Prof. Vibeke Sorensen, Chair
Assoc. Prof. Russell Pensyl, Assoc Chair Academic
Assoc. Prof. Louis-Philippe Demers, Assoc Chair Research

---

Ho Wen-Shing
Assistant Professor

MFA, American University
Graduate Credit, New York University
BSC, Chinese Culture University, Taiwan

Tel: 6316-8820
Fax: 6795-3140
Email: wsho@ntu.edu.sg

Ho Wen-Shing studied Graphic Communication at the Chinese Culture University in Taiwan. In 1996, she pursued further study in Film and Electronic Media Production at the American University, Washington DC. In 2002, Wen-Shing joined the faculty of DeSales University, Pennsylvania, teaching film production, animation/motion graphics and web design, at the same time collaborating with writer/director Moumen Smihi and writer/actor Francine Roussel.

Director, cinematographer and editor, Wen-Shing is a filmmaker with a unique and creative vision. She makes films about strong passions and life’s struggles using positive messages, creating films of “poetic comedy”. Often, she applies classical music theories in her filmmaking. Accordingly, each movement of the camera, lights and action creates its own image, playing a gentle melody, tune, rhythm or vision that shapes the film.

Wen-Shing’s films and photography have won many awards, including an Honorable Mention as Best Director for her film “Ku” at the Georgetown Indy Film Festival and First Place in the Single Image category for her photography “Me Mirror Myself” at the American Vision Festival, which premiered at the National Gallery of Arts, Washington DC. She was also a Telly Awards Finalist in the Children’s Audience Category with her animated film “Self-Portrait” and her thesis film, “Infinity” was among the official selection of the Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films. In 2002, Wen-Shing was invited by Systems Recordings, NYC, to direct a music video for the drum ‘n’ bass artist, Diesleboy. In 2004, her photography exhibition “Treasure of Human Soul Series, Prague 2004” was on display in Houston, Texas.

Wen-Shing’s latest initiative as a director and cinematographer is her narrative film, “A Rose By Any Other Name”.

Shannon Lee Castleman
Assistant Professor

MFA, San Francisco Art Institute
BFA, New York University, Tisch School of the Arts
Tel: 6316-8728
Fax: 6795-3140
Email: shannon@ntu.edu.sg

In addition to exhibiting her personal artwork Shannon Castleman (MFA, San Francisco Art Institute) spent eight years working as a freelance photographer. She has shot for numerous clients and publishers including ABC News, Alternative Press, Ray Gun magazine, Rolling Stone, and Workman Publishing. The contrast of her freelance assignments has ranged from photojournalism to fashion, and has also influenced and informed her personal work. Castleman often blends traditional documentary photography styles with fictional elements. The majority of her projects focus on cultures and relationships in urban environments, exploring the often-hierarchical structure within certain groups on the fringe of society. In 2003, she had the opportunity to participate in a residency at Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana, Cuba under the direction of Tony Labat. This further strengthened her understanding of conceptual art, allowing her to consider art from a global and cultural perspective. Prior to coming to Singapore, Shannon Castleman was assistant professor of photography at Dar Al Hekma, all women’s college in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. An experience she found both challenging and rewarding. As an instructor, Shannon believes that the convergence of art and new technologies has changed the way we need to teach photography. She thinks that teaching students to understand photography from the inside out enables them to use their knowledge and skills to articulate their ideas, thereby conceptualizing rather than just utilizing learned techniques.

Kate C. Kangaslahti
Assistant Professor

PHD, University of Cambridge
CPGS
BA (Hons), University of Melbourne

Kate Kangaslahti is originally from Australia, and completed her first degree in Art History and European Languages at the University of Melbourne in 1998. Her early interests soon led her abroad to pursue opportunities first at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and later in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum in London as the Sarah and William Holmes Scholar. In 2001 she moved to Cambridge to continue her studies where she was awarded her doctorate in the History of Art in 2005. While working on her own research, she taught a module in Surrealism in the Department of History of Art in Cambridge, as well as a survey course of Western Art History, in Paris, as part of Oxbridge Academic Programs.
Kate specialises in early twentieth-century European art, with particular emphasis on the relationship between art and politics in France during the interwar period. Her current research examines the phenomenon of the School of Paris and the situation of foreign artists practising in France between the First and Second World Wars. Other interests include: the history and philosophy of the museum and its relationship to artistic practice; the politics of display; orientalism in nineteenth and early twentieth-century French painting and more widely the influence of non-European cultures upon the production of European art; the materiality and historical technologies of art.

Mark Chavez
Assistant Professor

MFA, University of California, Los Angeles
BFA, Arizona State University
Tel: 6316-8827
Fax: 6795-3140
Email: mchavez@ntu.edu.sg

Mark Chavez has over twenty years of experience in the computer graphics industry, a career which began with pioneering techniques for creating projected laser imagery. His early work was showcased at concerts (including Ozzy Osborne’s 1984 World Tour), theme parks and special venues, most notably Stone Mountain State Park, Georgia. Projected onto a vast stone wall of carvings depicting confederate soldiers, Mark’s 50-minute hand-drawn animation of the famed horsemen charging off the mountain, executed in 1983, is still on display to large audiences every summer. Another early laser piece was selected for display on the side of the Westwood Federal Building during the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

Upon receiving his MFA in 1989 from the University of California (Los Angeles) Film School, Mark moved to Tokyo Broadcasting System Vision for two years, where he immersed himself in the pop-cultural tastes of Japanese television, video and motion rides. After leaving Japan he began investigating motion capture technologies at Acclaim Inc., New York, a large video game company where he supervised the first cinematics and sprite animation for a Playstation game that utilised motion capture.

In 1995, Mark returned to Los Angeles to join Dreamworks Feature Animation, to work on the integration of 2D and 3D artwork, sculpting characters and simulating crowd scenes for “The Prince of Egypt” and “El Dorado”, later acting as a lead modeller on “Spirit” and “Sinbad”. Following six years at Dreamworks, Mark began freelancing in the live action special effects industry. He has since formed his own company, CLONE3D, LLC, to purse a long-held interest, the creation of 3D characters backed with artificial intelligence and real-time automated animation techniques.

Joan Kelly
Assistant Professor

BFA Maryland Institute College of Art
MFA Western Connecticut State University
Email: jmkelly@ntu.edu.sg

Joan Kelly is a visual Artist working primarily as a painter in oils. Her work is involved in observation and the act of seeing, and the process of transforming. Her canvases are created on site. She works with still life and landscape simultaneously. The space created by the over lapping of these subjects is an integration of two dimensional picture plane and a three dimensional perspectival vision. There is a great sense of openness and optimism through her use of color and paint handling even when she is painting the objects of the vanitas.

As a teacher she strives to create a situation that provides the students contact and experience with the issues of art. An artist builds their own relationship to those issues, as a student begins to do also.

Hannes Rall
Assistant Professor

MFA State Academy of Fine Arts, Stuttgart, Germany

Tel: 6514-1057
Fax: 6795-3140
Email: sadm-info@ntu.edu.sg

Hannes Rall creates commissioned pieces and independent artistic works in the fields of 2D animation, illustration, comic and character design. In his animation, his goal is to combine fluid and sophisticated animation with an innovative look in terms of design. His style concentrates on bold visual statements, strong character design and the clear communication of ideas and stories. He strives for the creation of a distinctive look in his art, incorporating various influences such as German Expressionism, modern comic and manga styles and a reduced colour palette.

Hannes has gained a reputation for the creative adaptation of literature in animated short films, including notably “The Raven”(1999) and “The Erl-King”(2003), adapted from the respective poems of Edgar Allen Poe and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. These two pieces have been shown in over 100 film festivals worldwide and have won several accolades. “The Raven” featured prominently in “Animated Film from Germany 2004”, a travelling exhibition organised by the IFA and Goethe Institute, which opened in June 2004 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Teheran, Iran, moving later to Cairo, Alexandria, Ramallah, Damascus, Beirut and Tel Aviv.

More recently, Hannes was commissioned to develop a visual presentation for Bio-Pro Baden-Württemberg at Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan. The commission, included as part of the German Pavilion, comprised the design of the main characters, the creation of a 24-page comic book and associated Flash movie, as well as the design of the booth. Currently Hannes is working on a script adapting the classic German fairy-tale “The Cold Heart” for presentation as a 30-minute animated short-film.

Before joining ADM, Hannes Rall was an Adjunct professor at the Hochschule der Medien in Stuttgart, Germany.

Joyce Chin
Assistant Professor

MA, University of Huddersfield, UK
BA, National University of Singapore
Specialist Diploma, Temasek Polytechnic

Joyce Chin has been working in the design industry for the past five years in Singapore and UK. She has a broad appreciation of design on a global scale and understands the needs of multinational clients. Her research centers on design trends by experimentation and collaboration with other artists and designers. Art is her life.

Martin Constable
Assistant Professor

MA, Goldsmiths’ College, UK
BA (Hons) First, Camberwell College, UK

Up until a couple of years ago, I was a painter with a peripheral interest in computers. Then overnight it dawned on me that digital media had completely overtaken what I wanted to do with paint. The possibilities opened up before me and I dove in.” Martin embarked on his teaching career in 1992. Since then, he has been teaching drawing, studio practice and Photoshop at various colleges in the UK, most recently at Goldsmiths’ College. “Teaching for me cannot be separated from my art. I am constantly re-adjusting my ideas about myself as a creative through what I have learned at college. The students keep me in good contact with contemporary culture through the music they listen to, the artists they admire, the films they watch and the way they dress.

Sven Norris
Assistant Professor

BA (Hons) in Interior Architecture, University of Wales Institute
Masters in Computer Arts, Thames Valley University

Sven received his BA (Hons) in Interior Architecture at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff in 2000, and completed his Masters in Computer Arts at Thames Valley University, also in the UK in 2002. Prior to joining ADM, Sven taught at the London College of Music and Media.

Sven has worked as a freelancer in industry within the field of multimedia development, designing and developing sites and content for companies including Arc Worldwide, Leo Burnett Group, Reuters, Tidal Wave, The Grand Union, Signet, and McKinsey & Company. He undertook the role of Multimedia Developer at the company Sightline, creating interactive content, including 2D/3D modeling and animation, for a range of CD-ROMs and websites.

Sven, in his work, pursues a fascination in the creation and evolution of real-time virtual environments for entertainment, education and commercial purposes, with a particular focus on the video game industry.

Lucy Davis
Assistant Professor

MA, Roskilde University Denmark, Communications Studies &
International Development Studies.

Tel: 6316-8850
Fax: 6795-3140
Email: lucydavis@ntu.edu.sg

Lucy Davis grew up in Singapore, but was in the United Kingdom and Denmark from 1988-98 pursuing a parallel MA and visual arts practice. She returned in 1998, to research her MA dissertation, “Making Difference: Culturalist Ideology & Political Aesthetic Strategies in Singapore”. Since her return, Lucy has taught a number of modules in the Visual Arts and in Cultural Studies at the National Institute of Education, the National University of Singapore, the Singapore Management University and LaSalle-SIA College of the Arts.

A practising visual artist, scenographer and curator for fifteen years, Lucy uses a variety of media in her works: photography, sculpture, video, performance and installation. She has been involved in art events in Copenhagen and Singapore, including solo projects for “K96” Copenhagen in 1996, for the “Verdenskultur festival” Aarhus and for the Galleri Die Werkstatt in 1997, and for the Copenhagen Central Library in 1998; as well as participating in group shows at Oeksnehallen, and Den Frie in Copenhagen in 1997.

From 2000-2002, Lucy was Associate Artist with The Necessary Stage, with whom she founded focas: Forum On Contemporary Art & Society. While at TNS she also curated a series of art shows and public forums and designed a secondary curriculum in Integrated Arts and Personal Development. In 2003, Lucy participated in “Wirecrossing”, the flagship project for Singapore’s first Digital Art Festival, “The Year of Living Digitally”, while in 2004, she curated “Artists & Other Animals”, a visual arts project at The Substation.

Lucy’s art practice and research interests revolve around questions of visual culture, spectatorship, ideology and practice, and most recently, animality. Alongside her contributions to focas, her writings are featured in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Art AsiaPacific, Broadsheet and the Nordic Art Review.

Oh Soon-Hwa
Assistant Professor

ED.D and MA, Teachers College, Columbia University, US
MFA, School of Visual Arts, US
BFA, Pratt Institute, US

Oh Soon-Hwa started teaching visual arts in New York in 1994. A color photography teaching engagement brought her to Columbia University in 2002, followed by another year at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. In 2004, she was Adjunct Lecturer at Pace University, also in New York, teaching Creative Photography in Color and Introductory to Creative Photography. Her devotion to photography can be seen by the numerous works she exhibited in museums, galleries and exhibitions all over the United States and in other countries. She also won several artist awards and scholarships.

Christopher Toh
Lecturer

Post-graduate State Academy of Art and Design in Stuttgart, Germany

Tel: 6316-8824
Fax: 6795-3140
Email: christoh@ntu.edu.sg

IIndustrial designer Christopher Toh began his training in Singapore’s Temasek Polytechnic, for which he won the Trade Development Board Scholarship for Design from 1993-1996. He moved to Germany to pursue postgraduate study at the State Academy of Art and Design Stuttgart, where worked with Prof Klaus Lehmann and Prof Winfried Scheuer and the renowned industrial designer Richard Sapper. During his final term all three of his kitchen project designs were acquired by Neff GmbH, a company producing kitchen consumer products for Neff, Siemens and Bosch.

Upon graduation, Christopher managed a design team offering consultation services, communications, modelling and concept development. During his time with Industrial Design in Stuttgart he worked on a number of projects, serving clients such as Playmobil, Villeroy & Boch, Sigma Sports, and the Pigeon Corporation of Tokyo. Returning to Singapore, he established Ant Design, offering consultation and product design, where his clients have included The President’s Office, Istana, Singapore Press Holding, Maybank, United Overseas Bank, Associations of Bank Singapore, TBWA, and Style Asia Pte Ltd.

Christopher’s first solo exhibition was in Tokyo at the Mont Blanc Flagship store in Ginza and Osaka. Since 2001, he has been invited by a number of organisations to exhibit his work, including IDEE CO and SEMPRE (Japan), Ambiente Messe Frankfurt (Tokyo, Germany and Seoul), DesignMai (Berlin) and Lifestorey (Singapore). As a result of his success, in 2004, Christopher was invited to write a mentorship programme enabling young Singaporean designers, looking to exhibit their new works in Tokyo, to benefit from his experience.

Christopher’s work is currently available in design shops in France, Germany, Japan, Portugal, the UK, and the US, including in the MOMA Design Store in New York.

Peggy Poo-Pun Siu Kay
Lecturer

MA, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.
Major: Communication Arts, specialized in Television Production
BA (Hon) with High Distinction in Design, University of Illinois at Chicago, Illinois. Major:
Communications Design (Graphic Design, Photography and Cinematography)

Tel: 6790-5845
Fax: 6795-3140
Email: skpoo@ntu.edu.sg

Peggy Poo-Pun Siu Kaybegan her career as a graphic designer with Arthur Young & Co in New York City. After settling in Singapore, she spent twelve years working as a Senior Producer and later as an Executive Producer at the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation. Her 12-year tenure at SBC saw her produce a number of documentaries including Medicase (Parts 1-4) on common diseases, Living Crafts on local master craftsmen, Painted Faces (Parts 1-3) on Chinese Opera and the Babas. She also produced the science-based Innovators and Science Challenge; the children’s series Little Magic Boxes and Christmas Toyland; the arts and culture programme Through the Peering Lens on Chinese Painting; the educational series Conversational Mandarin as well as Christmas and New Year’s shows, and live recordings. A Century in Dance won her an award at the TV Programmes Festival in Moscow in 1980. While at SBC, she was also trained by the BBC.

Upon joining NTU, she worked as a Senior Media Specialist, before being promoted to Senior Deputy Director at the Centre for Educational Development. Her job responsibilities included consultations on the design, development and production of instructional and promotional media programmes. She had also produced most of the related videos screened at NTU’s major events, Schools and Centres. She was responsible for the planning, design and management of the CED video studio and the online digital video recording and retrieval/archival system for eLearning.

For the last five years, Peggy has been conducting General Studies courses in visual art and design, before joining ADM. Her recent research on “Inculcating Visual Literacy to meet the professional needs of Engineering and Business undergraduates” won her the Best Paper Silver Award.

Kenneth Feinstein
Assistant Professor

Kenneth Feinstein began his studies in Film & Photography at Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts, receiving his first degree in 1981. After many years as a practising artist, Kenneth returned to research, completing his MA in Media & Communications at the European Graduate School in Leuk-Stadt, Switzerland in 2003. He is currently working on his dissertation, “A Theory of the Obsolete”. Before joining ADM, Kenneth taught as an Adjunct Professor at the Parsons School For Design, and Empire State College, both in New York.

As a practitioner, Kenneth has been working in the digital realm since 1984. Over the course of two decades, his interests and production have expanded to include digital video, motion graphics, documentary, experimental film/video and installation art, often exploring the theme of memory as both a personal and cultural construct.

He has been an artist-in-residence at the Kala Art Institute in California, at CrossPathCulture SA, in Johannesburg, South Africa, as well as at the Makor/Steinhardt Center in New York. In 2000, a solo exhibition of Kenneth’s work was staged at the Frederieke Taylor Gallery (formerly TZ’Art), in New York; in 2004, he presented five of his video works at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York under the title Let a Thousand Videos Bloom. His work has also been widely exhibited in a large number of group exhibitions in cities worldwide, including, but not limited to: Hiroshima, Japan; Dresden, Germany; Graz, Austria; Beijing, China; and Kaliningrad, Russia.

Kenneth’s IRIS print, “Try Me”, was the first IRIS print acquired for the collection of the New York Public Library. Examples of his work are also currently included in the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

 

Isaac Kerlow
Professor

MS, Pratt Institute
BFA, School of Visual Arts
Diploma, Eina School of Design

Tel: 6514 8374
Fax: 6795-3140
Email: isaac@ntu.edu.sg

Isaac is a computer animation pioneer and the author of the third edition of "The Art of 3D Computer Animation and Effects" published by Wiley. Between 1997 and 2004 Isaac was Director of Digital Production at The Walt Disney Company, where he lead multiple initiatives related to producing entertainment with new media, including 3D computer animation and 24P High Definition digital cinematography. In this role Isaac participated in creative and production decisions that impacted dozens of live action and animated projects company-wide. Prior to that Isaac led for two years the group of digital artists and animators at Disney Interactive, where he oversaw creative and production aspects of over 20 computer games.

Before joining Disney in 1995 Isaac spent a decade at Pratt Institute in New York where he was a tenured professor and the founding chairman of the Department of Computer Graphics and Interactive Media. Isaac has presented workshops at many creative, production and research institutions throughout the world, and has participated in multiple international festivals including the International Electronic Film Festival in Japan, the New York Art Director’s Club, the 3D Festival and FMX in Europe, Res Fest, and the Webby Awards. He is also a longtime active member of SIGGRAPH and the Visual Effects Society, and the technology committee of the American Society of Cinematographers. In addition to being ADM's Dean Isaac is currently directing a computer-animated feature movie at Dygra Films, in Spain, where he resides for half of the year.

www.artof3d.com

 

Bridget Grady
Teaching Fellow

MFA, Western Connecticut State University
BS, Charter Oak State College

For the past 17 years, Bridget Grady has exhibited her artworks in numerous art galleries in Connecticut and New York City, USA. Some of her works are in the private collections of Werner Klemperer, Phil Lesh and Vincent Sardi. She has been teaching drawing and painting since 1997.

Eileen Reynolds
Assistant Professor

MFA, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
BFA, University of New Mexico

Eileen Reynolds is a multimedia artist, with interests ranging from painting to animation. In 2002, she became a teaching assistant at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, working in a wide variety of areas ranging from drawing and painting to 3D puppet animation and film and video production. In 2004, she became the digital imaging instructor at Chicago’s Discovery Academy conducting multimedia courses that blended technology and traditional art forms.

D. Scott Hessels
Assistant Professor

MFA, University of California, Los Angeles, California
BS, University of Phoenix, Pasadena, California

Scott Hessels is a media artist and independent filmmaker who has released art and commercial projects in several different media including film, video, web, music, broadcast, print, and performance. Producing under the name Damaged Californians, his films and videos have been shown in a variety of film and new media festivals, on television, and in art galleries. He recently completed a commission of three interactive films and six online movies for Australia and was honored with career retrospectives at the Melbourne International Film Festival and the Dallas Museum of Art. In 2006, his work was featured in Wired, Discover, and Focus (Italy) magazines as well as exhibitions at SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles, and the Sonar Festival in Barcelona.

More recently, Scott has been experimenting with the cinematic form and his recent artworks have mixed film with sensors, robotics, GPS systems, and alternative forms of interactivity. As a media artist, his installations have been shown at CiberArt in Bilbao, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and Japan’s Media Art Festival. They are also included in several new books on media art. This year he is producing an experimental planetarium show that, instead of showing the night sky of stars and planets, will show the various strata of man-made technologies in the sky above us.

Jan-Christoph Daniel
Teaching Fellow

SAE Technology College in Hamburg, Germany

Tel: 6513-8053



Jan-Christoph Daniel studied Film and Cultural Anthropology and completed his studies with a diploma in Digital Filmmaking from SAE Technology College in Hamburg, Germany. He is based in Singapore since 2004 and worked for Oak 3 films as a full-time editor for 2 years. In 2006 he formed his own company wanderjahr films, working as a freelance editor and producer.

Being in the media industry for more than 10 years, his experience is built on curiosity in all aspects of life. His past works as a filmmaker include the very personal documentary Wanderjahr - Diary of a Journey around the World which was shot during a gap year of travelling around the world.

As an editor he has worked on numerous programmes for MediaCorp's Channel News Asia and Arts Central, such as Hidden Dragons - Young Asian Filmmakers a series about Asia's independent film scene. More recent works include international documentaries such as Crossings- Ju Ming for Discovery Networks Asia, The Difference for ESPN Star Sports and Sense of Danger for arte France and ZDF German Television.

Suresh Sethi
Associate Professor

Lead Faculty - Product Design
Nanyang Technological University
Art, Design and Media
Singapore
Email: ssethi@ntu.edu.sg

Suresh Sethi began his career in Industrial Design at Philips India in 1983, soon firmly consolidating his position among India’s best designers through various projects. He went on to pursue further study in Italy, receiving his MA from the Domus Academy in Milan, where he studied under design icons like Andrea Branzi, Ettore Sottsass, and Gaetano Pesce and established strong links to Italian design.

In 1988, Suresh began his own company, Circus Design Studio, focusing on product design and continuing, throughout the 1990s, his professional work in consumer products and lighting design for firms in Asia and Europe, including Philips, Alessi, Akai, Eveready, Proctor & Gamble, and Videocon. Suresh’s guinding belief that products must be user-friendly has seen a number of his designs successfully re-run in various markets worldwide.

From 1989-1993 Suresh collaborated on the project, Organic Houses, with Nari Gandhi, an architect associated in the past with Frank Lloyd Wright. During the same period he also worked on Strategies for Living Crafts with Rajeev Sethi. From 1993 onwards he worked on the design of maritime-related projects, notably, the Mumbai Maritime Gallery, and an installation, “Sea-India” in Mumbai, for the International Fleet Review in 2001

Suresh has been a Visiting Professor, and has led many workshops and seminars at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India; the National Institute of Crafts and Design, Jaipur, India; the National Institute of Fashion and Technology, Mumbai, India; and SNDT University, Mumbai. Before joining NTU as the lead faculty in Product Design in 2005, Suresh was a tenured Professor at the Industrial Design Centre, Indian Institute of Technology, India.

© 2008 Nanyang Technological University