Tag: media

Queer Methodologies in Creative Technologies Conference, 29-30 June 2023 – Centre for Creative Technologies

Posted on by George Thomas

The Centre for Creative Technologies have organised a two-day conference which explores queer methodologies used by artists and researchers interested in creative technologies. We caught up with Katy Dadacz and Dr Francesco Bentivegna, from the Centre, to find out more.

What is the conference?

This two-day conference on the 29-30  June will be an opportunity for methodological reflection and collaboration around queer practices in creative technologies. We will be asking; what methods do queer researchers and artists use when they engage with creative technologies such as virtual reality, creative computing, and animation? What identities are privileged when technologies are imagined, narrated, designed, and used? How can practices be queered (using methods and processes that resist binary and hierarchy, and subvert heteronormative structures)?

Participants will re-think and recalibrate research methods to not only understand the complexity of queer approaches but to imagine alternative creative technology practices. The two-day conference will consist of a workshop and micro-talks. On the first day, MELT, (Ren Loren Britton & Iz Paeh), will run an online workshop. Their work focuses on arts-design research to generate material and infrastructural transformations that intersect Trans* feminism and Disability Justice. On the second day, speakers including queer artists, creative technologists and University of Bristol and University of the West of England researchers will give micro-talks, sharing their own practices and methods. This will range from reflecting on queer phenomenology as a potential way to critique dominant narratives of the Metaverse, to a project on inclusive design processes prioritising older queer people and their experiences. Over the course of the two days, we encourage imaginative, open, curious, and messy ways of working with creative technologies.

What inspired this project?

This project blossomed from a long-standing interest in creative collaboration between humans and technologies which has been explored at the Future Speculations Reading Group run by us at the Pervasive Media Studio. Beginning in October 2022, academics, artists and creative technologists from the University of Bristol, University of the West of England, Pervasive Media Studio, Control Shift Network and Queer Tech Meet Up discuss texts exploring themes such as artificial intelligence, algorithmic creativity, machine learning and feminist hacking. We critically engage with artist practices, as well as film and literary responses.

The reading group has challenged and envisioned just and equitable futures for human and machine collaboration, centred around trans feminism, disability justice and queer transformations. The discussions inspired us to think about the value of knowledge-exchange between artists, creative technologists, and researchers (whose identities often crossover) and how we can explore and build queer resilience within the emerging practices of creative technologies.

In the foreground is a smart phone in landscape orientation on a selfie stick. Someone's left hand is holding onto the selfie stick. The phone screen displays a blue and white digital image of the scene in front of the phone's camera viewfinder, which is blurred in the background.
Billennium, by Uninvited Guests and Duncan Speakman. Photo by Paul Blakemore.

Why is this research important?

Our project will be a response to the marginalisation and erasure of trans and queer folx in conversations and speculations surrounding the future of creative technology. We will re-think what resilience means with different contexts of creative technologies and emphasise the importance of collaboration between artists and researchers. It will be an opportunity to experiment and envision alternative ways for these connections to have different impacts with and for the queer community, in Bristol and beyond.

How will you go about researching, including partners involved?

We are working with artists-in-residency at the Watershed’s Pervasive Media Studio and creative technologists at Ctrl Shift Network and Queer Tech Meet Up. The interactive workshop will explore queer metaphors and materials that can help to expand creative technologies, as well as teaching low-tech solutions such as DIY servers. The symposium invites creative technologists at the Pervasive Media Studio and researchers at UoB and UWE from a range of disciplines to share their work, and a ‘thought experiment’ or question set. After each presentation, the participants, in small groups, will have time to engage with what has been proposed.

What impact do you expect this research to have?

We aim to see a network of queer researchers, artists and creative technologies grow, creating new relationships with which projects inspired by sustainable and equitable queer methodologies for resilience will begin. This project will also be an opportunity for public education around queer identities within creative technologies.

What are the next steps for the project?

Building from this pilot project, we aim to kickstart a standing series of workshops and meetings framed around Queer Resilience through Arts and Creative Technologies. Our idea is to develop regular, affordable, playful, and critical workshop-based meetups and a standing hub to share ideas, trajectories, and strategies for resilience.

The Centre for Creative Technologies launched in 2022 with the aim of facilitating collaborative research on creative technologies between disciplines within the Faculty of Arts and across the University. To find out more about the Centre’s activities, research and to join the mailing list, please contact artf-cct@bristol.ac.uk. 

Introducing the Centre for Creative Technologies

Posted on by Kathryn Pintus

By Dr Paul Clarke and Dr Ed King, Co-Directors of the Centre for Creative Technologies 

We are excited to be launching the new Centre for Creative Technologies this autumn and to have been supported by the Faculty of Arts. The Centre will provide a focus for colleagues from a wide range of disciplines working with and on creative technologies, using creative technologies as a method in their practice-as-research and working historically, critically, or theoretically on media. Our understanding of creative technologies is inclusive of both analogue and digital technologies, and of media from print and film to gaming and Virtual Reality. Bristol Common Press is part of the Centre, and we are closely associated with the new Bristol Digital Game Lab which is advertising upcoming events on its new site. 

Over our first foundational year we’ll be defining the Centre’s identity and scope through a series of events and doing so in dialogue with Centre members and our partners, both within and beyond the University, locally and internationally. We hope that bringing Faculty researchers together through the Centre will lead to inspiring conversations and collaborative exchanges, building our critical mass in this priority area for both the University of Bristol and the city region. 

In the foreground is a smart phone in landscape orientation on a selfie stick. Someone's left hand is holding onto the selfie stick. The phone screen displays a blue and white digital image of the scene in front of the phone's camera viewfinder, which is blurred in the background.
Billennium, by Uninvited Guests and Duncan Speakman. Photo by Paul Blakemore.

As evidenced by the success of the MyWorld Strength in Places bid, the University of Bristol and the South West region have a reputation as international trailblazers in screen-based media and creative technology research and development. Our Centre’s Management Committee includes Ki Cater, Professor in Computer Science and co-investigator on MyWorld, alongside Susan Halford, Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the new Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Centre for Sociodigital Futures, and Dylan Law from the Research and Enterprise Division (RED), who’s responsible for managing and developing creative and cultural opportunities. The intention is for the Centre to be a vehicle for more cross-Faculty STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths) research projects and to promote interdisciplinary collaboration on creative technologies innovation. 

The Centre also aims to enable and encourage further engagement with creative industries and communities on impact or knowledge exchange, including exploring social and civic applications of creative technologies with partners like Knowle West Media Centre. Our recent publications, activities and interdisciplinary projects range from Dr Ed King’s book Twins and Recursion in Digital, Literary and Visual Cultures and the AI and Literature symposium, which the Centre co-hosted, to Professor Esther Eidinow’s Virtual Reality Oracle, Connecting Through Culture as we Age: Digital Innovation for Healthy Aging and Dr Paul Clarke’s augmented reality engagement activity for planning consultation, Future Places Toolkit. 

The Centre will be based at the Pervasive Media Studio, which is a partnership between Watershed, UWE Bristol (UWE) and the University of Bristol, where UWE’s Digital Cultures Research Centre (DCRC) is also based. Jo Lansdowne (Executive Producer, Pervasive Media Studio) said: “We look forward to hosting the Centre in the Studio, to members contributing to the community of residents, and increasing the presence of the University of Bristol here. We’re planning a range of activities together, including a welcome event on Thursday 1 December, speculative co-design workshops around ‘Alternative Technologies’, and a series of public Friday lunchtime talks that will take critical perspectives on creative technologies. These will be co-curated with the Studio and the DCRC and it will be great to get Bristol and UWE researchers together with the creative technology professionals resident in the studio for discussions, to share skills and ideas, and to imagine exciting new collaborative projects.” 

A screenshot from the Virtual Reality Oracle, showing a figure in ancient Greek robes with arms outstretched, palms up, and looking up to the sky. The figure is standing in front of a large tree with bright green leaves.
Virtual Reality Oracle Project, Esther Eidinow , Kirsten Cater, et al, with Friday Sunday Studios, funded by AHRC, University of Bristol.

A priority for the Centre will be to support Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and postgraduates (PGRs), to attract new PhDs in this area, and to build the Faculty’s community of practice and research in creative technologies. One of the ways in which we’ll be doing this is through a new ECR and PGR-led reading group run by Dr Francesco Bentivegna and Katy Dadacz. As they say: “This will be open to those beyond the University, including Pervasive Media Studio residents and Control Shift Network. The group will focus on readings that explore creative relations between humans and machines, with invited presentations, discussions of interactive experiences and media, plus sharings of research and practice in progress.” As far as professional development for researchers at all stages of their careers, there are plans to work with the Library and Jean Golding Institute on training, potentially with funding from a bid recently submitted to the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) Embedding Digital Skills in Humanities and Arts Research scheme, and also for immersive media training in partnership with MyWorld. The MA Immersive Arts, which is part of MyWorld’s skills provision, is also associated with the Centre. 

The Centre for Creative Technologies will have a soft launch this semester, building towards a larger-scale and higher profile event at the end of this academic year, developed through exchanges with related centres internationally (and potentially in collaboration with the Virtual Reality Oracle project, Bristol Digital Game Lab and Bristol Common Press). The aim is for this to be both a symposium and showcase, to share Bristol’s thought- and practice-leading research in this growth area for both the University and local creative and immersive industries.  

We’re currently growing our membership, so do get in touch, whether your interests relate and you’d like to get involved in contributing to Centre activities, or if you’d like to join our mailing list to hear about upcoming events and opportunities. 

Dr Paul Clarke and Dr Ed King (Centre Co-Directors)