THEN TRY THIS - Key Persons
Alex is a researcher and practitioner investigating algorithms in pattern-making from an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing from a background in computer science, creative technology design, music performance, creative/live coding, and textile research. He wrote his PhD thesis "Artist-Programmers and Programming Languages for the Arts" at Goldsmiths, University of London funded by EPSRC, and has since held postdoc positions at the University of Sheffield, University of Leeds, and the Research Institute of the Deutsches Museum in Munich. He now works as part of Then Try This full-time, working on his "Algorithmic Pattern" project, funded by a 4-7 year Future Leaders Fellowship.
Alex is active across the digital arts, co-editing the Oxford Handbook on Algorithmic Music and co-authoring Live Coding: A User's Manual published by MIT Press, as well as co-founding major festivals, conferences, and movements including AlgoMech festival, Algorave, TOPLAP, and the International Conferences on Live Coding and Live Interfaces. He also regularly performs live coded music himself, using the popular free/open source TidalCycles environment that he created.
Antonio Roberts is an artist and curator based in Birmingham, UK, working primarily with video, code, and sound. He is critically engaged with the themes surrounding network culture and in his practice explores how technology continues to shape ideas of creation, ownership, and authorship. As a performing visual artist and musician he utilises live coding techniques to demystify technology and reveal its design decisions, limitations, and creative potential. His work has been featured at galleries and festivals including databit.me (2012), Furtherfield (2013, 2019), Tate Britain (2014, 2015, 2020), Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago (2014),Birmingham Open Media (2015-2016), Jerwood Arts (2016), Whitney Museum of American Art (2017), Green Man Festival (2017), Barbican (2018), Victoria and Albert Museum (2019), and the Czurles Nelson Gallery (2019). He has curated exhibitions and projects including GLI.TC/H Birmingham (2011), Bring Your Own Beamer (2012, 2013), Stealth (2015), No Copyright Infringement Intended (2017), Copy Paste (2020), and Rules of Engagement (2020). He is part of a-n's Artist Council, is an Artist Advisor for Jerwood Arts and from 2014 - 2019 he was Curator at Vivid Projects where he produced the Black Hole Club artist development programme.
Antony recently completed his PhD in Biological Sciences at the University of Exeter's Centre for Ecology and Conservation. He is interested in open source technology and its potential to provide accessible and affordable tools to solve important problems (e.g. in research, environmental monitoring, and conservation). Antony has joined Then Try This for a six-month placement funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), having previously joined us for a professional internship for PhD students.
Dave Griffiths is a founding director of Then Try This, and has worked with the FoAM network since 2009. His background is in R&D, working for Sony Europe (games) and The Moving Picture Company (film) in London. His software was used in feature film post production, and he has credits on Troy and Kingdom of Heaven. In 2009 he worked for FoAM Brussels using research AI technology to drive "plant spirit" characters for an online game about permaculture. In 2011 alongside Marloes de Valk and Aymeric Mansoux he won the Fundacion Telefonica VIDA Art and Artificial Life award with Naked on Pluto, a game that reflects on the invasive means used in the development of "social software", which has been exhibited in Madrid and Taiwan.
He is used to working with diverse sectors and people - developing experimental music technology for Aphex Twin and working with Cornish farmers on the Farm Crap App, which won the 2014 Soil Association innovation award with the Duchy College and Rothamsted Research. His current work includes research into how ancient and traditional approaches to pattern-making could enrich contemporary creative technologies, as part of Alpaca, a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship led by Dr. Alex McLean at Then Try This.
His media experience includes a live BBC radio 6 interview with Cerys Matthews and BBC TV news talking about Sonic Kayaks (remote sensing, citizen science and sound art for visually impaired people collaborating with Kaffe Matthews). As part of slub he has performed music livecoding internationally at festivals such as VIVO Mexico City, Mozilla Festival UK, Sonar Barcelona, STRP Eindhoven and The Secret Garden Party. He is an Associate Lecturer in Electronic Music, Computing and Technology at Goldsmiths University of London, and Assistant professor for Critical Programming at the Institute For Music And Media of the Robert Schumann School of Music and Media in Düsseldorf, and also teaches programming, electronics and critical approaches to technology with primary school children, young families, school teachers in Cornwall.
Dr. Amber Griffiths is a founding Director of Then Try This. With a background in wildlife conservation genetics research and science policy, Amber now develops new ways to do research that integrate better with the needs of society, with publications spanning genomics, ecology, evolution, data visualisation, sound art, remote sensing, appropriate technology, workshop design, wildlife conservation and science policy, as well as writing for international media including The Guardian and The Conversation on the rapid global changes in research culture and education.
Amber held a permanent lectureship in 'Natural Environment' at the EU funded Environment and Sustainability Institute at the University of Exeter, a EU Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (University of Exeter, wildlife disease genetics and citizen science, 2013-2015), and an Academy of Finland Research Fellowship (University of Helsinki, fisheries genetics and management, 2011-2013). During this time they supervised 3 PhD students (Drs. Abhilash Nair, Charlie Ellis and Lewis Campbell), as well as numerous MSc and BSc research students. Before this Amber was a postdoctoral researcher on the EU FP7 project BALTGENE (University of Helsinki, Baltic sea genetic biodiversity and management, 2010-2011) and EU FP6 project CLIMIGRATE (Royal Holloway University of London, using ancient DNA to predict the response of wildlife to climate change, 2009-2010), and completed a PhD on citizen science and genetics for amphibian conservation (Institute of Zoology/Queen Mary University of London, 2005-2008). Amber was seconded as a scientific adviser in the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (2008) translating science for MPs and Lords, has performed advisory roles in the European Parliament, and sat as a Councillor (UK local government, Mylor and Flushing, 2018-2019).
Amber's current projects include making a citizen science platform for insect behaviour research, building low cost air pollution sensors for community activism, developing a climate adaptation tool for local government, curating a residency series on microbe behaviour, and a cross-political-party project linking policy makers with local researchers for environmental and climate action.
Dr. Julieta Arancio is a social scientist with a background in environmental science and many other hats, interested in how open source and a philosophy of the commons can transform the way we do science and technology. Her work has focused mainly on open science hardware, meaning open access to the designs of scientific instruments. She is a member of the Gathering for Open Science Hardware (GOSH), with whom she has written policy recommendations and other community documents; she has also co-founded the Latin American Free/Libre technologies for science and education (reGOSH). She is one of the organisers of "Open Hardware Makers", a training and mentorship program for developers, and works as a consultant for the Appropedia Foundation on documentation workflows for open hardware and innovation. More recently, Julieta was consulted for the UNESCO 2021 Recommendation on Open Science and works on developing strategies and tools for open hardware support in research policy. Julieta is currently a postdoctoral researcher in science and technology studies in the Center for Science, Technology and Society at Drexel University (US), funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. She is working on a case study of the OpenFlexure Microscope, doing fieldwork in the UK at University of Bath, and in Tanzania at the Ifakara Health Institute. Her PhD, defended in March 2021, explored how academics, community scientists, teachers, entrepreneurs and artists are building an open hardware movement to democratise the tools of knowledge production. She joined Then Try This as a non-executive director in July 2022.
George is doing an MSc in Sustainable Development at the University of Exeter and joined Then Try This for a work placement in 2023. During the placement George got the SmogOff air pollution sensors out into our local community, wrote a user-guide, and wrangled sensor data into easy-to-understand reports.
Jane has a background in Fine Art and Design, Humanities, Art History and Theory, and a Diploma in Counselling. Jane is the Director of Cultivator, which is a skills and business support project for the Creative Industries in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, funded by European Structural and Investment Funds, Arts Council England and Cornwall Council. From 2001 to 2016 she was Director of Creative Skills - funded by various strands of ESF, Creative Skills supported the skills development of Cornwall's Creative Industries SMEs. During that period Jane was also director of ArtsMatrix, an EU funded programme that provided continuing professional development support for Creative Industries SMEs across the South West, with offices in Bristol, Bovey Tracey, Montacute in Somerset; Bridport and Gloucester. Prior to 2001 she was variously Marketing Manager at Kneehigh Theatre; ceramic technician at Truro School and the editor of Cornwall Holidays. Jane is a trustee at Miracle Theatre (since 2014) and the Leach Pottery (since 2015), and joined Then Try This as a non-executive director in October 2020.
Jo is interested in the relationships between people and nature. This includes the effects people have on the environment, the ways people interact and the effects nature has on people. She has a background in marine sciences, so is particularly passionate about the connections between society and the sea. Jo currently works on the BlueHealth project at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health researching the links between aquatic environments and human wellbeing. Previously, for her PhD, she investigated the underwater noise from shipping and the BOLT Lifesaver wave energy converter in Falmouth Bay making long term recordings of underwater sound. Jo has been collaborating with FoAM Kernow (now called Then Try This) on the Sonic Kayak project, linking together her background in marine noise and BlueHealth research.
Karen is an environmental scientist with an interest in all things spatial. Her work queries the relationships between patterns and functions in ecosystems. She predominantly works in systems with small plants where the structure of ecosystems relates to functional ways that landscapes respond to change. She founded the University of Exeter's DroneLab where her team are trying out new ways of using drones for capturing environmental data. Karen works at the University of Exeter as a Professor in the geography department, and she joined Then Try This as a non-executive director in October 2020.
Lotty Brand is interested in the evolution of human behaviour and cognition. Her PhD work investigated the effect of sex differences in confidence and risk-taking on social learning. She also conducted a large scale comparison of statistical analysis techniques to promote a new form of cumulative science. Most recently she has explored the evolution of social hierarchies and prestige-biased social learning. She conducts experiments with members of the wider community as well as students, and is a dedicated science communicator. She believes firmly that all scientific work should be fully transparent, reproducible, and openly available to all.
Vivek Nityananda has a PhD in Animal Behaviour from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He has worked at the University of Minnesota, St Paul and Queen Mary University of London and is currently a David Phillips Research Fellow at Newcastle University. He researches the ecology and evolution of sensory behaviour and cognitive biases. Vivek is working with Then Try This on the Evidence Support Initiative, having taken part in the first pilot placements for scientists with their local councils.