July 3rd, 2009 |
by Sam Coley
Published in
Events, social media
Cartoon of Sam Coley CC Alex Hughes
Moseley Barcamp was held at The Cross in Moseley on Sunday the 28th of July and was a free-ranging forum for those involved in Birmingham’s social media / internet “scene”. Speakers included Pete Ashton, Nick Booth, Chris Unitt and Michael Grimes to name but a few… The room contained a fair smattering of the “Brumtwitter mafia” who debated, and I imagine “tweeted”, passionately about all things “web” in Birmingham.
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July 2nd, 2009 |
by Sam Coley
Published in
AHRC KTF, Radio | 1 Comment
Jon Dovey at the “Internet Attractions” Workshop
Last week I attended the University of Nottingham’s “Internet Attractions” workshop, sponsored by the AHRC as part of their “Beyond Text” research programme. Over two days the team examined short-form online media and the fleeting ways they tend to circulate. This was the first of two workshops in the series and focused on ‘user-generated’ content.
The workshop brought together academics from a range of disciplines as well as various media practitioners. Keynote speakers included Professor Barbara Klinger from Indiana University and Hugh Hancock, the Artistic Director of “Strange Company”.
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June 28th, 2009 |
by Andrew Dubber
Published in
AHRC KTF, General, Technology, social media | 1 Comment
Singer Nima captures video of her fellow Aftershock participants on a dinner break in Genoa – Pic © After Shock Project
“I can’t believe how hard you work.” High praise from Nitin Sawhney, composer, multi-instrumentalist and (it turns out) heavy-duty arts and culture thinker.
Of course, work’s a relative term when you’re doing something really enjoyable and fascinating in a really amazing setting, but given that I was completely focused on (almost) nothing other than the task at hand from 8am till 2am over 5 consecutive days, perhaps he had a point.
I was in Genoa, Italy with Birmingham web developer and entrepreneur Stef Lewandowski to work on the Aftershock Project – a pan-European collaborative music event. In short, Nitin Sawhney turns up in a town, brings about a dozen musicians together, and they workshop, compose, rehearse and eventually perform about an hour’s worth of completely new music over the course of a week. Stef had been commissioned to make them a website, and he’d asked me on board for my perspective as the “online music guy”.
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June 26th, 2009 |
by Jez Collins
Published in
AHRC KTF, Music as Culture | 2 Comments
June 25th, 2009 |
by Simon Barber
Published in
AHRC BBC Radio Listeners Online, Events
On 22nd June 2009 at our Perry Barr City North campus in Birmingham, the Interactive Cultures team attended RESCON09, the first of what looks to be an annual research conference at Birmingham City University. The event may sound like a highly futuristic, evil corporation, but it’s really just an abbreviation of ‘Research Conference’.
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June 19th, 2009 |
by Jon Hickman
Published in
Creative & Cultural Industries, Events, General
Pic: Lord Carter outside the Ikon and Fazeley Studios, CC Dave Harte
On Tuesday 16th June the Government published the Digital Britain report. The report outlines the direction of policy in several areas of digital media from infrastructure to digital literacy. On the following day Birmingham held the first in a series of regional debates on the report. The event was organised by Digital Birmingham, part of Birmingham City Council, and featured a keynote address by Lord Stephen Carter who oversaw the writing of the report. Parallel to this “official” event, a 2nd Digital Britain Unconference was held at Fazeley Studios. Lord Carter also attended this event where he spent some time taking questions from the floor.
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June 16th, 2009 |
by Jon Hickman
Published in
AHRC KTF, Events, Music as Culture
Nick Webber, Jez Collins, Andrew Dubber, talk music as culture at Un-Convention Salford
We recently attended Un-Convention Salford 2009. Organised by AHRC KTF partner Fat Northener, Un-convention is a not for profit grassroots led music conference for DIY and Independent music makers and companies. Born in 2008 as an alternative to Manchester’s mainstream In The City event, it has already inspired Un-Conventions in Belfast and Swansea and future events in Glasgow, London, Barcelona and Reykjavík. This year’s UK national event in Salford featured a range of key musicians, bands and industry personnel.
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June 15th, 2009 |
by Nick Webber
Published in
General
Image CC willemvelthoven
I’ve not given a conference presentation in a number of years, and being part of a piece delivered at the Mobile Music for Everyday People: A Symposium on Mobile Music and Sound was consequently quite odd. What was even odder was seeing the proceedings from the perspective of a laptop. Neither Tim Wall nor I had been able to travel to the conference (which was in Minneapolis), but we did the next best thing: Tim pre-recorded the presentation, it was projected onto a big screen at the venue, and afterwards we took questions via Skype. So, first conference paper in ages, and being on a giant TV. Interesting day.
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June 13th, 2009 |
by Simon Barber
Published in
General
Rocking the whiteboard. Photo by Jon Hickman.
I’m Simon. I’m a songwriter, composer, producer, writer and researcher, originally from Liverpool but now living in Birmingham. I’m the newest member of the Interactive Cultures team, which means that I have survived the humiliating fraternity-style initiation intact.
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June 12th, 2009 |
by Jon Hickman
Published in
Events, General, social media | 8 Comments
Last night I spoke at “My Dad’s on Twitter but he doesn’t know why” – part of Fazeley Digital ‘09. Part lecture, part performance, the idea was to mind map some current thinking about Twitter by writing on a wall in an empty studio space. I’ve written a blog post about the process of the event on the new MA Social Media blog but wanted to also reflect on some of the content here on the IC blog.
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