Panel Statement
Chair Persons: Dan Dixon & Jonathan Dovey
Presenters: Constance Fleuriot & Tim Kindberg
Pervasive media is a new and developing field; commissioners, brands, clients, funding bodies often have difficulty grasping its potential. Very few media professionals, let alone members of the public, understand what Pervasive Media is, or could become. We are at a new frontier. New, pervasive, ubiquitous and mobile technologies promise us an ever more connected world and the possibility to access ever more detailed information about context. Although these promises contain drastic changes to media and technology, they don’t engage with the necessary changes to the practices of media production, distribution, technology creation and the commercial and practical realities that could make these promises a reality. These will be drastically game changing; creating new business possibilities, whilst making others obsolete. These promises, and changes, will be critically addressed during this panel. Pervasive experiences also require a new, and significantly more diverse, set of skills to implement. This includes a wide variety of media production, technical skills and business acumen. However at this period of development practitioners from widely varying fields in art, design, and technology find little time, or common ground, to reflect on their practice. This session will draw on results from workshops and events where the panellists have provided space for reflection and discussion amongst practitioners in this emergent field. There are new, and different, relationships between designers, commissioners and those using these new experiences. New equations for value are emerging, which are different from those within more traditional mediums. What is the value, in pervasive experiences, to all these different stakeholders? Why is it worth doing, what does everyone get out of it and why do they enjoy it? The discussions will be fundamentally grounded in the ecologies of value that provide perspective on these issues. This panel is assembled from the network of researchers and practitioners who provide practical and theoretical perspectives to The Pervasive Media Studio. The Studio is an organisation that creates space and opportunities for this emergent field of pervasive media, encouraging collaboration across boundaries, experimentation, reflection and analysis. It draws in a diverse community of artists, creative companies, technologists and academics.
- Dan Dixon is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Technologies at the University of the West of England, UK, where he runs their degree course in Web Design. His research revolves around the way people interact with technology and specifically the space where digital gaming and the real world mix. Currently he is working on a PhD, entitled Playing with Reality, which examines the cultural and aesthetic aspects of the nearly indefinable field of Pervasive Gaming. He is also involved in projects on gamification, augmented reality and location based gaming. Prior to moving to academia he worked in the we industry and had roles as a senior consultant with social software company Headshift, product manager for the BBC’s online communities and production director for new media agency Syzygy. dcrc.org.uk
- Prof. Jon Dovey has recently been appointed to the new Faculty of Creative Arts at University of the West of England, UK, with a view to raising the profile of media research there. Since joining UWE he has established the Digital Cultures Research Centre; interfacing industry and academia and based at the Pervasive Media Studio. Jon is a leading researcher in the field of interactive media and gaming and spent the first 15 years of his working life in video production, working through the early years of Channel Four as a researcher, editor and eventually as Producer. He worked principally in documentary and experimental video, co founding original scratch artists Gorilla Tapes in 1984. His video projects gained international distribution and recognition and have now taken their place in the documented histories of UK Video Art. After moving to Bristol in 1990 he worked at the Watershed Media Centre for two years before teaching at the University of Plymouth in 1992 and then at both the University of the West of England School of Cultural Studies and the University of Bristol. As Head of the Department of Drama at Bristol University he piloted a £13m redevelopment through University planning stages. He is Knowledge Transfer Fellow at the the Pervasive Media Studio 2010-2011 and is researching the the Aesthetics and Value of Pervasive Media innovations.
- Dr Constance Fleuriot is a Research Associate at the Digital Cultures Research Centre, University of the West of England, based in the Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol, UK. She is working with Professor Jon Dovey on an AHRC funded Knowledge Transfer Fellowship investigating the language, aesthetics and value of pervasive media, attempting to capture the emerging field of practice around the pervasive media studio and what the new business models might be. She has a lengthy involvement with innovative technologies, both in her own arts practice and also as one of the principal investigators on the Mobile Bristol Project, investigating the social impact of emerging pervasive and mobile technologies. After Mobile Bristol she founded featherhouse, an independent family collective of digital, social and pervasive media consultants, which in 2010 launched fashionpopcorn.com, a new network for creative people working in film, fashion and digital media. Constance has worked as a consultant in user research and locative media design for clients in industry and education, facilitating location-based mixed-media projects with a variety of user communities. Her current interests encompass exploring ethical issues associated with pervasive technology, including the accessibility of production and consumption of pervasive applications, and where romantic fiction might fit into all of this. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts