Dr. Sharath Chandra Ramakrishnan

Biography

Research Interests

Dr. Sharath Chandra Ramakrishnan (Sharath Chandra Ram)’s research concerns the design of cognitive media interfaces, with the capacity to augment our perception of information in the surrounding world using multimodal cues, especially auditory and haptic interfaces that can augment visual and graphical mediums. His doctoral research employed a socio-technical design approach to overcome limitations imposed by the current industrial-medical model of innovation concerning assistive hearing technologies, that were a result of a history rooted in oralism and a visually dominant conception of hearing disability and speech perception. While recognizing the importance and need for a trans-disciplinary agenda, his research framework spans the fields of human-machine interaction design in virtual environments, cognitive psychology, auditory cognition, sound studies and the media arts.

Previous Experience

Previously, as a Pre-Doctoral Research Associate, at the Edith O’ Donnell Institute of Art History (EODIAH), his work with cultural heritage informatics involved a web deployment of the virtual model of the Oplontis Villa excavation. He continues this collaboration to explore the representation of auditory imagery in cultural heritage, with emphasis on accessibility. He was also Research Associate at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India, in a project that funded by the Dept. of Biotechnology, Govt of India, to study the capacity limits of information processing and networks of multimodal cognition. Subsequently, in a departure from clinical neuroscience, he was Faculty at the Srishti Manipal Institute of Art Design and Technology where he advanced a technical practice that integrated the cognitive sciences and media arts, and was also a Design Engineer at Schneider Electric working with the design of critical alarm interfaces in industrial automation environments.

His current research trajectory involves efforts that extend to more than a decade of being involved in community media networks, grassroot technology activism and communications technology design. This included setting up a technology policy and community lab at the Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India and involvement in several networks in South Asia and South America (HONF Foundation in Indonesia, Bricolabs, Plato Hedro in Colombia, to name a few). As a licensed amateur radio broadcaster (callsign: VU3HPA) he continues to extend his creative technology and media arts practice as a ‘transmission artist’ in various international curations and forums, to engage the public while addressing contexts that bridge the worlds of media, science and tech policy.