Ghislaine Boddington

Creative Director, body>data>space

Ghislaine Boddington is an award-winning artist, curator, director and presenter, specialising in the future human, body responsive technologies and immersive experiences. She is co-founder and Creative Director of body>data>space, a pioneering interactive creative design collective who have advocated for the living body to be at the heart of the digital debate since the early 1990s. With a background in dance and performing arts and a long-term focus on the blending of our virtual and physical bodies, she engages in highly topical and future digital issues for our living bodies, including personal data usage, identity and representation of the self, connected body enhancements, digital itimcacy and collective embodiment of the future.

Ghislaine co-presents bi-weekly as Studio Expert for the renowned radio show BBC Digital Planet (formerly Click), the BBC World Service flagship technology and society programme and podcast. She works worldwide as a keynote speaker, presenter, host and panellist and consults into the arts, education, creative industries and business sectors, regularly working as a curator of futures.

As an active advocate for diversity and inclusivity she is a co-founder of Women Shift Digital (2012 to date), a Trustee for the Stemettes and Spokesperson for the Deutsche Bank “Women Entrepreneurs in Social Tech” Accelerator. She was an Inventor of the Year Finalist in the Tech Inclusive Alliance Awards 2019.

In 2017, Ghislaine was awarded the IX Immersion Experience Visionary Pioneer Award by Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) for her long-term innovative work in digital arts, and in particular her “passionate and inspirational engagement towards embodied intelligence in immersion space”.

  • As a director Ghislaine has led numerous international group creation projects, such as Butterfly Effect Network (1991–1996), Club Research (1995–1997), CellBytes (2000–2001), skintouchfeel (2002 – 2006) and Ideasphere (2004 – 2006). She directed the participatory immersive performance installations Dare we do it Real Time? (EU / Kinetica Art Fair 2009), me and my shadow (EU / National Theatre, London, 2012) and Collective Reality – Experience Togetherness (Nesta’s FutureFest, 2016). These real-time experiential projects focused on the blending of the virtual and physical body through converging telepresence, sensors, motion capture, wearables, gesture interfaces, biofeedback, robotics, virtual worlds and mixed realities into experiential environments.

    Throughout the direction of these connected immersive experiences, she co-developed The Weave, an inter-authorship methodology for inter-disciplinary co-creation processes, stimulating collaborations between thousands of participants/audiences across the world for educational, performing arts and creative industries usage. This open methodology is used by many creatives onwards today.

  • As a curator Ghislaine has delivered multiple exhibitions and programmes of work across the last 30 years from Gender Mayhem (ICA, 1993-95), Soundworks Exchange (Goethe Institute/ British Council 1996-8) and Virtual Incarnations (Dance Umbrella 2000-02) to lead direction of large scale international and EU programmes such as Future Physical (2002-04), Post_Me New_ID ( 2007-09), Robots and Avatars – Our Colleagues and Playmates of the Future (2009-12). Recent curations include Future Machines (Nesta’s FutureFest 2015), Future Love (Nesta’s FutureFest 2016), The Games Europe Plays (EUNIC London 2016), FutureFest Forward 2018 series and Bio-Body-Tech for FutureFest 2018.

  • She works as a Creative Director into projects on innovation and human futures, and consults across corporate, creative industries, academia and arts sectors, gathering inter-sectorial insights and links through her wide ranging knowledge and original thought process. She was Creative Director for the launch and first year of Plexal Innovation Centre (Here East, London, 2016–17) and for the industry launch of Imogen Heap’s blockchain based Mycelia Platform for musicians (2017). She coaches creative tech mentees, including working as a Process Lead for Dansathon (La Maison de la Danse de Lyon, Sadler’s Wells in London, Théâtre de Liège 2018) and as Lead Contributor and Mentor for the QuestLab series (Studio Wayne McGregor 2018-19).
  • Her research is supported by a Readership in Digital Immersion at University of Greenwich. Ghislaine continues her exploration into the advancements of the human body and coined the term ‘The Internet of Bodies’ to examine the highly topical evolution of our future multi-selves through gesture and sense interfaces, biometrics, augmented realities and embedded digital body connectivity. This research points to the rapid blending of the virtual and the physical body and future collective embodiments.
  • She keynotes internationally and had presented in over 30 countries in a range of sectors from arts and academia to creative industries and corporate scenarios. With two TedX presentations and many university linked keynotes, Ghislaine talks into a diverse range of audiences from small groups to large auditoriums about her topical concerns on identity and self-hood and the future human issues linked to the ownership of biometric body data. (See selected keynotes and presentations below)
  • She sits on the editorial board of Journal AI and Society (Springer) and is regularly invited as a jury member for international creative industries and digital arts competitions. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a member of Tech London Advocates Women (UK), the Internet of Things Council (UK), digital arts network RAN (France) and the Gabriela Tudor Foundation (Romania).
  • She receive press / TV coverage of her work in written articles and is regularly asked to input topical commentary for TV, radio and government reports on her key expertise. Recent reviews and interviews on Ghislaine’s expertise include Douglas Rushkoff’s Team Human, Financial Times, Forbes, Sky News, The Independent, The Guardian, Vice Canada and UK, BBC World News, BBC Science, BBC World Service, Digital Futures Telefonica, RTV, Upload VR, Daily Mail, The Memo, etc.

Selected keynotes and presentations:

2019

  • Keynote – ‘The Internet of Bodies – body data and ethics’ at UK Research and Innovation’s Industrial Strategy conference ‘BEYOND – AI and Creativity’, Edinburgh, UK
  • Keynote – ‘The Internet of Bodies – alive, collective and connected’ at Women in Games European Conference, London, UK
  • Keynote Speaker – ‘Internet of Bodies: Exploring the Future Human and Collective Engagement Scenarios’ for ‘Tacit Engagement in the Digital Age’ Conference, University of Cambridge, UK
  • Presentation – ‘Cyborg Futures’ for The Pioneers, Hofburg Imperial Palace, Vienna, Austria
  • Opening Keynote ‘The Internet of Bodies – alive, connected and collective’ and ‘Biohacking on Stage Live Human Chip Implant Show’ for Mobile World Congress / 4YFN (4 Years From Now), Barcelona, Spain
  • Keynote – ‘The Internet of Bodies’ at the Simulation Training for Resilience & Safety Symposium in London, UK
  • Presentation – ‘The Internet of Bodies’ at Milan Digital Week for Nesta Italia in Milan, Italy

2018

  • Keynote Speaker – ‘Women in Tech: Diversity & Inclusivity Enables Innovation’ for the Deutsche Bank Women Entrepreneurs in Social Tech Accelerator Launch at Deutsche Bank, London, UK
  • Keynote – ‘Internet of Bodies – alive, connected and collective’ for the House of Beautiful Business, Academy of Science, Lisbon, Portugal
  • Presentation and curation – ‘Future humans: Augmented selves’ and ‘AI and Creativity Futures’  for Nesta’s FutureFest, London, UK
  • Presentation – Live Human Chip Implant Show ‘You have been upgraded’ for Manchester Science Festival, UK
  • Keynote – ‘The Internet of Bodies’ for the Simulation Training for Resilience & Safety Symposium, London, UK
  • Keynote – Women in Tech for Plexal Innovation Centre at Here East, Queen Elizabeth Olympics Park in London, UK

2017

  • Opening Keynote – ‘The Internet on Bodies – alive, connected and collective’ for Internet Mobile World, Bucharest, Romania
  • Keynote – ‘Internet of Bodies – alive, connected and collective’ for Manchester Science Festival, UK
  • Visionary Pioneer Award Keynote – ‘Internet of Bodies’ for IX Immersion Experience Symposium for SAT Dome, Montreal, Quebec
  • Presentation – ‘Internet of Bodies – alive, connected and collective’ for Thinking Digital, Newcastle, UK

2016

  • Keynote Speaker and curation – ‘Live Human Chip Implant Show’ for Nesta’s FutureFest, London, UK
  • Presentation – ‘Women in Tech’ for Telefonica Digital Futures, London, UK
  • Presentation – ‘The Internet of Bodies – connected and collective’ for Develop:Evolve VR conference, Brighton, UK
  • Keynote – ’The Internet of Bodies” for Market Research Council Conference, London, UK
  • Presentation – ‘Future Love – The Internet of Bodies’ for ISEA in Hong Kong

Selected publications:

  • ’What is it that makes us human?– exploring our future creativity and identity’ – Nesta / FutureFest – published online on Nesta and London Tech Week – published online 13 July 2018
  • ‘Woven Bodies, Woven Culture’ a chapter in ‘Identity, Performance and Technology‘ (Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Performance and Technology) – Josephine Machon (Au- thor, Editor), Susan Broadhurst (Author), Dr Susan Broadhurst (Editor), publication date 2013.
  • ‘excited atoms, an exploration of virtual mobility in the contemporary performing arts’, Judith Staines with Ghislaine Boddington. Published by on the move 2010
  • ‘Virtual/Physical Bodies: Corps Virtuels/Physiques’. Centre des Arts Enghiens-les-Bains, Paris. ISBN 9782916639093 – Ghislaine Boddington and Emmanuel Cuisinier, co-eds.  publication date 2008
  • ‘Virtual Physical Bodies – Serious Play’ The World as Virtual Environment, Trans-Media-Akademie Hellerau. ISBN 9783981024739 Extended essay by Ghislaine Boddington Die Welt als virtuelles Environment: Das Buch zur CYNETart_07encounter. Birringer, Johannes and Dumke, Thomas and Nikolai, Klaus, eds. ‘- publication date 2007
  • ‘Virtual Presence Physical Beings – from telegraph to telecast – a reflection on virtual beingness’ – publication date 2000 ResCen Middlesex University.

Find more links to articles and process documents here

@GBoddington