Technology, Exchange and Flow: Artistic Media Practices & Commercial Application
Transtechnology Research at the University of Plymouth in collaboration with the VU University, Amsterdam, the University Applied Arts, Vienna, the Eye Film Institute Netherlands and The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision will be undertaking a major three year project approved under the HERA JRP call ‘Humanities as a Source of Creativity and Innovation’.
Starting in April 2010 Transtechnology Research at the University of Plymouth will lead a 1 million Euro research project “Technology, Exchange and Flow: Artistic Media Practices and Commercial Application”. Through a series of distributed projects and subprojects the research will examine the commercial, technological and creative traffic between advertising/industrial filmmakers and media artists. It will seek to identify significant parts of the complex network of reciprocal influence between commercial producers, artists and consumers particularly when new technologies offer possibilities for recombination and creative intervention. As such it will provide an alternative to a ‘hard’ technological determinism and offer insight and guidance for a future policy that regards the arts and the creative industries as a single dynamic entity, and which factors in popular desire and imagination through the recognition of consumer/user agency.
In collaboration with Prof. Dr. Bert Hogenkamp at the VU University Amsterdam, Prof. Margarete Jahrmann at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, and partnering with the Eye Film Institute Netherlands and The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, research teams comprising Senior researches and PhDs will examine the connections between the media arts and the media industry from a pan-European perspective. It will combine philosophical, historical, and practice-based approaches that will ultimately contribute widely applicable conclusions concerning creativity and innovation relevant to the burgeoning globalisation of media cultures. By examining media, human interaction and the imaginary, affective dimensions of technology and media, it will challenge the traditional concept of a top down hierarchical flow from artistic creativity to the commercial sector triggered by the stimulus of new technology.
Led by Prof. Dr. Michael Punt and Dr. Martha Blassnigg at the University of Plymouth the collaborative research will lead to a number of publications, seminars and conferences concluding with a large-scale interactive exhibition in Vienna in 2013.
The HERA-ESF is a joint programme of national science foundations, set up to derive new insights from humanities research in order to address major social, cultural, and political challenges facing Europe. The theme ‘Humanities as a Source of Creativity and Innovation’ called for “proposals that addressed creativity in all its aspects in the expectation that new research, whether it be disciplinary or interdisciplinary, into the processes and conditions of human creativity will add new understandings of the value systems of the humanities and the practices and conditions of the creative, performing and visual arts, and a much better understanding of how these values and processes might contribute to cultural, social and economic innovation.”
Summary
This project will explore the relationship between creativity and innovation within the contemporary European media sector, which is influential in the shaping of cultural attitudes and identities.
The crucial question is how can we understand the relationship between commercial applications and implementation of artistic media practices in Europe? Is it determined by technological opportunity? Or the exchange between artists, producers and consumers? Or an interweaving of cultural and media formats (film, video, internet) which carry reproductive and distributive possibility? The project asks how traffic between cultural forms in Europe, such as industrial film and new media arts on the one hand, and commercial exploitation of audiovisual media on the other hand, is radically transformed at key moments. As such it is intended to prepare the way for thinking about new media environments when the distinctions between kinds of producers and indeed the consumer and the producer are no longer valid or viable distinctions.
The project brings together three expert teams and two significant archives in a research partnership which focuses on three distinct European examples of artistic practices and their commercial applications: early advertising and experimental film at a moment when the technologies of production become more widely available, post-war industrial films & early television commercials, and finally the new category of prosumers in contemporary distributive media consequent on games culture. This project examines the connections between the arts and their application from a Pan-European perspective by combining philosophical, historical, and practice-based approaches. Its findings will be presented in publications, symposia and conferences culminating in a major public exhibition using gaming feedback strategies.
The project is ultimately expected to contribute widely applicable conclusions concerning creativity and innovation relevant to the burgeoning globalisation of media cultures.
Further details of the research teams and the ongoing project will be posted on this site.
See also: http://www.heranet.info/Default.aspx?ID=356
http://www.esf.org/research-areas/humanities/hera-era-net/hera-joint-research-programme.html
The Amazing Field Project
December 2008- April 2009
At Molenick, on the Port Eliot Estate there is a field that at first sight appears to be a neglected patch of random agricultural land. On closer inspection this field is the site of the remains of an ancient circle and apparently random lumps of earth begin to reveal an underlying intelligence to the topography. On wider inspection the whole landscape as far as the eye can see is connected to this mound through sight-lines and other archaeological features. On top of this field is another field: an apparently random microwave field of communication networks. This too, on wider inspection, is connected to the wider area.
Bianca Eliot, the current owner of these two fields, has invited multidisciplinary teams to submit artworks the join these two fields. During the next six months a number of artists are invited to work with a nominated collaborator from another discipline to produce small-scale artworks which can be circulated to a wide audience through mobile phone technologies.
Each team of two collaborators, one artist and another from a different discipline will be invited to stay for three days (two nights) at her house to scope the project undertake the preliminary research. Guest accommodation will be provided and there will be a small caravan in the field to be used as a studio during the brief residency.
Current participants:
Dr Martha Blassnigg, Hannah Drayson, Len Massey, Isobel Taylor, John Vines and Dr Brigitta Zics.
Past projects:
AHRC ICT methods network workshop at the Immersive Vision Theatre, University of Plymouth, 13 Dec. 2007
Workshop coordinators: Dr. Martha Blassnigg, Prof. Michael PuntThe event was convened jointly by Transtechnology Research at the University of Plymouth and the AHRC ICT Methods Network.
Aims of the workshop: This workshop concerns content design for immersive vision theatres. These are typically planetariums refurbished and modified to accept ¬±180 degree digital projection. Facilities such as these are increasing in the UK in the HE and the museum sector, and with the advent of portable inflatable domes, there is a growing interest in primary and secondary sectors. This event aims to identify:* the key topics, approaches and discourses that need to be co-ordinated to develop reliable practices and methods of evaluation in designing immersive audio-visual experiences in an educational and research context;* existing strategies for the effective use of immersive A/V environments for the transfer of knowledge;* new areas of research that will contribute toward a deeper understanding of the experience for the participant. The workshop will draw together leading scholars from the Humanities, Arts and Sciences, immersive theatre designers, technical support teams, content providers, software engineers, evaluators and educationalists to pool research and discipline specific approaches. One of the outcomes of the day will be a preliminary bibliography relevant to the specifics of the audiovisual immersion and a viable network for future research collaboration. More…
In development:
Beyond the visible spectrum in Zero Gravity
Following our Mars Patent project Design for Absolute Openness (www.mars-patent.org) we are testing the possibility that the telepathic dimension may be influenced significantly by gravity. We will conduct a series of experiments during a parabolic flight to test this hypothesis and expect to publish the outcomes as an artwork and a reportStakeholders: ZGAC: September 2006, NASA, Los Angeles (Zero Gravity Artists Consortium), University of Plymouth. More…
Bio-feedback in the future theatre
A new large-scale visual and physical performance piece based on research into consciousness, action and precognition is to be created in collaboration between The Theatre Royal Plymouth and the University of Plymouth. The theatre and university will work in collaboration with the international choreographer, Yacov Sharir, using a specially designed data collection system in the theatre, which will enable biometric feedback between the audience and performers. Through ongoing evaluation, participatory observation and beta-testing of creative strategies it is intended to develop ways to transfer knowledge between distinct disciplines in art and science through performance and public interaction. More…
On trans-method for space science and art (Performance and Consciousness, Ideas and Intuitions)
The project is intended to conduct research into a comparative analysis of differing approaches to cosmology and their dissemination in two apparently mutually contradictory worldviews; this includes the study of a performance ritual in connection with spiritual beliefs and the traces of ritualistic performance in scientific methods associated with rationalism. More…