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Toby Harris, PhD

I use art, design and engineering to do interesting things. Here, that’s getting a robot to do stand-up comedy to better understand performer–audience interaction. This site logs a lot more, currently 34 projects since 2000, and 1247 diary entries since 2006.

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Live events have driven much of my work. They fascinate me; things change, there together, in the moment. Here, we match-made social entrepreneurs from around the world, and captured commitments as they happened. Published on the spot, we made a ‘talking shop’ actionable and accountable.

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A problem I always hit is the inflexibility of media, even with computers. I often think of oral storytellers, who adapt the story, moment-by-moment, to the audience. They navigate story-worlds rather than recounting fixed narratives. Digital media should be this dynamic. Here, I worked with the BBC to model narrative and ask what a true ‘web adaptation’ of a story might be.

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My instinct is to think like a product designer. On occasion, I am actually one. This is video hardware I hacked together for my own needs, and spun into a retail product. But I’m a good all-rounder too: every detail of it was my doing, from the PCB traces to the marketing copy. And, of course, the business model.

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Here is my artist alter-ego *spark, in the programme of Brazil’s FILE festival. I have performed Live Cinema pieces worldwide, and made a documentary about the artform.

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Websites can only do so much. I much prefer to be out there, engaging face to face. Coffee…?