6 September 2013
Future 40 accolade for DJCAD lecturer
Image is of Christian Shaw, a character from one of Dr Leishman's projects.
A researcher and media artist from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) has been named as one of Scotland's top storytellers working today.
The groundbreaking Scottish publishing firm Canongate has celebrated its 40th anniversary with a list of the 40 contemporary storytellers whose work they believe will define the next four decades of the nation's cultural output.
Dr Donna Leishman, programme leader for Communication Design at DJCAD and a renowned interactive artist who has worked and exhibited across the world, was among those listed in Canongate's Future 40, which was compiled in collaboration with Scottish cultural magazine The Skinny and top artists, writers, musicians and publishers.
The list recognises how the possibilities of storytelling have been changed by new technology and scoured both traditional and new media for the best storytellers in the fields of literature, animation, film, visual art, spoken-word, games, music, graphic novels, digital media and theatre.
Dr Leishman's works have been featured in The New York Times, The List, The Herald, Create Online, Computer Arts, The Scotsman, The Guardian, Desktop Magazine (AUS), TIRWEB and Design Week. Since 1999, her website 6amhoover.com has showcased her interactive projects. Her artworks have been presented in museums, galleries, conferences and festivals around the world.
She expressed her delight at being named as one of the Future 40, saying, 'The shelf-life of literary experiences as they intersect and transform over digital platforms has been a longstanding research subject of mine and something that has directly fed into my teaching at DJCAD.
'As such, it is really invigorating to be acknowledged by the publisher Canongate and their peers as a contemporary storyteller, someone who is also producing visual projects that make people think and have the potential to influence the future of our creative culture in Scotland.'
Dr Leishman was nominated for a place on the Future 40 list by Mark Daniels, Executive Director at New Media Scotland, who said, 'Her narratives are brought to life as illustrations animated using Flash. There is a dark undertone hidden behind wide eyes in this work, a density of layers to be explored.'
Francis Bickmore, Publishing Director at Canongate, said, 'Forty seemed an appropriate age to look at where we had come from and where we are going. We didn't want it to be too nostalgic and backslapping, and for us the interesting thing was looking ahead to the new forms which storytelling could take over the next 40 years.
'The mission was to find people who haven't quite popped up onto the mainstream radar yet, but are likely to be the ones to watch for exciting narrative ideas over the coming years. More than ever the role of the author is one that can extend out of the writer's study and into the world. How writers engage with their audience is something we are wrestling with as a culture but is certainly going to have an effect on storytelling.'
For media enquiries contact:
Grant Hill
Press Officer
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384768
E-MAIL: g.hill@dundee.ac.uk
MOBILE: 07854 953277 |
