Wiliam Latham - Week 2

Wiliam Latham is another artist introduced to us during the Week 2 lecture. This artist is related to our Experimental Gaming module as he developed software that was used in games such as:

• The Thing (2002)
• Evolva (2000)
  

Here's a brief biography on the artist:

From 1987 to 1994 he worked for IBM in their Advanced Computer Graphics and Visualisation Division at IBM Hursley near Winchester , and his Mutation work achieved world wide recognition at SIGGRAPH and other events and a number of IBM patents were published. He was co-author with Stephen Todd of the book “Evolutionary Art and Computers” published by Academic Press which is still recognised as a key work in this area. His organic artworks and films were shown worldwide in major touring exhibitions of the UK , Germany , Japan and Australia

William was CEO of computer games developer Computer Artworks Ltd from 1994 to 2003, hit games produced included The THING (Playstation2, Xbox and PC) which sold in excess of one million units world-wide, and was Number 1 hit in the UK and Germany . The Thing was published by Vivendi Universal in USA and Europe, and by Konami in Japan and the Far East . (The Thing game was the sequel to the cult John Carpenter Film The THING starring Kurt Russell).

He has a wealth of experience in games development and games business and has managed (and closed) contracts valued $200K to $5m with Microsoft, Nokia, Atari, Vivendi Universal, SCi, Sony SCEE and Virgin Interactive. He has direct experience in film rights negotiation, copyright issues, games negotiation, digital assets management and games technology development.

In 2004, recognising the ongoing increase in games budgets and increasing new investment from financial organisations outside the games industry William founded Games Audit Ltd. Games Audit Ltd is a project management and audit operation for the games industry and offers a wide range of services. Clients include Ingenious, Add Partners, IDGVE .

From 2005 to 2006 William Latham was Professor of Creative Technology at Leeds Metropolitan University and a Research Fellow of Goldsmiths College ( University of London ).

In 2007 William became full Professor of Computing at Goldsmiths. He continues to remain CEO of Games Audit.

William has an MA from The Royal College of Art and a BA from Oxford University