Prof Brendan Walker

Biography

Brendan is Professor of Creative Industries at Middlesex University, and a former Senior Research Fellow in Interaction Design at the Royal College of Art and Principal Researcher in Computer Science at the University of Nottingham.

Brendan Walker is Founder Director of Studio Go Go who are on a mission to turn neglected amusement rides into unusual and brilliant experiences - whether it’s avant-garde VR revamps for mechanical fairground classics, or new content for their growing number of location-based VR swing simulators.

Brendan originally trained and worked as an aeronautical engineer, before practicing in Industrial and Interaction Design in the Museum and Public Art sectors. Insights into these worlds of entertainment inspired Brendan to write The Taxonomy of Thrill (2007), which is a guide for designing thrilling experiences for any context and where Brendan first revealed ‘The Walker Thrill Factor’ – a scientific formula for thrill. In 2020 he delivered a prestigious Royal Institution Discourse about the art and science of thrill.

Brendan is known as a Renaissance Showman - a technology-inspired performance artist described by The Times as "the world's only Thrill Engineer". His multi-faceted Thrill Laboratory performances have provided popular entertainment for audiences from the Science Museum, London, to Disneyland, Paris. His work has been featured at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, MoMA, NY, and on TV shows across the world. He became a regular consultant on future attraction design for Merlin Entertainment, and has worked across all of their brands developing concepts for second gate business opportunities. He continues to consult on experiential brand design and activations for blue chip clients such as Durex (Reckitt Benckiser), Royal Caribbean and Nissan.