[ISEA2011] Panel: Con­stance Fleu­riot – The Lan­guage of Per­va­sive Media

Panel Statement

Panel: Pervasive Media: Practice, Value, Culture

There is an emer­gent lan­guage of Per­va­sive Media. A set of jar­gon, ver­nac­u­lar and de­scrip­tive terms that sur­round the pro­duc­tion of these new ex­pe­ri­ences is being gen­er­ated by the pro­duc­ers, de­sign­ers, artists, aca­d­e­mics, crit­ics and users that sur­round Per­va­sive Media. This has de­vel­oped in re­sponse to the lack of the cor­rectly nu­anced lan­guage in other media pro­duc­tion. This cur­rent re­search de­vel­ops work that was car­ried out dur­ing the Mo­bile Bris­tol pro­ject, where var­i­ous de­sign di­men­sions of mo­bile media were iden­ti­fied, such as so­cial­ity, place, or genre. Through work­shops with prac­ti­tion­ers and aca­d­e­mics based at the Per­va­sive Media Stu­dio the key con­cepts and the de­tails of the lan­guage that is used to de­scribe the ex­pe­ri­ence and pro­duc­tion of these pieces of per­va­sive media. At first a num­ber of ar­che­typal and suc­cess­ful pro­jects were ex­plored, get­ting peo­ple to ex­pe­ri­ence them and then dis­cuss them, often with the de­sign­ers and artists them­selves pre­sent. Fol­low­ing on from that a num­ber of key con­cepts were iden­ti­fied, such as play and space, and these were ex­am­ined more gen­er­ally and com­pared across pro­jects. This work is lead­ing to­wards the pro­duc­tion of a ‘Per­va­sive Media Cook­book’ that will pre­sent key pro­jects in per­va­sive media as well as a crit­i­cal look into the specifics that set Per­va­sive Media apart from other media ex­pe­ri­ences.

  • Dr. Con­stance Fleu­riot is a re­searcher at the Dig­i­tal Cul­tures Re­search Cen­tre, based in the Per­va­sive Media Stu­dio. She is work­ing with Jon Dovey on an AHRC funded Knowl­edge Trans­fer Fel­low­ship in­ves­ti­gat­ing the lan­guage, aes­thet­ics and value of per­va­sive media. She founded feath­er­house, an in­de­pen­dent con­tent agency spe­cial­is­ing in dig­i­tal, so­cial and per­va­sive media, which in 2010 launched fash­ion pop­corn, a new net­work for cre­ative peo­ple work­ing in film, fash­ion and dig­i­tal media. Con­stance was a found­ing mem­ber of staff at the Per­va­sive Media Stu­dio, work­ing on pub­lic en­gage­ment pro­jects for the stu­dio, at­tempt­ing to draw in peo­ple of all ages and back­grounds. As a Re­search As­so­ci­ate at Bris­tol Uni­ver­sity, Con­stance was one of the prin­ci­pal in­ves­ti­ga­tors on the Mo­bile Bris­tol Pro­ject in­ves­ti­gat­ing the so­cial im­pact of emerg­ing per­va­sive and mo­bile tech­nolo­gies. Since then she has been work­ing as a free­lance con­sul­tant in user re­search and loca­tive media de­sign, and fa­cil­i­tat­ing lo­ca­tion-based mixed-me­dia pro­jects with a va­ri­ety of user com­mu­ni­ties. She worked on the de­vel­op­ment of the Fu­ture­lab cre­ateas­cape web­site, a re­source for pupils and teach­ers on how to use HPlabs mscape soft­ware in an ed­u­ca­tional set­ting. She still runs mscape work­shops, mainly with schools, but has ex­pe­ri­ence in teach­ing mscape to peo­ple of all ages. Con­stance’s in­ter­ests en­com­pass show­ing peo­ple how to be cre­ative pro­duc­ers with per­va­sive tech­nol­ogy and not just con­sumers.  She is also in­ter­ested in ex­plor­ing what might be em­bed­ded or hid­den in per­va­sive tech­nol­ogy ap­pli­ca­tions, whether de­lib­er­ate or due to the as­sump­tions of the de­signer.