Alex teaches interactive media design in the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore. Alex's current research investigates various aspects of computer-based art and entertainment, focusing in particular on interactive stories. This work involves creating digital and non-digital interactive storytelling systems, using these systems to develop creative works, and observing how people respond to the resulting pieces. It also involves theoretical work to understand what is happening in and around this process. Current funded project: "Understanding Repeat Engagement with Dynamic Computational Systems" (AcRF Tier 1 grant). Previous funded projects "Exploring 'Literary Devices' for Poetic Interactivity" (AcRF Tier 1 grant), "Communication Strategies in Real-time Computer-Mediated Creative Collaboration" (HSS Seed Grant, with A/P Lonce Wyse and Dr. Jude Yew), and "Authoring Paradigms and Representation in Interactive Storytelling Tools" (FASS Startup Grant).
Before joining NUS, Alex was a lecturer at the School of Interactive Digital Media, Nanyang Polytechnic, where he taught and developed projects in interactive media and games. Alex has also worked as an interaction designer at IDEO, London, and at I2R, Singapore. He has a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, and recently completed his PhD at the NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering, where he was attached to the Partner Technologies Research Group.
His creative work has been shown at Graphite 2004 (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore); the Creative Curating Lab (Singapore Art Show 2005); the Displacements exhibition (13 Wilkie Terrace, 2013); Passports: Through the Red Dot Into Other Worlds (Lorong 24A Shophouse Series, 2013); Seni Mini (Mi Casa Su Casa, 2014); Print Lab (Grey Projects, 2014); Interstitium (Lorong 24A Shophouse Series, 2015); 50 Obsessions (LaSalle-SIA College of the Arts, 2015); Petri #4: Repurposing Nostalgia (42 Petain Road, 2016); ID: The Body's Still Warm (42 Cambridge Road, 2018); and Climates of Change (ELO/HyperText, 2020). His fiction has been published in Dark Tales, Balik Kampung 2, and in several issues of the Twenty-Four Flavours series, a collection of flash fiction published by Math Paper Press.
2022/2023 Semester 1:
Current students
Previous students
"Understanding Repeat Engagement with Dynamic Computational Systems" (AcRF Tier 1 grant)
Much of the motivation to reexperience creative works such as films, novels, or music assumes that although the context of the experience may have changed, the actual work being revisited is still the same. However, when returning to a work where an underlying computational system dynamically alters the surface of the work as the result of the participant’s actions, there is no guarantee that the experience, or even the work itself, will be the same as in the previous encounter. This project explores what motivates people to return to this type of work, what type of satisfaction can be gained by this repeat experience, and how the design of the formal elements of the work impact this experience.
ARTICLES IN JOURNALS
CONFERENCE PAPERS
CHAPTERS IN BOOKS
THESES/DISSERTATIONS
VIDEOS
Group Exhibitions
Published Fiction