Samantha Kitchener

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Samantha Kitchener
About
Teaching and learning
Research

About

I am an artist, researcher and Senior Lecturer in transmedia storytelling for MA Illustration and Acting Course Leader for BA Interaction Design. I have experience in live projects that are public facing as well as facilitation of practice research within cultural spaces working with stakeholders, arts councils, and local communities.

My interests centre on the interstices between computation, instrumentality and human experience. My practice explores transmedia storytelling as an emerging practice within heritage, visual communication and interaction design disciplines. The application of remote sensing techniques fosters a relationship with virtual environments that embrace indeterminacy over exact representation. Instead, they are investigated as spatial-critical mediums that reveal hidden narratives and reconstruct collective memory.

My practice-based doctoral research (completion Sept 2024) explores volumetric and experimental spatial capture as a methodological approach to understanding visual ethnographies, heritages and marginalised communities through the technological lens.

Academic responsibilities

Acting Course Leader BA Interaction Design and Senior Lecturer (Transmedia Storytelling) MA Illustration

Qualifications

  • BA Graphic Design — Brighton University
  • MA Visual Communication — Royal College of Art
  • Fellowship - Advance HE (FHEA)

Teaching and learning

I have contributed to postgraduate and undergraduate programs in Higher Education with a focus on practice-based research, visual methodologies, and collaboration. My approach to teaching transmedia storytelling is to encourage a transdisciplinary approach to making and understanding the liminality between technological tools and human activity. Instrumental modes of visual communication, whether using a pencil or a digital device, can be understood theoretically as the same. The approach is one of transferability rather than skill acquisition. My aim in teaching is to foster familiarity and innovation with an accessible approach to advanced technologies that challenge ways of designing space and interactions within visual communication disciplines, prioritising sentiment and emotion unfettered by political, economic and social discourse.

Qualifications and expertise

  • Fellowship - Advance HE (FHEA)

Undergraduate courses taught

Postgraduate courses taught

Research

My practice-based doctoral research documents the 2020-2022 eradication of the Redcar Steelworks site and industrial landscape on the Northeast coast of England.

The research challenges traditional modes of heritage digitisation that equate volumetric totality with authenticity. Instead, indeterminacy is embraced when using experimental spatial capture tools to reveal biography, aura, and experiential knowledge. The methods are predominantly photogrammetry and structure from motion algorithms, virtual reconstruction in computer gaming software, and 3D laser scanning. They are offered as tools to redefine heritage perception that bring us closer to the essence of place. 

Remote sensing techniques mediate multiple community voices experiencing heritage loss. Through reflexivity and participatory practice, the visual assemblage becomes a multi-authored approach to the virtual re-imagining of a site that no longer exists. Notably, through a process coined ‘Retrospective Capture,' I gathered approximately 100,000 image points from community ‘found footage' on social media that captured the exact moment of demolition as felt by those most intimately connected to the site. The process combines handcraft and instrumental techniques to build a virtual cosmology of those experiences. 

Areas of specialism

  • Cultural Heritage
  • Volumetric Capture
  • Interaction Design
  • Community Engagement