Dr Chris Barker

Chris is the Creative Director and Production designer for a new media company urbanskinning, creating immersive animated environments for stage and events. Chris has worked as an animator and compositor of visual effects for film and television, and has exhibited his work as visual artist nationally and internationally.

Chris’s research is primarily focused in augmented architecture, virtual heritage and creative entrepreneurship.

Chris has worked as Art Director in the design of sets and stage shows, with Pixellated Sea, a collaboration with Chrissie Parrot for WAPA, and The Last Days of Judas Iscariot in Brisbane. Chris has exhibited work at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image with Stand Here (Eyes, Lies and Illusions, 2006–2007) and has shown spatially-based projection installations in China (Shark Soup, 2006), (Bullet Point, 2008), Japan (Zaim, 2007) and New Zealand(Bullet Point, 2006). He has collaborated with Keith Armstrong on the work Knowmore – House of Commons, 2009 (Brisbane, Montreal), a major real time table-based tangible media work. Chris has been commissioned by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) for a projected illusion-based work for their permanent exhibition The Way Forward (2009). His work has been reviewed by prominent magazines and publications in design studies, virtual heritage, and illusion in Art.

Research and scholarship

• Animation Studies

• Human-Computer Interaction

• Virtual Heritage

• Creative Entrepreneurship

• New Media Art

• B Arch St(Hons) Adelaide University

• Grad Dip Animation and Interactive Media, (RMIT)

• Doctorate in Creative Industries (Queensland University of Technology) (completion June, 2008)

Links to industry

• Member of Melbourne ACM SIGGRAPH Professional Chapter

• Member of CG Society

Accomplishments/achievements

• Research Funding Acquired

• 250K for Digital Songlines, 2005-6.

• 20K for Our Place 3d to 3g project (Chief Investigator), 2007

• 31K for Acid Vision (Chief Investigator) (Australasian CRC for Interaction Design), 2008

• 20K (seed funds Queensland Government) for Virtual Reef (Design Lead), 2008 

Exhibitions (solo or group exhibition of work) 

• Knowmore,(House of Commons), Table-based interactive work with Keith Armstrong, Showing at State Library of Queensland,, and Internationally in 2009.

• Urban Skinning, Projector-based architectural installation, in VSMM (Virtual Systems and Multimedia), QUT, Brisbane, 2007

• Short Stare, Projector-based architectural installation, in International Digital Arts Touring Projects, Zaim Gallery, Yokohama, 2006.

• Shark Soup, in International Digital Art Projects (IDAP), Beijing, 2006 (with Joe Bryant)

• Unroll, Unfurl, Projector-based architectural installation, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, 2007.

• Stand Here, in Eyes, Lies, Illusion, International traveling exhibition from the Hayward Gallery in London, at Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) invited contemporary Artist, 2006–2007

• Digital Songlines, ACID Pictures, Chris Barker director/animator, animated short, 2005.

• Bullet Point, Implied Pictures, Chris Barker director/animator, animated short, 2004. (Shown nationally and internationally in festival programs)

• Final Notice, animated short, AIM Films, Chris Barker director/animator (winner of the Planet X award for best use of digital media, Melbourne 1999.) 

Collaborations

• Pixellated Sea, Collaborative work with Chrissie Parrot, WAPA, Dance and Animation, Produced by QUT Creative Industries.

• Sex, Drugs and String Quartets dir. Carla Thackrah, Executive Producer, Mark Chapman, Big Island Pictures, 2003.

• Circus Sweet dir. Carla Thackrah, Executive Producer, Mark Chapman, Big Island Pictures, 2004

• Intimate Transactions, dir Keith Armstrong, Transmute Collective, 2003–2004.

• Citadel, dir Chris Barker, ACID Production collaboration with Auran Games, 2004.