as part of the process to convert the allocation into a firm
award.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Ivor Crewe said: 'This is thrilling news. The
new gallery will provide a tremendous boost for the arts in the region.
The University looks forward to working with the new gallery to make
Colchester a premier cultural centre.
'In partnership with the gallery it aims to enhance research and
teaching opportunities for the University's Department of Art History and
Theory for the benefit of the region, and to make the University's
collection of art, including its unique Contemporary Latin American Art
collection, more accessible to the community.'
Students
create new school library
Students from the University rolled up their sleeves and took a break
from exams to create a stunning new library for children at a Wivenhoe
infants school.
In a Changing Rooms-style project, they transformed a redundant
kitchen into a library at Broomgrove Infants' School. As well as knuckling
down tirelessly to the DIY work, they showed their creative skills,
painting lavish Winnie-the-Pooh and Elmer the Elephant murals to brighten
up the walls.
More than 20 students and some staff members helped out with the
Students Union Community Action project over the weekend of 2 and 3 June.
Some returned to the school ten days later to meet the children and staff.
Student Activities and Development Co-ordinator Shelly Donaghy said;
'This project is one of many that we plan to do in the next year. Our aim
is to provide fun activities and developmental opportunities for our
students as well as helping the local community with their projects.'
Shelly would like to hear from any community groups or organisations
about projects which the Community Action Group may be able to tackle. She
can be contacted on 01206 863211 or by email at shelly@essex.ac.uk
Birthday
Honours
Emeritus Professor Michael Podro of the Department of Art History and
Theory has been awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours.
Cambridge graduate Professor Podro joined the University of Essex in
1969, having served as head of the Art History Department at Camberwell
School of Art and Crafts, and as a lecturer at the Warburg Institute.
He has published several ground-breaking works in the area of the
philosophy of art: The Manifold in Perception (1972), The
Critical Historians of Art (1982), and Depiction (1998).
Professor Podro, 70, is a Fellow of the British Academy, and was
appointed as a Trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1987. He
retired in 1998.
Writer and Booker Prize winner Ben Okri, a former Literature student of
the University, receives an OBE.
e-Gadgets
- a vision for the future
eGadgets is an exciting new project in the Department of Computer
Science which is investigating the different possibilities which could
emerge if computers were reduced to nanometre dimensions and placed inside
normal everyday objects.
Not just inside electrical computer-based objects such as televisions
and entertainment systems for example, but in items such as clothes and
furniture which are not electrical or computer based.
This may seem a rather distant vision but this kind of technology could
become a reality thanks to the Intelligent Inhabited Environments (IIE)
Group in the Department of Computer Science.
Members of the eGadgets
consortium at a recent meeting in Patras, from left, Margarita Dekoli,
Achilles Kameas (Greek Computer Technology Institute), Victor Callaghan,
Graham Clarke, Hani Hagras (Essex Intelligent Inhabited Environments
Group), Kieran Delanay (Irish National Microelectronics Research Centre).
The group is a member of the eGadgets European Consortium, which has
been given 1.7 million Euros from the European Union's Disappearing
Computer Initiative to investigate how such intelligence can be
incorporated into computers.
The IIE Group has been in existence for the past six years and was
formed to explore ways of exploiting the ubiquitous availability of
computing power and networks that now exists within ordinary computing
environments.
Hakan Duman, one of the members of the Essex team involved with the
project, explains more about it: 'The aim of the project is to create an
environment in which the objects within it are able to communicate and
co-operate with each other to support those living within it and perform
tasks that reflect their needs or wishes.
'By reducing computers to such small dimensions and placing them inside
everyday objects they can assist in everyday activities.'
Team member Dr. Vic Callaghan adds: 'Imagine people aiming at improving
their fitness and going for a run with a smart vest. This vest monitors
their health condition and governs their exercise whilst, when they return
back home, the system pampers them with having a shower ready and
enforcing a low calorie regime in the kitchen'
The aim of eGadgets is to make everyday life that little bit easier,
especially for the disabled or the elderly.
Initially, the Essex group will be evaluating these ideas by building
an Intelligent Student Dormitory, the iDorm, which is being
developed in cooperation with the University's Estates Section, various
external research funding agencies and sponsoring companies.
'The funding for this initiative is derived from the European Union's
Fifth RTD Framework Programme, and in particular the Future and Emerging
Technologies (FET) initiative.
Hakan Duman said: 'The FET programme is somewhat unusual in that,
according to its own description, it is open to considering bold ideas
whose realisation would involve high risks. The philosophy is to let
people try things out - even if these things are only based on a dream, or
a hunch, with the promise of really leading to something in the future.'
Biggest
building programme since the 60s starts on campus
Building work is underway on the biggest annual capital spending
programme since the University was built in the 1960s.
Projects with a total value of nearly £6 million have been approved,
and a major construction programme will be carried out during the summer,
managed by the Estate Management Section.
Much of the work is necessary to accommodate the growing number of
students studying at the University. Two years ago the University decided
to plan for a 40 per cent increase in student numbers by 2005, with half
of these based at Wivenhoe Park and half elsewhere in the county.
Work started this month on Building 2001, a new academic building which
will house the History and Accounting, Finance and Management Departments.
The new building is an extension to the north end of the Physics building,
between the Hexagon and the Library. It is due to be competed in June
2002.
Work has also re-started on the Sports Centre extension, after being
halted during the exams, and will be completed for the start of the new
academic year. It will provide a new enlarged fitness room and activity
hall, while the old facilities will be converted into a laboratory and
accommodation for Sports Science. Another project which will be completed
during the summer is the creation of a new laboratory for the Department
of Psychology on Floor 1 of the Square 1 building.
Phase 1 of the Students' Union refurbishment is also due to start by
the end of June, subject to receipt of satisfactory tenders.
Work on the Lecture Theatre Building, involving the refurbishment of
LTB4 and creation of additional storage space, is also underway. The new
LTB4 will be better equipped for Film Studies use. This work involves the
re-routing of footpaths leading to the south campus student accommodation.
Development of a new Multi-Media Centre is due to start in late July in
the space formerly occupied by the Central Science Workshops, immediately
under the Students Union Bar. This will provide an open access computer
laboratory, language laboratories, a video-conferencing suite and space
for the Teaching Services Unit.
Other works during the summer include expanding the offices for
Personnel Section, long-term maintenance projects in Eddington Tower and
Tawney Tower, and works in Bertrand Russell Tower to overcome problems of
rainwater leakage, which may involve replacement of windows.
VIADOCS
aims to computerise a million records of life on earth
Researchers at the University are working with the Natural History
Museum to convert more than one million index cards storing information on
the planet's species into a web-based database.
The VIADOCS project in the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering
aims to develop a set of tools to analyse and recognise the content of the
card images and transfer this to a database.
In some cases the cards, containing specialised taxonomic vocabulary,
are completely handwritten, others have hard-to-read typefaces and
handwritten corrections, and the oldest records are contained in ledgers.
The Natural History Museum has estimated that manual conversion of the
archives by re-typing them direct into a database would take 430
man-years. The specialised vocabulary means the task could only be carried
out by experts in the field.
Professor Andy Downton, from the VIADOCS team, 
said:
'Legacy data is important for anyone who wants to make historical
comparisons, such as the distribution of a particular species. Historical
data is not normally available electronically, but once it has been
converted into electronic form it can then be analysed.'
The aim of the VIADOCS project is to produce a system which can be used
to convert any legacy archive data in non-accessible card and paper form
into an accessible electronic form.
Working with the Natural History Museum, the VIADOCS team has already
developed a demonstration interactive conversion system using a
29,000-card archive of pyraloid moths. The cards are scanned using a bank
cheque scanner, and initial Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is then
carried out using either a state-of-the-art commercial handwriting
recognition system produced by Parascript, or a novel OCR research system
developed by Dr Simon Lucas of the Department of Computer Science.
At present the Natural History Museum's card archives can only be
accessed by physically visiting the museum, restricting their potential
contribution to international biodiversity and taxonomic research.
By digitising these archives, the museum will make numerous unique
datasets not only accessible, but also capable of being readily searched
and analysed by academics, students and wildlife enthusiasts.
A high level of accuracy is essential to the project's viability, and
the VIADOCS team is developing an interactive verification tool. This will
allow on-line verification and editing by appropriate categories of users,
ensuring specialist expertise only needs to be applied to those parts of
the archive which are needed, as and when they are used.
Grant
for Life-Nexus art-science project
The Wellcome Trust has awarded a grant for £10,000 for a pilot
art-science project at the University. This is a collaborative initiative
between the University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art and the
Departments of Art History and Biological Sciences.
The Wellcome Trust funding, together with additional financial support
from Colchester Borough Council, Firstsite at the Minories and the
University of Essex Research Promotion Fund, will enable the Paris-based
Argentinian artist Jorge Orta to come to Essex to work on a project on the
theme of the human heart, both as a biological organ and a metaphor for
human expression and communication.
Orta has used art to explore these ideas as a part of his on-going Life-Nexus
project in many different parts of the 
world over the past five years,
including Mexico, Colombia, Canada, Greece, France and Antarctica, but
this will be Life-Nexus' first manifestation in the UK.
Workshops held at the University and in the Minories Art Gallery will
involve people from different backgrounds including artists, scientists,
nurses, teachers and transplantees. The artistic outcome of these sessions
will be works that address the issues of organ transplantation,
immunological tolerance and rejection and social harmony Work-in-progress
on the project will be on display in the Minories Art Gallery in
Colchester during July, and a final exhibition will be held in the
University Gallery in October.
