Art & Algorithms – Coding to Create

Wayne Lewis is a founding member and Director of RSP.  While studying visual arts, he recognised the potential of computers in film visual effects and immersed himself in the craft of 3D computer generated animation.

Over the past two decades, Wayne has assumed various roles from animator, director, creative director, facilities manager, head of production and CEO.  In 2006, he was Executive Producer on the Australian films Boxing Day and Brother. 

Rising Sun Pictures is a brilliant visual effects company based in Adelaide. There work can be found in some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters such as X-MEN Days of Future Past. 

David McGrath is a graduate with a B.Sc. and B.E. (Elec) from the University of Sydney and began his professional career as an Integrated Circuit designed with Austek Microsystems in Adelaide. Austek had been spun off from the CSIRO a year or two earlier, and the close ties with CSIRO – particularly the Division of Radiophysics – led to the co-development of a number of signal-processing ICs.

David joined CSIRO in Sydney in 1990, and in 1991, with the assistance and encouragement of CSIRO, he co-founded an audio signal-processing start-up, Lake Technology. Lake went on to develop audio processing hardware that was used by many of the world’s leading acoustics researchers at organisations that included Bell Labs, British Telecom, Panasonic, Motorola, BMW and Ferrari.

In 1998, Lake completed the development of its first consumer-facing audio technology, and this led to a technology licensing agreement with Dolby Laboratories. The relationship with Dolby grew over the following years, and in 2005 Lake was acquired by Dolby. David now works in Dolby’s Sydney office, within Dolby’s Sound Technology Research Team. His current work is particularly focussed on human perception of spatial sound, and the associated signal processing that is used to analyse and process spatial sound.

Associate Professor Martin Tomitsch is Chair of Design at the University of Sydney’s School of Architecture, Design and Planning, and Director of the Design Lab, a research group that focuses on interaction design and creative technologies.

Before moving to Australia, he studied informatics and worked as interaction designer in Vienna, Stockholm, Reykjavik and Paris.

He is founding member of the Media Architecture Institute, state co-chair of the Australian Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group (CHISIG), and visiting lecturer at the Vienna University of Technology's Research Group for Industrial Software (INSO).