Sama’a Al Hashimi is from Bahrain. In 2002, she received her Bachelor of Science in Graphic Design (Major) and Fine Arts (Minor) from the Lebanese American University. She then undertook her MA in Design for Interactive Media and completed her PhD research on paralinguistic vocal control of interactive media in the Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts at Middlesex University, London. She is now an assistant professor in the multimedia division of the Department of Arts at the University of Bahrain. Her current research interests center on exploiting the untapped dimensions of voice to enhance the role of non-speech voice input in the user’s experience of multimedia.
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Acknowledgements
I am infinitely grateful to Gordon Davies, for his unstinting mentoring and collaboration throughout every stage of my PhD. I am exceedingly grateful to Stephen Boyd Davis and Magnus Moar for their lavish assistance and supervision. The following publications and contributions wouldn't have been possible without their guidance and support.
Publications:
Al Hashimi, S. (2005) Beyond Using Voice as Voice. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference for Advanced Studies in Systems Research, Informatics and Cybernetics. Baden-Baden, Germany.
Al Hashimi, S. (2006) Blowtter: a Voice-Controlled Plotter. In Proceedings of the 20th BCS HCI Group Conference in Cooperation with ACM. Vol 2. London, UK.
Al Hashimi, S., Davies, G. (2006) Vocal Telekinesis; Physical Control of Inanimate Objects with Minimal Paralinguistic Voice Input. In Proceedings of ACM Multimedia 2006. Santa Barbara, California, USA.
Al Hashimi, S. (2006) Users as Performers in Vocal Interactive Media: The Role of Expressive Voice-Visualizations in Transforming Users into Performers. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media. 2.3, London, UK.
Al Hashimi, S. (2007) The Role Of Paralinguistic Voice Input of Interactive Media in Augmenting Awareness of Voice Characteristics in the Hearing-Impaired. Extended Abstracts In Proceedings of the twenty-fifth annual CHI conference (CHI 2007), California, San Jose, April 2007.
Al Hashimi, S. (2007) Vocal Telekinesis: Towards the Development of Voice-Physical Installations (A proposal accepted for presentation at Striking a C[h]ord;CHI 2007 workshop on non-verbal acoustic interaction)
Al Hashimi, S. (2007) Preferences and Patterns of Paralinguistic Voice Input to Interactive Media. To appear in the Proceedings of HCI International 2007, 12th international conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Beijing, China.
Presentations and Workshops:
Attended the Ultrasound festival in Huddersfield and participated in TileToy workshop that was organized by Daniel Blackburn and Tuomo Tammenpaa. (November, 2005)
Presented her work to the Computer Arts Society (CAS), a specialist group of the British Computer Society that was founded in 1968, Covent Garden, London (December 13, 2005).
Participated in DART (Design Advanced Research Training) masterclasses which were coordinated by David Durling and aimed to provide advanced training in doctoral studies in design. The course, which was held in Middlesex University, comprised a two-day workshop that was partly taught by Ken Friedman (July, 2006).
Participated in the Doctoral Consortium of HCI Engage, the 20th British Computer Society (BCS) Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Group conference, in co-operation with the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM). The two-day consortium was held in Queen Mary, University of London (September, 2006).
Participated in the Student Research Competition at the twenty-fifth annual CHI conference (CHI 2007), California, San Jose, April 2007.
Participated in Striking a C[h]ord; workshop on non-verbal acoustic interaction in the twenty-fifth annual CHI conference (CHI 2007), California, San Jose, April 2007.
Other Contributions:
Program Committee Member of Striking a C[h]ord; workshop on non-verbal acoustic
interaction in the twenty-fifth annual CHI conference (CHI 2007), California,
San Jose, April 2007.
Awards:
sssSnake, a voice-controlled game developed by Sama’a Al Hashimi was awarded The EUROPRIX Top Talent 2006 Quality Seal for games. The game will be presented in the Top Talent DVD-ROM of Innovation in Multimedia.