Biography
Curriculum Vitae- PhD, Arts Education, University of Warwick, UK, 1995
- MA, Electronic Graphics, Coventry University, UK, 1989
- BA, Fine Art, Sheffield Hallam University, UK, 1987
Jane Prophet was born in Birmingham, UK in 1964. She has held faculty positions at Goldsmiths College, University of London; City University, Hong Kong (where she was Associate Dean for Research); and University of Westminster, London.
Her practice-based research and writing emerges through collaborations with life scientists such as neuroscientists, stem cell researchers, mathematicians and heart surgeons. She works across media and disciplines to produce objects and installations, frequently combining traditional and computational media to produce apps, objects and installations. Her ongoing interest in 3D printing began with Model Landscapes (2005) that includes miniature trees 3D-printed from mathematical data. This one of series of pieces that consider contemporary landscapes, these range from photographic and animation pieces that combine images of real and algorithmic landscapes to Souvenir of England (2007), where she put a life-sized apple tree inside a snowglobe in an English orchard. This interests in trees and landscape continues with the collaborative Augmented Reality app, Pocket Penjing, that grows virtual bonsaii to visualize air quality. Her experiments with the human body include working with neuroscientists to scan her brain during meditations on death to make life-sized 3D printed portraits that are animated with video projections of growth and decay.
Her research foci include the apparatus of contemporary neuroscience experiments, and blended online/offline identities via augmented reality and ubiquitous computing. Her research with neuroscientists into memento mori was supported by a Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship Award from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council. Prophet’s papers position art in relation to contemporary debates about new media and mainstream art, feminist technoscience, artificial life and ubiquitous computing.
Professor Prophet received a PhD in arts education from Warwick University in 1995. She has contributed widely to debates about art and computation, in particular interdisciplinary collaboration. She is involved in international discussion about the role of art in higher education, in particular interdisciplinary and practice-based PhDs and the role of the academic artist-researcher. Her PhD blog, “Research Skills and Methods: The Doctorate and Beyond”, is a practical guide to help students get the PhD done and move into the next stage of their professional lives.
