Graduate Programme for Media, Music and Performance, May/June 13
Location: 2.20, MediaCityUK (unless otherwise stated)
Times: Internal speakers, 3-3.55pm; External speakers, 4.10-5pm.
Wednesday 1 May
Internal Speaker: Professor Mary Oliver (University of Salford; Performance Directorate)
Please take my hand and talk to me: crossing the virtual divide with acts of empathy and kindness
Touching as an act of empathy and kindness has become demonized, perverse in our physically disconnected technologically dependent lifestyles. Our hands are the tools with which we communicate remotely, altering hand eye co-ordination capability, which in turn impacts on our cognitive functions. We have adapted ourselves to these machines and in doing so have become trapped in a communication system that is alien to us as a warm, tactile, intuitive species. This paper is part an exploration of why it is so difficult to change the HCI and part performance research as I strive to create a new work using both physical touch and sensing technologies.
Mary Oliver is Reader in Digital Performance and head of the Performance Research Centre in the School of Arts and Media. She has been a professional performer, writer and video maker for over twenty years, performing internationally across the fields of contemporary music, theatre, and dance. For the last decade she has focused on bringing impossible performers to the live stage,primarily using her own badly behaved Digital Double. She is leader of the ‘As Yet Impossible: in human performance’ research project, which is examining the development of new performance paradigms.
External Speaker: Dr. Kathrine Sandys
Remediating the Cold War through Acousmatic Animation
In Northern Europe we still find the Cold War an enigmatic and alluring period of history, as civilians. This is partly the mystery and secrecy that is only just being uncovered since decommissioning of military sites in 1992, as well as the declassification of documents gradually unfolding. It is also partly due to the fictional reality of the Cold War disseminated through novels and films in the second half of the Twentieth Century. It was this mythical version of the Cold War that was appropriated for the benefit of a 6 year long research exploration undertaken through practice.
“Radioflash” and “Hush House” are two site specific sound installations using acousmatic sound that will be presented in order to illustrate this research project. The process of remediation, in order to show this work at a series of touring exhibitions will also be discussed in all its problematic glory. Having just completed a two year long tour from Cardiff to Prague, the V&A and finally Edinburgh, “Hush House” has been witnessed by audiences far outnumbering those of the original event. It received an international award at the Prague Quadrennial and has been judged, based on documentation alone. However, what have these audiences missed out on through not experiencing the work first hand? The issue of how site specific work is archived and methods of how this form of practice can be captured for re-presentation will be an issue opened up for questioning.
Wednesday 8 May:
Internal speaker: Professor Seamus Simpson (University of Salford; Journalism division)
Public Service Journalism and Converging Media Systems
Concepts and practices of public service have been an integral part of the evolution of communication media systems for decades in Europe and beyond. However, the process of media convergence has called forth an examination of the place of public service in communications. Ideas of public service have been an important part of the development of journalism and have too come under increasing pressure in the era of media convergence. This session will commence with an exploration of some of the key ideas that have shaped articulations of public service in media systems and journalism. It will then go on to explore some of the challenges and opportunities for public service journalism which have arisen from the development convergent media platforms and services. It will conclude by exploring the extent to which public service journalism is relevant today in our diverse-yet-converging, highly commercialised, digital multi-media systems.
External Speaker: Rob Edgar (York St John University)
Theorising Practice and Writing for Education: Writing for an Audience
This presentation will discuss and debate the role of the academic in writing specifically for a student audience. Debates continue about the nature and importance of academic research yet the issue of impact and relevance is taking on more and more importance. In debating these issues the function of educational writing and the role of practice in research will be debated as increasingly relevant forms of research.
Dr Robert Edgar is Head of Postgraduate Film and Television Production at York St John University. In this role he heads the MAs in Film Production and Documentary Production and supervises PhD students, increasingly in practice led theses. He is the author and co-author of a number of text books for the AVA series in Film making. (Host BH)
Wednesday 22 May:
Guest Speaker: Beth Johnson (Keele University)
Shameless: Situating Sex Beyond the City
This paper explores how the unashamed representations of the sexual desires of four female characters in Shameless (Channel 4, 2004 – present), namely Monica Gallagher (Annabelle Apsion), Fiona Gallagher (Anne-Marie Duff), Shelia Jackson (Maggie O’Neil) and Karen Jackson (Rebecca Atkinson), are connected to and cartographized through the fringe spaces of the Chatsworth estate. Contemplating the ways in which the UK series moves away from high-end US visions of slick surfaces, spaces and bodies, found, for example, in series such as Sex and the City (HBO, 1998-2004), the paper analyses the social positions, dominant sexual desires and complex narrative functions of these women, arguing that in the series, female desire is unashamedly repositioned at the centre rather than at the peripheries of the narrative.
Dr. Beth Johnson is a lecturer in Television and Film Studies at Keele University, UK. She is the author of various extant publications in journals such as Angelaki and The Journal of Cultural Research and her recent book chapters include ‘Realism, Real Sex and the Experimental Film: Mediating New Erotics in Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye’ in Realism and the Audiovisual Media (Palgrave Press: 2009, 135-151), and ‘Sex, Psychoanalysis and Sublimation in Dexter’ in Investigating Dexter: Cutting Edge Television (I.B.Tauris: 2010, 78-95). Beth’s forthcoming publications include a monograph on British television auteur ‘Paul Abbott’ for The Television Series (Manchester University Press, forthcoming, 2013) and a co-authored book entitled Exploring the Carnographic: Sex, Violence and Extremism in Global Culture to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2014. Beth has recently co-edited a new collection entitled Television, Sex and Society: Analyzing Contemporary Representations (Continuum Press, August 2012).
Wed 5th of June
Internal Speaker: Michael Goddard (University of Salford, Media division)
Media Ecological Approaches to Alternative and Radical Media
This presentation will explore some of the issues in approaching alternative and radical media drawing on and extending the work of Downing et al (2000) on Radical Media and Atton on Alternative Media and An Alternative Internet (2001, 2004). In particular it will use the concept of media ecologies as developed by Matthew Fuller (Fuller 2005), as a way of approaching a range of case studies drawn from both analogue and digital media. Using examples ranging from free and pirate radio and guerrilla television to cyber-activism, this talk will look at how media ecologies and approaches to self organisation can shed light on both small scale media and activist use of larger media forms (television, social media etc).
External Speaker: Nina Power (Roehampton University)
Representing Rebellion: Media and Protest
This paper examines the framework in which the media – both putatively “left” and “right” – construct an examine of protest and perpetuate the myth of the “good” and the “bad” protester. It looks at the ways in which terms like “violence” are used by the media in a general way that nevertheless invokes both fear and permits the state to construct the context in which individuals receive lengthy jail sentences in court. It also looks at the way in which gender is invoked in images of protest (e.g. the Daily Mail’s “Rage of the Girl Rioters” article during the student protests of late 2010). It argues that the media is complicit in a structure that seeks to uphold the existing order and pre-emptively criminalise protesters in much the same way as the state does. Sources will include: newspapers, tv footage, court reports and the police protester database.
Dr Nina Power is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Roehampton University. She is the co-editor of Alain Badiou’s On Beckett (Clinamen), and the author of several articles on European Philosophy, atomism, pedagogy, art and politics. Nina has a wide range of interests, including philosophy, film, art, feminism and politics. She is the author of One-Dimensional Woman (Zer0, 2009) and is interested in independent publishing and reviving certain political forms and genres of writing. Some of the publications she regularly contributes to include frieze, Wire, Radical Philosophy, the Guardian, Cabinet, Film Quarterly, Icon, The Philosophers’ Magazine. Nina is currently working on two book-length projects – one on the topic of work and the other on the history of the collective political subject. She is also working on a number of more experimental collaborations with artists and writers.
April 26th, 2013 - 09:33am
