Dr Hannah Drayson
Profiles

Dr Hannah Drayson

Lecturer in Digital Art & Technology/Immersive Media Design

School of Art, Design and Architecture (Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business)

Hannah Drayson co-convenes the Transtechnology Research group, a community of over 20 graduate researchers in the School of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Plymouth. 

Since the beginning of her career, Hannah’s work has been situated at the intersection of arts, science and technology. As an artist and designer, she has explored a range of media as platforms for creative enquiry, including; web and digital design, interactive art, live coding, reconstructed psychological instruments, hypnotic performances, lists, and live events– mainly parties. 

Her explorations of suggestion as medical and psychological practice led her to train in hypnotism (stage and hypnotherapy) and microphenomenological interview techniques, which offer research topics as well as methods in her work. Her PhD, completed in 2011, led her to an ongoing exploration of the paradoxical phenomenon of the placebo effect and the role of affect and creativity in medicine and healing. Her current research develops these concerns with the aesthetic dimensions of biomedicine, which raise questions of ontology, technology and embodiment. As a member of the Faculty of Minor Disturbances she is currently undertaking research that unexpectedly involves Raymond Chandler and porridge. 

She is currently writing a series of papers on the theme of taste, medicine and the everyday which have involved desk research across a range of disciplines, as well as collaborative workshops and experiments in cooking and recipe writing. The first paper of the series, titled “Don’t Sugar Coat It”, is published in online journal Feast. She is currently working on the second paper, “At the Bitter End” which reflects on how human co-evolution with plants can help us to think about what it means to “take a bitter pill”.

Qualifications

Ph.D. Gestalt Biometrics and their Applications: Instrumentation, Objectivity and Poetics. University of Plymouth.
EPSRC funded research into the use of biometric technologies in interactive arts practice. This project combining theoretical approaches from medical humanities, arts and STS with practice-based interactive artworks focussed on the epistemological consequences of ideas such as objectivity and instrumental realism in creative practices that repurpose medical instrumentation.

MSc. Digital Art and Technology. University of Plymouth.

B.A. (Hons) Critical Fine Art Practice. Brighton University.

Key publications

Drayson HE 2018 'Design(ing) and the Placebo Effect—A Productive Idea' Design Issues , DOI Open access
Drayson HE 2018 'Debunking the Self: Jastrow, Münsterberg and the Automatograph' in Steinmetz R A Treasure Trove. Friend of the Photoplay – Visionary – Spy? New Trans-disciplinary Approaches to Hugo Münsterberg‘s Life and Oeuvre Leipzig University Press Open access
Drayson HE 2017 'Academic carelessness, bootstrapping, and the cybernetic investigator' AVANT. The Journal of the Philosophical-Interdisciplinary Vanguard , DOI Open access
View all publications

Teaching interests

Doctoral Research Supervision
Research Degree Completions
Dr. Joanna Griffin, (Transtechnology Research). Changing Space: The Social and Experiential Culture of Spacecraft and the Public Domain (2014).
Edith Doove, (Transtechnology Research). Exploring the Curatorial as Creative Act. (2017)
Eugenia Stamboliev, (CogNovo). The social robot between social, surveying and digital media. (2018).
Abigail Jackson, (Transtechnology Research). Technology and Human Interaction in Autism Movement Therapy (AHRC funded). (2014-2019).
Guy Edmonds, (CogNovo). The Flicker Effect. (2014-2020).

Current PhD Supervision;
Director of Studies:
Stephanie Moran, (3D3 Scholarship) Symbiont Encounters: Ecological Fictioning and Networked Media. (2018-)
Lucinda Guy. Artist designed systems in Community Radio. (2018-)
Finnegan, P., The digital image according to its hieroglyphic and animistic capacities (2018-)
Welsman, L., AI: A deep history (working title) (2019-)
Dorothea-Smith, J., Vision – An excavation of the retinal space, physiological, phenomenological, cultural and spacial (2019-)
Turton, S., Technologies of Soul (2018-)

2nd Supervisor
Amani Alsaad, Art Therapy in a non-western context. (2015-)
Jane Hutchinson, (Trantechnology Research). Not me – not not me: concerning the mediation of dissolving actualities and performing self. (2014-)
Jacqui Knight, (CogNovo). The ‘frisson event’ a unified experience of simultaneity (2014-)
James Sweeting, (Transtechnology Research). The impact of technological constructivism on representation in videogames (2015-)

3rd Supervisor
Nicholas Peres. (Transtechnology Research). Immersive cinematics in medical simulation: interfaces for the patient voice (2014-)
Becalelis Brodskis, (3D3 Scholarship) Re-Imagine your town: Co-created archives of community urban visions. (2016-)

Ph.D. Theses Examined
Ellen Sebring, (2015) University of Plymouth. Visual Narrative; A theory and model for image-driven digital historiography based on a case study of China’s Boxer Uprising (c. 1900)


Key publications

Drayson HE 2018 'Design(ing) and the Placebo Effect—A Productive Idea' Design Issues , DOI Open access
Drayson HE 2018 'Debunking the Self: Jastrow, Münsterberg and the Automatograph' in Steinmetz R A Treasure Trove. Friend of the Photoplay – Visionary – Spy? New Trans-disciplinary Approaches to Hugo Münsterberg‘s Life and Oeuvre Leipzig University Press Open access
Drayson HE 2017 'Academic carelessness, bootstrapping, and the cybernetic investigator' AVANT. The Journal of the Philosophical-Interdisciplinary Vanguard , DOI Open access

Key publications are highlighted

Journals
Articles
Drayson H 2019 'Don’t Sugar Coat It' Feast Journal 0, (1) 0-0 Publisher Site Open access
Drayson HE 2018 'Design(ing) and the Placebo Effect—A Productive Idea' Design Issues , DOI Open access
Loesche F & Lucznik K 2017 'Our GIFT to All of Us: GA(Y)AM: Preface' AVANT. The Journal of the Philosophical-Interdisciplinary Vanguard VIII, (Special) 13-16 , DOI Open access
Drayson HE 2017 'Academic carelessness, bootstrapping, and the cybernetic investigator' AVANT. The Journal of the Philosophical-Interdisciplinary Vanguard , DOI Open access
Drayson H 2017 'Rituals' Leonardo 50, (1) 100-101 , DOI
Drayson H 2016 'Delete: A Design History of Computer Vapourware' Leonardo 49, (1) 94-94 , DOI
Drayson H 2014 'Doctored: The Medicine of Photography in Nineteenth-Century America by Tanya Sheehan. Pennsylvania State University Press, PA, U.S.A., 2012; Thames & Hudson, London, U.K., 2012. 216 pp., illus. Trade, paper. ISBN: 978-0-271-03792-9; 978-0-271-03793-6' Leonardo 47, (2) 187-188 , DOI
Drayson H 2013 'When Biometrics Fail: Gender, Race, and the Technology of Identity by Shoshana Amielle Magnet. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, and London, U.K., 2011. 224 pp., illus. Paper. ISBN: 978-0-82-235135-1' Leonardo 46, (2) 187-189 , DOI
Drayson H 2012 'Players Unleashed! Modding The Sims and the Culture of Gaming by Tanja Sihvonen. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, Holland, 2011. 224 pp., illus. Paperback. ISBN: 978-90-8964-2011' Leonardo 45, (5) 491-493 , DOI
Drayson H 'To the Bitter End: Affect, Experience and Chemical Ecology' Curare Open access
Books
Griffin J; Drayson H; Knight J; Hutchinson J; Punt M 2020 Exchange & Flow: An anthology. Plymouth Transtechnology Research Open Access Publisher Site Open access
Chapters
Drayson HE 2018 'Debunking the Self: Jastrow, Münsterberg and the Automatograph' in Steinmetz R A Treasure Trove. Friend of the Photoplay – Visionary – Spy? New Trans-disciplinary Approaches to Hugo Münsterberg‘s Life and Oeuvre Leipzig University Press Open access
Drayson HE 2009 'Constructed Bodies; How can physiological instruments become tools of self-perception?' in Ascott R; Bast G; Fiel W; Jahrmann M; Schnell R New Realities: Being Syncretic Wein Springer Verlag 90-93
Conference Papers
Drayson HE 2017 'Being fooled on purpose; historical reflections on the voluntary and involuntary in experimental manipulations of embodiment and agency'
Drayson HE 2017 'Cognitive innovation, bootstrapping and neology' OFF THE LIP Collaborative Approaches to Cognitive Innovation Plymouth University
Drayson HE 2017 'All kinds of magic; instrumental representations of mind-body medicine as a way to make things happen' Creative Encounters with Science and Technology. Legacies, Imaginaries and Futures Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Bangalore 2-/-0/20172-/-0/2017
Drayson HE 2012 'Keynote presentation; Instrumentation, Objectivity and Poetics' International Symposium of Innovation in Interactive Media Media Lab/UFG, Goiânia, Brazil 5-/-0/20125-/-0/2012
Tahiroglu K, Drayson HE & Erkut C 'An Interactive Bio-music Improvisation System' International Computer Music Conference Belfast 8-/-0/20088-/-0/2008
Performances
09/04/201509/08/2015The Island of Nova Santos: Portfolio of visualisation performances. Old City Nicosia. 9th-11th April, 2015, SuperNormal festival, Oxfordshire UK. 9th August, 2015,
13/08/2011Shokku AV performance at BFI Dark Fibres. BFI SouthBank, Dark Fibres
06/08/2010Shokku AV Performance. BFI Stage at Big Chill Festival
01/01/2008“The Control Group”. Club NIME, Genova, Italy