Michael Punt and Martha Blassnigg

This seminar 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new media environments when the distinctions between kinds of producers and indeed the consumer and the producer are no longer valid or viable distinctions.