Robert Walton

Background

About Robert Walton

Robert Walton is an artist and director recognised with multiple awards for his work in theatre, screen, installation, writing, interactive art, and research. He is the Dean’s Research Fellow at The University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Fine Arts and Music. In this role, he leads the development of performances and artworks that explore the creative potential of ancient and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence/automated intuition, theatre, virtual holograms, swarm robotics, standing stones, engineered bacterial bioluminescence, algorithmic ritual, MR/XR, storytelling, building information model data, ambient computing, expanded photography, virtual production, and fire. Bio++ Robert Walton (Aus/UK) is a conceptual, media and performance artist and a director whose work includes theatre, choreography, installation, writing and interactive art. He trained in theatre at Dartington College of Arts (England) and as a technologist in The University of Glasgow’s Master of Science in Information Technology (Software and Systems) programme. His PhD from the University of Melbourne explored the creative use of mobile computing in performance events and won the Chancellor's Prize for Excellence in PhD Thesis. Robert is currently the Dean's Research Fellow in Fine Arts and Music at the University of Melbourne and was Resident Artist at the School of Computing and Information Systems 2019-2022. Before moving to Australia Robert co-founded two experimental art organisations in Scotland with Ivor MacAskill: Reader Performance Group and Fish & Game. ‘Alma Mater’, their final work together, was credited as “the world’s first piece of iPad theatre” (The Independent, UK). Robert moved to Australia in 2011 to join the Theatre Department at the Victorian College of Arts, University of Melbourne. Robert curated the Australian dance and performance works for Culture 2014, The XX Commonwealth Games (Glasgow). He created Vanitas with Jason Maling, nominated for best Art and Experimental Mobile App at the 2018 Webby Awards and two 2019 Greenroom Awards. In 2018 Robert was the inaugural Australia Council Artist in Residence at Blast Theory (UK). In 2019 he was commissioned by the City of Chicago to create Exhuming Johnny for the Goat Island Archive and the Year of Chicago Theatre. His project Child of Now received Honorary Mention at the S+T+Arts Prize 2023, the Grand prize of the European Commission honoring Innovation in Technology, Industry and Society stimulated by the Arts.