Dr Phoenix Perry

Biography

Dr. Phoenix Perry, Reader in Games and Creative Technologies, specializes in developing accessible machine learning tools, founds value-driven creative coding organizations, and creates games that explore our collective interconnectivity. As the founding Course Leader for the MSc in Creative Computing at the University of the Arts London, she blends embodied gaming, inclusive design, and advanced machine learning in interactive systems. She holds a PhD in Computing from Goldsmiths where she focused on Disability Led Game Design. Founder of the Code Liberation Foundation, Perry has empowered over 6000 women to explore computational creativity with games. She also creates tools and open-source resources for game designers and artists, most notably InteractML. Her installations and games work has shown at museums and festivals such as Wellcome Collection, Somerset House, A Maze, Indie Cade, and GDC.

Her past roles include Program Leader of the Independent Games and Playable Experience MA at Goldsmiths, University of London, Sr. Lecturer at HKU in the Netherlands, and an Adjunct Professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, NYU Game Center and NYU ITP. She founded the game studio Dozen Eyes Games focused on games and installations which created social change. The highlight of this project was the creation of a game with the US State Department to help newly arrived refugees in the US. Concurrently, she owned and ran Devotion Gallery in Williamsburg Brooklyn from 2009-2014, which was a vital cultural establishment producing over 200 classes, exhibitions, and events.

Her speaking engagements include A MAZE, GDC, Games for Change, The Open Hardware Summit, Indiecade, Comic Con, Internet Week, Create Tech, IBM Dev Pulse, Montreal International Games Summit and NYU Game Center among others. Perry's creative work spans a large range of disciplines including drawing, generative art, video, games, interfaces, and sound. Her projects have been seen worldwide at venues and festivals including the GDC, E3, Come out and Play, Maker Faire at the New York Hall of Science, Lincoln Center, Transmediale, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, LAMCA, Harvest Works, Babycastles, European Media Arts Festival, GenArt, Seoul Film Festival, and Harvestworks. In 2011 she co-authored the book, Meet the Kinect with Sean Kean and Johnathan Hall. Finally, she has curated since 1996 in a range of cultural venues, the most recent of which is her gallery, Devotion Gallery until 2014. Devotion was a Williamsburg gallery focused on the intersection of art, science, new media, and design.