Stuart Nolan

Lancaster University, Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA), Graduate Student

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I have been a professional performer, creative technologist, and artist for the past 40 years and I’m currently an artist-researcher at Lancaster University UK, investigating the cultural history of mind-reading from 19th-century theatrical mentalism to present-day neurotechnological imaginaries.
My practice combines traditional disciplines of deception with innovative and questionable technologies that have included a mind-reading robot bird, an AI that believes in magic, fortune-telling Blockchain, and a device that makes a person’s arm invisible. My work has been featured on BBC Click, The Guardian, US Wired, and at the Venice Biennale. I recently trained a thousand people in how to read minds through touch.
I am a co-founder of the Magic Research Group, Huddersfield University, co-editor of The Journal of Performance Magic, NESTA Fellow in Applied Magic, Emeritus Magician in Residence at Pervasive Media Studio, and was recently awarded the title of Most Exalted Member of The Magiculum.
Supervisors: Professor Charlie Gere and Professor Bronislaw Szerszynski

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Interactive TV:Planned Educational Uses versus Real Educational Needs

IOS Press, Oct 1, 2002

Tangible Gestural Interaction with Resonant Bits

Physical Metaphorical Modelling with LEGO as a Technology for Collaborative Personalised Learning

Technology-Supported Environments for Personalized Learning

LEGO Serious Play is a business development process where users build metaphorical models from LE... more LEGO Serious Play is a business development process where users build metaphorical models from LEGO bricks in order to explore and share their perceptions of various aspects of their working lives. They model important symbolic elements of their personality, emotions, working practices, organization, and the relationships between these elements in order to share stories that aid the construction of organizational knowledge. This chapter reports on trials using LEGO Serious Play with HE students from a range of subject areas who used metaphorical modelling to articulate their learning autobiographies, current situations, orientations to learning, and aspirations. The models helped students make informed choices and helped staff to understand their needs and personalise the learning provision appropriately

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Physical Metaphorical Modelling with LEGO as a Technology for Collaborative Personalised Learning

Technology-Supported Environments for Personalized Learning

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Building magical realms: responses to pervasive and locative media technology

Digital Creativity, 2006

This paper reports on 12 participatory design workshops involving 216 young people, aged 9 to 16.... more This paper reports on 12 participatory design workshops involving 216 young people, aged 9 to 16. It discusses responses to existing and proposed locative and pervasive media technologies in gaming, mapping, gifting, game design, bodystorming, and collaborative storytelling activities. Issues of the technomagical in scenario planning are discussed.

Box Clever: The Intelligence of Television

AI & Society, 2003

Television is a global, near-ubiquitous technology that has played a unique role in shaping moder... more Television is a global, near-ubiquitous technology that has played a unique role in shaping modern society. It is a member of the family household that is regarded, both consciously and subconsciously, as a social actor, in a way that is remarkably similar to that of other members. Individuals, households and broad social groups form complex relationships with television but its underlying technologies have remained relatively simple until now. This paper looks at how new technologies will add intelligence to television and change these relationship for good or ill.

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Edenic Telepathy: From Thought Drawings to Neuroimagery

Ever since the 19th-century, techniques for performing telepathy and the visualisations of though... more Ever since the 19th-century, techniques for performing telepathy and the visualisations of thoughts they produced have shaped our technological imaginaries. Images produced by scientific investigations of stage mindreaders, by theatrical muscle readers, and by thought drawing parlour games all reflect a theological/philosophical tradition that yearns for a tamed, frictionless, Edenic telepathy between pure, transparent, disembodied communicants.<b></b>This paper explores the visual unfolding of cultural notions of Edenic telepathy from 19th-century thought drawings to the images of thoughts generated by neurotechnologies such as CTRL-Labs/Facebook's neural interfaces, Elon Musk's Neuralink, and Openwater's mind-reader.The paper draws on the art/research project One Thousand Mindreaders, during which the author taught a thousand people the skill of thought drawing by muscle reading. By holding another person's arm while they imagine making a drawing, muscl...

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Letter from the Editors

Journal of performance magic, Dec 6, 2021

Ambalaj atıklarının geri dönüşümü hem ekonomik hem de çevresel avantajlarından dolayı hızla artan... more Ambalaj atıklarının geri dönüşümü hem ekonomik hem de çevresel avantajlarından dolayı hızla artan atık üretimine karşı alınacak önlemleri destekleyebilecek önemli bir çalışma alanıdır. Maltepe Belediyesi ile ortaklaşa yürütülen bu çalışma; çevresel, sosyal ve ekonomik açıdan en uygun olan ambalaj atığı toplama sisteminin geliştirilmesini amaçlamaktadır. Bu kapsamda; mevcut ambalaj atığı toplama sistemi ve bu sisteme alternatif olarak geliştirilen 6 farklı toplama sistemi incelenmiştir. Toplama sistemlerinin sürdürülebilirlik analizinde yaşam döngüsü değerlendirmesi metodu kullanılmıştır. Yaşam döngüsü değerlendirmesinde kullanılacak olan envanter verileri; mevcut sistem analizi, saha gözlemi, anketler ve alternatif sistem hesaplamaları sonucunda elde edilmiştir. Alternatif senaryoların çevresel ve ekonomik analizi mevcut sistem verileri dikkate alınarak hesaplanırken; sosyal analiz, saha gözlemleri ve anketlere dayandırılarak yapılmıştır. Bu çalışmanın sonunda, çevresel ve ekonomik açıdan değerlendirme yapıldığında resmi toplama sistemine kıyasla, kayıt dışı toplama sisteminin daha avantajlı olduğu görülmüştür. Ancak sosyal analiz sonuçları irdelendiğinde kontrolsüz toplama sistemlerinin ciddi bir dezavantaja sahip olduğu tespit edilmiş, bütünleyici bir bakış açısına ihtiyaç olduğu açıkça görülmüştür. Bütüncül bir perspektifle yürütülen çevresel, sosyal ve ekonomik analiz neticesinde ortaya çıkarılan zayıflıkların, resmi ve kayıt dışı sistem entegrasyonunun önerildiği alternatif toplama sistemiyle minimize edilebileceği öngörülmüştür.

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iDTV Gamers: The Emergence of a New Community?

If digital games are to continue to grown as important cultural form they must move into new plat... more If digital games are to continue to grown as important cultural form they must move into new platforms and environments that appeal to a broader cultural demographic. Interactive Digital TV (iDTV) is developing rapidly in Europe and is providing platforms where games are popular among communities quite unlike the traditional PC or console gamer. In addition, communication is becoming possible through multi-player games, TV based mail, chat, message boards and leader boards which show the scores of the top players. This paper looks at the development of iDTV games, the current gamers, and explores the issues surrounding their relationship to traditional television, games, and the family.

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Vers une magie numérique non rétinienne

Performing Fabulous Monsters: Re-inventing the Gothic Personae in Bizarre Magic

by Stuart Nolan and Nik Taylor

Bizarre magic is a form of performance magic that favours theatrical character, storytelling, ove... more Bizarre magic is a form of performance magic that favours theatrical character, storytelling, overt allegory, symbolism and metaphor, and themes of the supernatural, fantastic, amazing and weird. Having roots in Victorian stage magic and the early 20th century performances of Theodore Annemann and Stewart James it realised itself as a movement in the 1970s through a counter-cultural reaction against the big boxes and card flourishes of a disenchanted contemporary mainstream stage magic. Bizarre magicians sought to re-enchant performance magic with the mysterious and the spiritual, (re)discovering meaning through storytelling and theatrical character. This paper examines the adoption of popular Gothic representations in the stage persona of a number of key figures in bizarre magic. Such representations may be overt - Charles Cameron's Count Dracula Mentalism - or subtle - Eugene Burger and Max Maven referencing the characters of Boris Karloff and Ming the Merciless respectively. ...

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Letter from the Editors

Journal of performance magic, 2015

Resonant Bits

Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction - TEI '14, 2015

This paper presents the concept of Resonant Bits, an interaction technique for encouraging engagi... more This paper presents the concept of Resonant Bits, an interaction technique for encouraging engaging, slow and skilful interaction with tangible, mobile and ubiquitous devices. The technique is based on the resonant excitation of harmonic oscillators and allows the exploration of a number of novel types of tangible interaction including: ideomotor control, where subliminal micro-movements accumulate over time to produce a visible outcome; indirect tangible interaction, where a number of devices can be controlled simultaneously through an intermediary object such as a table; and slow interaction, with meditative and repetitive gestures being used for control. The Resonant Bits concept is tested as an interaction method in a study where participants resonate with virtual pendulums on a mobile device. The Harmonic Tuner, a resonance-based music player, is presented as a simple example of using resonant bits. Overall, our ambition in proposing the Resonant Bits concept is to promote skilful, engaging and ultimately rewarding forms of interaction with tangible devices that takes time and patience to learn and master.

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Resonant Bits: Harmonic Interaction with Virtual Pendulums

Performing fabulous monsters

Imaging gothic fictions from the nineteenth century to the present, 2015

Stuart Nolan

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