Public Lecture Series 2013- The Good Life is a matter of Aesthetics rather than Ethics

Can we have a good life without being good people? Can good art be produced by bad people? Can we separate the aesthetic from the ethical? Joseph Giacomin (focusing on human centred design), Johannes Birringer (theatre) and Peter Wiegold (music) will each  discuss  these contested notions from their disciplinary perspective. Peter Beresford will focus upon the need to engage all of us in formulating and understanding aesthetics.

Chair: Professor Christina Victor
Speakers: Joseph Giacomin, Johannes Birringer, Peter Wiegold, Peter Beresford 

Speaker profiles 

Joseph Giacomin

Professor Joseph Giacomin is Director of the Human Centred Design Institute (HCDI) at Brunel University, where research is conducted that leads to products, systems and services which are physically, perceptually, cognitively and emotionally intuitive to their users. He teaches modules in Human Factors and in Perception Enhancement.

Professor Giacomin has a PhD from Sheffield University and has both Master's and Bachelor's degrees from the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. He has worked for both the American military and the European automobile industry. Over the years he has participated in numerous EU and UK research projects and has produced more than 60 publications. Most recently he has published his book Thermal - Seeing the World through 21st Century Eyes.

Professor Giacomin is a member of the editorial boards of Ergonomics and of the International Journal of Vehicle Noise and Vibration (IJVNV). He is a Fellow of the UK Ergonomics Society (FErgS), a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA), a member of the Associazione Per Il Disegno Industriale (ADI) and a member of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS).

Johannes Birringer

Johannes Birringer is a choreographer/media artist and director of DAP-Lab at Brunel University where he is Professor of Performance Technologies in the School of Arts. The DAP-lab focuses on research in performance, interactive systems and wearable design.

Johannes Birringer has created numerous dance-theatre works, video installations and digital projects in collaboration with artists in Europe, the Americas, China, Japan and Australia. In 2003 he founded the Interaktionslabor in a former coal mine in Germany, initiating long-term research into interactive systems and real time processes. His digital oratorio Corpo, Carne e Espírito premiered in Brasil at the FIT Theatre Festival in 2008; the interactive dancework Suna no Onna was featured at festivals in London, and the Lab’s mixed-reality installation UKIYO went on European tour in 2010. His new production is a dance opera, for the time being, created as an homage to the 1913 futurist Russian opera Victory over the Sun. He has published widely, and his books include Theatre, Theory, Postmodernism (1989), Media and Performance (1998), Performance on the Edge (2000), Performance, Technology and Science (2009), and two edited volumes on Dance and Cognition (2005), and Dance and Choreomania (2011).

Peter Wiegold  

Professor Wiegold is the Head of Music Research at Brunel and director of two Institutes: The Institute of Composing and BICMEM, the Brunel Institute for Contemporary Middle-Eastern Music. 

He is a composer and conductor and often brings the two together as a ‘band-leader’ crossing the boundaries of composing and improvising. He has also specialised in working across culture, including with musicians from China, India and Japan. Recent compositions include: He is armoured without, for the BBC Proms, with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the Coldstream Guards and musicians from Uzbekistan; Bow-Wave for the National Youth Orchestra; and The End of the Line, an opera for 150 performers for Manchester Piccadilly Railway station. 

He has recently conducted the Composers' Ensemble, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group,  Northern Sinfonia, RPO and Symphony Nova Scotia. 

His own ensemble, notes inégales, described as ‘post-fusion’, combines playing written new music with improvisation – and playing rhythmically ‘funky’ as well as straight. They have their own club at Euston, club inégales, with fortnightly events. Each evening includes a guest and they’ve crossed a wide range: from folk singer Chris Wood to performance poet Murray Lachlan-Young, ‘Polar Bear’ drummer Seb Rochford, Will Self and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

notes inégales have just released a CD of Eastern European klezmer music made for Will Self and his London Review of Books/Arts Council SPACE project ‘Kafka’s Wound’. 

A CD of Peter’s music featuring notes inégales, Earth and Stars, was released in 2010 on the NMC label.

Peter Beresford

Peter Beresford OBE Is Professor of Social Policy and Director of the Centre for Citizen Participation at Brunel University. Participation is the focus of his work as an educator, writer, researcher and activist. He has a background as a long term user of mental health services and is also Chair of the national disabled people’s and service user organisation and network, Shaping Our Lives, which works locally, nationally and internationally to increase the say and control disabled people can have over their lives and support.

Professor Beresford writes regularly for The Guardian, is Executive Editor of Disability and Society and has written widely on social care issues, most recently co-editing with Sarah Carr Service Users, Social Care and User Involvement (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2012).