Meet the 2009 Crossover Participants

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

A fantasy fiction author, a film producer, an artificial intelligence expert and more…meet the motley crew of participants who will be coming together at Crossover Australia 2009 to discuss, dream and create the future of interactivity across platforms.

Gav Barbey

“The idea dictates the medium… the medium does not enforce the artistic passion”.

Gav Barbey’s artistic career has spanned 25 years, from his early apprenticeship as a commercial artist, to scenic artist and sculptural prop maker, to the study of theatre and film design at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts. As a professional Designer Barbey collaborated with such companies as Pina Bausch, Sydney and Melbourne Theatre Co, and was a founding member of Richard Roxborough’s award winning Co, The Burning House. He’s early interest in Puppetry, Dance and Image Based performance has taken him to International Festivals as not only a Designer but also as a Performer and Visual Artist. As a film maker, writer and director Barbey’s films have won awards, and programmed internationally including Sundance International Film Festival. As an exhibiting visual artist Gav has exhibited throughout Australia, Internationally in Korea, USA and is held in collections in the above and including the UK and South Africa. His latest body of works is a culmination of visual art, performance and film.

In 2008 his first book was published by Pan MacMillan, his feature art film ‘ART2b’ was shot in December 2008 to be released late 2009, his hand painted pre school animation series Sunny Time Zoom Zoom is in development with the ABC television and Cartoon Network UK.

Emma Beech

Emma is a Flinders Drama Centre grad. For the past 2 years, Emma has been working with theatre companies Carte Blanche and Gruppe 38 in Denmark. In that time, she has co-developed and performed in 5 major interactive productions. Her most recent work includes performing in the re-mounting of My Walls Have Ears, developed for the Copenhagen Art Gallery by Seimi Nørregård. She has also been an acting consultant with The Animation Workshop - a European professional animation training institution. Emma has taken part in a script development workshop using an improvised scripting process with Holly Owen and Rob Marchand entitled SMess, and has worked again with Rob on a feature film, 6 Characters. She also creates her own short films using domestic media tools. Emma’s cross-platform production, Saskia Falls, which she has conceptualized and will perform in, premieres with Vitalstatistix Theatre Company inn October. Recently she has been at the national Playwriting Australia Workshop in Canberra, and in Melbourne working with Real TV on their location based game.

Melissa Bubnic

Melissa Bubnic is a playwright and filmmaker. She is a winner of the TAC's Make a Film, Make a Difference 2006 competition, and has been awarded commissions and prizes from La Mama, Western Edge Youth Arts, Platform Youth Theatre and the Children's Literature Board of Australia, Australian Theatre for Young People, and St. Martin's Youth Arts Centre. She has received the Rae and Edith Bennett Travelling Scholarship and an Ian Potter Cultural Trust Grant to undertake a Masters in Writing for Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2009. Melissa attended the 2007 World Interplay Playwright´s Festival as one of nine Australian delegates. She has written two plays: Citizen Corps (dir. Clare Watson) for Platform Youth Theatre and Shedding (dir. Sam Strong) for La Mama. She is currently working on her new play Sick with the assistance of an Arts Victoria Development grant, and is writer-in-residence at Red Stitch Actors' Theatre.

Sandy Cameron

Sandy is the Interactive Producer at Katalyst, a South Australian web developer specialising in Cross-platform production and large scale interactive projects. Prior to that he was a Project Officer at the South Australian Film Corporation, working across all funding strands but with a particular emphasis on Digital Media development and production. A graduate in Law and Screen Studies from Flinders University, Sandy is also a contributing writer on film and media to Real Time, Screen Hub, Art Link and metro.

Sandra Cook

Sandra travelled overseas extensively in third world countries for six years. After working in Mexico as an underwater camera operator she returned to Australia in 2002 and studied Media and Production at Hamilton College, South Australia.

She began freelancing in the film industry in the camera department, working on feature films and TVC’s. Sandra’s role has varied according to the project.

In the last few years Sandra has been working in documentary sector. Cathy Henkel mentored Sandra for a year and then she began working with Hatchling Productions. Most recently Sandra was second unit director on The Burning Season, directed by Cathy Henkel and produced by Jeff Canin and Cathy Henkel. The Burning Season recently won an IF award for Best Documentary. She also travelled to New Zealand to capture scenes for Cathy Henkels latest film Show Me the Magic, and to Papua New Guinea for Jeff Canin’s latest film, The Future of the Forests.

Christine Cromarty

In her current role, Christine builds new business opportunities, driving export development for South Australia’s $4 billion IT Industry. She has managed and led several international trade delegations. In 2008 she led a national Digital Content Delegation to Korea, resulting in the development of successful projects and relationships with Korean broadcasters and digital media companies.

Her earlier work as an international marketing manager for a global telco helped her develop commercial collaboration skills and business development experience. She later spent three years in Washington DC, first as a sales manager with a leading software company then CEO of her own export consultancy company. As a runner, her capacity to share experiences and motivate others is evidenced by her own coaching program that has inspired many new runners. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree, and participates on several industry committees. She is currently working on a long-time dream to create a commercially sound screen-based interactive project which centres around a children’s TV show called KidsCafe.

Louise Cusack

Louise is a highly visual fantasy author whose best-selling trilogy published by Simon & Schuster Australia was selected by the Doubleday book club as their ‘Editors Choice’. She has been Writer in Residence at the Queensland Writers Centre where she is currently a key regional tutor, and in 2006 she travelled to the US to present the Queensland government’s Queensland Writing Showcase to New York agents and publishers at the swanky 21 Club! She has also worked with the now defunct Static Productions company to develop a computer game for children. Louise is slowly working through a Research Masters in Speculative Fiction at QUT while writing a sci fi novel and a young adult fantasy and mentoring other writers through her manuscript development business.

Louise is a vegetarian, ex animal rights and peace activist, mother of an 18 cowgirl and 20 year old IT boy.

Diana Ford

Diana Ford is from Perth, Australia. Diana’ began her filmmaking journey in 2000 exploring innovative forms to tell stories, she held the title for best experimental WA filmmaker 2002/2005, consequently moving to indigenous storytelling. Diana thereafter continued her research into form as a means to tell virtual stories. She has completed one feature film entitled Blue Skin as part of her PhD dissertation, shot using a game engine, which she is in the process of reshooting to broadcast quality. Diana established Machinima Pty Ltd in 2005, a pre-visualiation company that uses game engines to tell stories, Diana patented two innovative games technologies positioning her company strategically for growth with the growing machinima medium, in the process also paving way for future collaborations with TV and gaming companies commissioning machinima pre-defined content that raise awareness and deal with social responsibility issues aimed at reaching a broader online and youth audiences.

Leah Grycewicz

Leah Grycewicz is an interdisciplinary artist, curator and producer who delves into embodiment through performance and cinematic modes. Her performance and film work is inspired by site specific contexts and has rendered live events in ex WWII oil tanks, synagogues, airports, dungeons, defunct cinemas and strange isolated fields. Over the past five years she has focussed on independent experimental film work, writing and directing Riding Dark and Remote and producing two works for HandyChien, Esperanto and 31st April. As curator for dLux media arts (2000-2003), Grycewicz introduced to an Australian audience seminal international players in the fields on Artificial Life, Tactical Media and Data Mapping. As creative producer for Kick Arts Inc (1993-1999) she created more than 20 contemporary visual and performative events bringing a dynamic range of international artists and cross collaborative exchange to the far northern shores. She is currently working up Mouthful, an interactive round table project.

Solrun Hoaas

Solrun came to filmmaking from a background in theatre, journalism and academia. Her films as writer/producer/director include documentaries 'At Edge' with Judith Wright, 'Sacred Vandals', 'Green Tea and Cherry Ripe', ’Pyongyang Diaries’ and feature film 'Aya'. Her original feature film screenplays include 'The Okinawan Daughter' (shortlisted in the first AWG/Adelaide Film Festival screenplay competition) and ‘Fearless Tours’ with games and mobile phones central to the narrative. She has been on juries for AWG, AFI, MIFF and BIFF and enjoyed artist residencies in Japan, Korea and at Bundanon. Solrun believes in reinventing herself, showing video in galleries in Korea (PICAF) and etchings in several group and solo exhibitions (incl. Benalla Art Gallery, Australian Print Workshop). Driven by curiosity, she finds new ways of repurposing a varied past and unlocking creativity a constant challenge.

Stephanie Johnston

Stephanie Johnston has been a director with Michael Bollen of Adelaide based independent publishing house Wakefield Press for 18 years. Before that she worked in Tokyo for six years for a commercial art and design publishing company and agency. She has nurtured Wakefield into a leading independent Australian publisher with an international reputation, publishing 40–50 books a year and regularly winning literary, design and production awards.

Stephanie has a degree in Architectural Studies and is undertaking a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning. The founding Chairperson of the national Big Book Club initiative, she has served on the Australian Publishers’ Association Export committee and chairs the University of Melbourne’s Asialink Literary Advisory committee. Her passion for planning issues is reflected in her ongoing community activism and appointment to the Town of Walkerville’s Development Assessment Panel in 2006.

Alex Kelly

Alex Kelly is a media/arts practitioner and producer who has worked on magazines, film installations, documentaries and community media as well as facilitating arts spaces and large-scale collectively run projects. After returning to Australia from editing a magazine and presenting films in Europe in 2003, she started working with Big hART. She has since worked on Knot@Home, Radio Holiday, Stickybricks and Junk Theory with the company. In 2004 she moved to Coober Pedy to support the Irati Wanti (The Poison – Leave It) campaign of the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, Senior Aboriginal Women of Coober Pedy. From Coober Pedy she moved to Alice Springs to produce the Ngapartji Ngapartji project, which she conceptualised with Trevor Jamieson and Scott Rankin. Alex is currently Creative Producer of Ngapartji Ngapartji and Chairperson of Red Hot Arts board, Alex was the 2007 recipient of the Australia Council for the Arts Kirk Robson award and is a 2008 Youth Action Net fellow.

Ben Kilsby

Entering stage right from a successful career in the Australian Music Industry, Ben retrained as a 3d artist earning an Advanced Diploma of Computer Game Art in 2006.  After working as an internal game developer for an Adelaide based animation studio, Ben together with business partner Richard Taylor opened the doors to Holopoint in late 2007. 

Since commencing study, Ben has had hands on experience in content generation and ideation on approximately 10 different game engines across multiple hardware platforms, from PC, to console, to high end simulators.  He actively evangelises technology based training solutions, and champions the serious game concept throughout Australia to all who will listen.

Holopoint specialises in 3d content generation, rapid prototyping and the development of video game and serious game titles.  Ben currently lives in Adelaide and feels somewhat uncomfortable talking about himself in the third person…

Melissa Maclean

Melissa Maclean's first documentary feature, Beyond Our Ken, was nominated for Best Documentary and Best Documentary Direction in the 2008 AFI Awards. The film, co-directed with Luke Walker, recently screened on Compass on ABC 1. Melissa has previously produced, directed and written for several observational documentary series as well as feature reporting for current affairs programs.

She currently works as the Series Producer on The Zoo, for the Seven Network, and is in post-production for a short documentary on new HIV prevention strategies in Uganda.

Melissa graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2005 with a Masters in Film and Television (Documentary Production).

Fee Plumley

Fee Plumley had no choice but to work in the creative industries from the moment her mother (an illustrator) advised her not to. Things started reasonably enough in the UK Theatre circuit as a Stage Manager/Prop Maker, but on graduating from a BA in Theatre Design & Technology (1995) she realised all the fun stuff was happening somewhere else. An MA in Interactive Multimedia Production (1997) kick-started a transition into media arts which, rather than leaving any one artform behind, actually attempted to incorporate as many as possible.

Fee has since combined her love for performance and media arts, producing innovative interactive events for clients including Douglas Rushkoff (Ecstasy Club, Manchester 1997) and the Manchester Literature Festival (The Burgess Project, Manchester 2006). Described as a "Techno-Evangelist", she has curated public screen content (GMI, London, 1999 & BBC Bigger Picture, 2004), enabled community webcasting (Superchannel.org 1999-03) and has been a speaker and a juror at several international arts gatherings (ISEA, Banff New Media Institute, AIMIA & BAFTA) and educational establishments.

Best known for encouraging people to be creative with their mobile phones through the-phone-book Limited (2000-present), this year she extends the mobile/emerging legacy by joining ANAT as portable platforms & emerging technologies Program Manager.

Vicki Sugars

Vicki Sugars has a background in film as a first assistant director. In 2003 she received her Masters in Screenwriting at University of Technology, Sydney.

Vicki’s first short film MOUSTACHE premiered at Venice Film Festival in 2004 and went on to win 11 awards internationally, selling to Canal+, MTV, ZDF, ABC and ARTE TV Belgium. She was an associate producer on the feature film LOOK BOTH WAYS winning Best Film at the AFI Awards and the Discovery Award at the Toronto Film Festival. In 2006, she produced the 6 min. claymation EXTREME MAKEOVER premiering at Annecy International Animation Festival and took out Best Animation at St Kilda.

Her latest short film PAST MIDNIGHT premiered at Flickerfest 2009 and is screening at this year’s Adelaide Film Festival. Currently, she’s co-producing Jo Kennedy’s first feature, LION’S TEETH and also has two screenplays in development with SAFC; THE ART OF LIVING and BEFORE KATE.

Levi-Joel Tamou

Described as ‘tenaciously passionate about life’ Levi has a strong drive to develop leading enterprises in new media productions that facilitate social venture philanthropy. He has over 10 years experience in international business, small business management, marketing & community cultural development.

Levi is the Managing Director of inSpire by eXample Pty Ltd (iBE), a new media productions company with a vision for being the best on earth at helping 9-12 year olds discover their emotional intelligence through multimedia edu-tainment. Although only recently established iBE is marking the map with the coolest kids television game show ever called Collaborate!

He is also a Director of Human Ventures Ltd. A non-profit public company that provides programs and services that equips the most vulnerable members of our society, and organisations who work with them. Human provides community and cultural development projects, digital storytelling print, web and multimedia design social marketing and social web hosting.

Lachlan Tetlow-Stuart

Lachlan is a new media creative director, working across many forms of live performance and public interactive events. His work ranges from theatre and dance to public happenings and interactive digital events. Recent works include Suburban Giants (08 Feast Festival), Locked In The Attic (08 SALA Festival) and Blink (08). Theatre direction credits include The Hospitality Show (07 Fringe Festival), MOTH (06 Fringe Festival) and Assistant Director on Triple Threat (?07 State Theatre of South Australia). Lachlan is also a performer, having performed with Restless Dance Theatre for the last four years in over six major productions. He also reluctantly takes credit for the infamous public dance troupe The John Farnham Dance Collective, a dance posse dedicated to the resurrection of forgotten pop icons.

Rahul Trikha

Rahul Trikha is a Masters of Computer Science from University of Adelaide, Proficient in the following programming languages: C++, Java, Ruby. Currently he works as Technical Director at Digital Monkey PTY LTD an interactive media company; developing web applications for clients like the Australian Performing Arts Market, which is funded by the Australia Council; the Australian Government; Arts SA and DFAT; the Riverland Winegrape Growers’ Association; the Jam Factory; the Adelaide Fringe; SALA Inc; and Vertigo Productions, StarPlay Music etc. Beside web applications Rahul’s interest lies in Fractal Art, Fractal Music and Artificial Intelligence. His final year master's research project was "Adaptive Artificial Intelligence for Synthetic Creatures in Games" with RatBag games and the University of Adelaide using Genetic Algorithms and Neural Networks to create a self learning computer bot.

Jo Zealand

Since 1992 Jo Zealand has directed, devised and produced over 40 theatre pieces and facilitated 100’s of workshops with a wide variety of people. She completed the Adv Dip in Professional Screenwriting at RMIT in 2008 and was director’s attachment to Peter Templeman for SBS comedy series ‘Bogan Pride’. In 2006 she was a Raw Nerve Finalist and her film ‘Like You Do’ was nominated for ‘best performance’ at the SA Film Awards. She has worked on ‘US Mob’ as a runner and co-coordinator and as operations assistant at the AIDC. Jo was artistic director of ‘No Strings Attached’, a theatre company for people with disabilities, for five years where she produced, directed and gained funding for projects including an overseas tour to Canada in 2001. Jo continues to develop her screenwriting projects and is currently devising a DaDa cabaret piece for the Melbourne Comedy Festival and teaching drama to young people.