Technology

Interactive Cultures at Scarborough Jazz Festival

September 17th, 2009  |  by Simon Barber
Published in AHRC KTF, Events, Technology

Left to right: Prof Tim Wall, Andrew Dubber, Dr Simon Barber, Jez Collins.

Left to right: Prof Tim Wall, Andrew Dubber, Dr Simon Barber and Jez Collins.

What is it?
‘Just Like Jazz’ is a collaborative project between <a href=”http://interactivecultures.org” alt=”Interactive Cultures”>Interactive Cultures</a>, a research unit at
<a href=”http://mediacourses.com” alt=”BCU School of Media”>Birmingham City University</a>, and the <a href=”http://scarboroughjazzfestival.co.uk” alt=”Scarborough Jazz Festival”>Scarborough Jazz Festival</a>. Part of our academic interests include jazz and so we’re working with the Scarborough Jazz Festival to explore the ways in which jazz festivals can be portrayed online.
Why is it different?
Rather than creating a brochure website around the festival, or simply filming the festival and putting that online, our goal is to capture the spirit of the festival using a range of techniques such as photography, text and handheld, personal digital video. We have given small, cheap, portable video cameras to select audience members, musicians, backstage staff and the festival organisers and asked them to capture whatever they think is interesting: the buzz of the audience, the surrounding environment, snippets of the music performed, and any discussions that take place around jazz.
PROMO VIDEO OF ANDREW: Watch members of the Interactive Cultures team describe the aims of the Scarborough Jazz project.
What are we going to do?
We’re gathering together all of this video, photography and text from our contributors and publishing it live on a website as the festival happens. We’re also tagging the content in order to experiment with the ways in which the characters and stories that are captured can be navigated by visitors to the website. This process gives audiences the opportunity to experience the festival in their own way and makes the event accessible to those who may wish to attend the festival in future years, or who may never have considered visiting a jazz festival at all.
MORE VIDEO OF Tim
Although we’ve worked on projects like this before, with <a href=”http://aftershockproject.com/shock/genoa” alt=”Aftershock”>Aftershock</a> in Italy and with the <a href=”http://www.andrewdubber.com/2009/07/thursday-afternoon-in-copenhagen” alt=”Copenhagen Jazz”>Copenhagen Jazz Festival</a>, we don’t have a fixed idea of what we’re going to end up with. We’re working with a loose structure and quite a lot of improvisation – in a way, it’s just like jazz.
Follow us
Please bookmark http://justlikejazz.org and follow along with the experiment as it happens live online between September 18-20. The website will also remain online in the future, so check back to discover our thoughts on what came out of the process.
We hope you enjoy exploring the festival online with us,
Tim, Andrew, Simon and Jez.

What is it?

‘Just Like Jazz‘ is a collaborative project between the Interactive Cultures research unit at Birmingham City University, and the Scarborough Jazz Festival. The team comprises Professor Tim Wall, Andrew Dubber, Dr Simon Barber and Jez Collins. Part of our academic interests include jazz and so we’re working with the Scarborough Jazz Festival to explore the ways in which jazz festivals can be portrayed online.

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Aftershock: Musical creative process as digital narrative

June 28th, 2009  |  by Andrew Dubber
Published in AHRC KTF, General, Technology, social media

Singer Nima captures video of her fellow Aftershock participants on a dinner break in Genoa
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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Interactive Cultures at the Mobile Music Symposium in Minneapolis

May 21st, 2009  |  by Tim Wall
Published in Radio, Technology

Tim Wall: Mobile Music from Jon Hickman on Vimeo.

I was recently invited to make a contribution to the Mobile Music Symposium taking place in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the US.  I offered the organisers a paper on the transistor radio and its role in the developments of US radio music listening in the 1950s and 60s.

In fact I should have been there today, but sadly at the last minute I wasn’t able to make the journey.  In true Interactive Cultures style, though, I offered a videoed version of my paper, and a Skype link so I could join in the question and answer session.  You can watch the whole paper presentation (it’s just over 16 minutes long) thanks to Vimeo.
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Lucid Project and @brumtag

February 27th, 2009  |  by Jon Hickman
Published in Technology, social media

I spent the afternoon with colleagues from Screen Media Lab and User Lab brainstorming ideas for a social media game which we’ve called @brumtag.  The first game will be a demonstrator project for the Lucid Project: an exploration of the potential of wireless devices to deliver context-aware information.

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Interactive Technologies for Active Learning- Phase 1 Round Up

December 19th, 2008  |  by Jon Hickman
Published in Teaching & Learning, Technology

Phase 1 of our “Interactive Technologies for Active Learning“project has just come to a close.  During Phase 1 we considered how student teachers might adopt Flip video cameras within teacher training. This week Nick Webber & I met with BCU colleagues Dave Kane & James Williams (from Centre for Research into Quality) and Anita Reardon (from the School of Secondary and Post-Compulsory Education) to debrief on the project so far and to look at opportunities for Phase 2.

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