Biography
Artist, researcher, and media arts scholar working across fine art, emerging media technologies, robotics, artificial intelligence, and synthetic phenomenology.
David Harris Smith is a former Associate Professor in Media Arts at McMaster University in Canada. In addition to a fine arts practice in drawing, painting, and sculpture, his work in emerging media technologies includes the practices and applications of artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual worlds, and mixed reality environments.
His cultural robotics project hitchBOT, the hitchhiking robot, created in collaboration with Frauke Zeller, received extensive international media coverage. His current research explores the design and implementation of artificial consciousness, or synthetic phenomenology.
Dr. Smith’s research initiatives have received substantial funding and recognition from government and industry partners. He is a recipient of the Silicon Valley Top 30 Innovators Award.