DrAndrew Burrell

Andrew Burrell is a practice-based researcher and educator exploring virtual and digitally mediated environments as a site for the construction, experience and exploration of memory as narrative. Their ongoing research investigates the relationship between imagined and remembered narrative and how the multi-layered biological and technological encoding of human subjectivity may be portrayed within, and inform the design of, virtual environments.

Andrew's networked projects in virtual and augmented environments have received international recognition. Andrew uses creative practice to research and understand the complexities of emerging and speculative technologies and is particularly interested in how these are implicated in more-than-human ecologies.

Current projects include "Twice, again", which looks at the role of memory and forgetting in machine-mediated spaces and how this might affect networked ecologies and "overGround:underStories", a series of more-than-human encounters exploring entangled networks and relationships between physical and virtual ecologies investigating the role of creative practice in understanding so-called artificial and biological intelligences.

Previously, Andrew was a chief investigator on the ARC Linkage initiative Waves of Words and led one of its core research outcomes – the Layered Horizons project. Waves of Words investigated the movement of language in pre-colonial times from the Pacific into now-Australia and back again. An ongoing extension of Layered Horizons includes an investigation into the use of machine learning to speculate on the ways in which seabirds may have played a role in the movement of language.

Recent works include co-authorship of "The Urban Filed Naturalist's Guide to the Creatures in Your Neighbourhood", Amala Groom X Andrew Burrell's - "can't buy me love", and a collaboration with Agatha Gothe-Snape, for The National "Every Act of Reading Performs the Work" (funded via create NSW 360 Vision initiative). Andew's creative practice informs his traditional research outcomes, which include Nura Yarman ('Country Speaks'): Language, People and Place in Serious Games, co-authored with Danièle Hromek and Rachel Hendery, which was published as a paper in the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (2022), and Between the physical and the virtual: The present tense of virtual space, published in Virtual Creativity (2019).

Andrew is a member of the UTS Visualisation Institute, a multidisciplinary research group focused on the creation of data visualisations, stories and immersive experiences, and the School of Design’s Critical Visualisation research group.

Teaching
Andrew is an advocate for studio-based learning in which students design solutions to real-world questions through the use of iteration and experimentation. Andrew considers the role of design as an anchor for interdisciplinary practice and regularly brings cross-disciplinary practitioners and perspectives into his teaching spaces and encourages students to engage with new and emerging technologies, challenging them to rethink their relationship to design and their own creative practice.

Supervision
Andrew places significant emphasis on helping students establish supportive learning networks with their supervisory teams and their peers. They are currently supervising five PhD and master’s students and has an interest in working with students who sit at the intersection of traditional and practice-based research approaches, as well as those working with contemporary and emerging technologies.