The UNT College of Visual Art and Design in collaboration with the iARTAresearch initiative recently hosted a lecture and follow up round-tablediscussion with UCI arts professor, Simon Penny.

Penny was appointed Professor of Arts and Engineering at University ofCalifornia Irvine (a specially-created joint appointment between the HenrySamueli School of Engineering and the Claire Trevor School of Arts) in2001 (with an appointment also in Information and Computer Science).He was architect and founding director of the interdisciplinary graduateprogram in Arts, Computation and Engineering, established 2003 (ACE,see www.ace.uci.edu). He is ‘humanist at large’ for the University ofCalifornia Council on Research. Prof. Penny was previously an AssociateProfessor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University (a jointappointment between the College of Fine Arts and the Robotics Institute);1993-2001. During 2000-01 he was European Professor of InteractiveEnvironments at the University of Portsmouth and the Merz Akademie,Stuttgart, and a member of the central committee of the EU ESPRITproject CIRCUS. He established the Electronic Intermedia Program atthe University of Florida 1989-93. Prior to his arrival in the US, he helda range of academic positions in Australia. He is a guest professor forthe Interdisciplinary Master in Cognitive Systems and Interactive Media(CSIM), Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, 2008, and 2009.