Dr Anthony Lewis Brooks (aka Tony)
PhD Art, Media and Design 2006
Originally from Pembrokeshire, Wales, Dr Anthony Lewis Brooks has been working in the field of Medialogy, which was developed aligned to his prior research in Creativity, Cybernetics, Art, Digital Media…for more than 20 years. His first interactive installation was at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) in London in 1978.
He has since presented globally including at numerous leading Museums of Modern Art; two Olympics/Paralympics cultural events (Atlanta 1996/Sydney 2000), and many more prestigious events.
As a founding entity of the Medialogy education at Aalborg University in Denmark, often referred to as “Mister Medialogy”, he has been investigating the links between digital technology and human interaction/performance over many years with a goal of societal benefit/impact.
His interactive art installations use similar flexible, modular, bespoke solutions as used in his research within healthcare, rehabilitation and wellbeing – across condition/diagnosis, situation, and age. In 2004 he founded/designed/funded/established The SENSORAMALAB, under Medialogy at Aalborg University’s Esbjerg campus, where he went on to direct an academic team of expert post-docs/assistant professors and other staff.
The SENSORAMALAB was a multi-room complex exploring Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality, Video Games, Sensor technologies (especially gesture-based interactions), Human Behavior, Artificial Intelligence, IoT, and other aspects of human interactions with technology. Brooks brought numerous international conferences of note to the complex including 17th International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence (ICAT 2007) – notably, ICAT’s first time outside Asia/Pacific; The Sixth International Conference on Disability, Virtual Reality and Associated Technologies (ICDVRAT) 2006; DigArt 2008; Art & Technology 2011 … and more.
Through the use of virtual technology and sensors, Brooks has developed a learning environment that encourages and motivates participants to creatively express, play and experience entertainment is therapeutic targeted intervention to supplement traditional strategies. He was the first in the world to investigate Virtual Reality, Video Games, and Brain Control Interfaces in this field of healthcare, (re)habilitation, and wellbeing. He was also the first to place multiple (4) video macro-cameras within a head mounted display to be able to observe/analyze what a user was seeing (through eye-tracking) whilst simultaneously observing and analyzing the emotions associated to what was experienced (through pupil dilation).Virtual Rehabilitation is a term often associated to his approximate four decades mature body of work that is titled SoundScapes. His approximate 250 publications include numerous special issue journals and a trilogy of Springer published volumes on ”Technologies for Inclusive Wellbeing” – see (2014, 2017, 2021).
Dr Brooks is active as an EU Expert for the European Commission and project panel assessor (FP6 & FP7; Horizon 2020; Erasmus+). Additionally, he is reviewer for the Council for the Humanities of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), e-health innovations by SMEs, and The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), UK.
Amongst his current roles he is an Associate Professor, senior researcher in Medialogy at the Aalborg University in Denmark where he is also the director of Sensorama Lab, a multi-room Virtual Reality, Games/Perceptual controllers and Usability research and development complex where digital media is investigated and studied. Brooks’ four decades of research has resulted in national and international awards; large national (Denmark) and international (European Commission) funded projects; an industry start-up; published patents on method and apparatus; numerous board and editorial positions; International Conference ongoing steering position (ArtsIT) under the European Alliance for Innovation (EAI).
From being on the coordination board of the large European funder i3net between 1996 – 2002, Brooks is most recently (2022) appointed onto the coordination board of the Council of Europe’s initiative on Video Game Culture under the Educating Digital Citizen program. His swan-song project is his vision of “Probably the best healthcare, (re)habilitation, and wellbeing complex in the world”. Interested parties are welcome to contact Dr/Prof Anthony Brooks on this concept towards advancing the field.
Dr Brooks was conferred as “ICAT FELLOW” as the only one outside Asia on February 1st 2023.
The International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence - ICAT - is the oldest international conference on Virtual Reality and Telexistence, and as a fellow Brooks is recognized for his achievements and contributions to this area of expertise and research.
Dr Brooks received this international recognition – among others, including his 2019 “EAI FELLOW” conferred from the European Alliance for Innovation - for his work with methods and educations for the benefit of patients and health care professionals whereby his research has also realized a family of patents on method and apparatus.