i-DAT has developed a programme of digital media workshops for Children and young people through an ongoing collaboration with Creative Partnerships, AimHigher and numerous schools and community organisations. i-DAT is currently engaged with the delivery of Widening Participation workshops (over 1000 participants over the last 2 years) for AimHigher and several research and networking projects for Creative Partnerships (Infinite Infants, aimed art reception level play environments, and Projecting Plymouth online resource for young peoples creative production projects). Many of the viral technology projects, such as the v-mOb workshops are also targeted at engaging young people in creative production through a range of new and domestic technologies.
It’s about creating imaginary worlds that have a special relationship to
reality - worlds in which we can extend, amplify, and enrich our own
capacities to think, feel, and act.”
(Laurel B, 1993, Computers as Theatre Brenda Laurel, Addison-Wesley)
The current series of workshops actively involves young people in playful engagement with the production and publication of their own mobile music videos. The workshop takes the aspirations of Brenda Laurel’s ‘imaginary worlds’ one stage further by providing participants with a mechanism to share their desires across a community of peers. Workshop participants will be able to create dynamic micro-masterpieces by capturing, producing and distributing mini-movies.
The workshop explores the creative potential of the worlds most ubiquitous communications system: the Internet. As well as being a resource of near infinite information, it is also a mechanism for communicating ideas and distributing them to a potentially massive audience.
Having said this, the workshop is essentially about having fun with computers, probably the most simple and effective way of learning about these complex technologies.
Check out videodat on You Tube. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=videodat&search_type=&aq=f
The main part of the session will take place in the University of Plymouths Digital Media Studios. Here the music videos will be created on, and for mobile phones. The workshop is completed by a session will then take place in the Immersive Vision Theatre. Participants will get a chance to experience its cutting edge surround sound system accompanied by immersive generative visualisations, whilst being given an understanding of the origins of fulldome environments – from domed architectures, planetariums, multi-projector film environments, flight simulation and virtual reality.
Driving the workshops forward is a bunch of dedicated student ambassadors from the BA/BSc Digital Art & Technology course. Drawn from across all years of the programme the team bring a range of contemporary experiences to the workshop participants.
NB: Workshop participants are encouraged to bring their mobile phones (especially Bluetooth enabled camera phones) as well as a CD or MP3 of a music track they like to the sessions.
SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) / Rapid-prototyping workshop & Looking into the Eye of God seminar. The Bartlett School of Architecture, i-DAT, m-DAT, nascent-research, trans-techresearch. Sliding Scale (13-15/12/06 to 19/01/07) presents a view of our relationship with the peculiar landscapes of digital technology as an ‘ecology’. In exploring these landscapes we navigate through a territory that is disturbed, moist, blurred and vacillating. We are forced to focus on the ‘relationships between’ where process replaces product in importance, just as systems supersede structure. The tools that form these landscapes are harbinger’s for a meaningful ecological (both machinic and natural) audit of specific sites and processes. They demand the development of new strategies and protocols for their users (designers, engineers, architects and artists) and require that the sites, agents, provocateurs, disparate observers and drifters that consume and influence their output critically engage with them. http://www.nascent-technology.net/SlidingScales.pdf
(15/12/2006) i-DAT & The Bartlett School of Architecture are collaborating on an SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) and Rapid-prototyping workshop to generate an exhibition to be installed in January 2007 at University College London. The workshop and seminar are part of Nascent Research Digital Knitting Practice based research workshop, the Tran-Technology research Seminar series (Looking into the Eye of God) and the Invisible Architectures module for m-DAT. This continuing collaboration with Unit 20 of the Bartlett School of Architecture builds on last years Arch-OS workshop held in the Plymouth Planetarium. http://www.nascent-technology.net/SlidingScales.pdf
(18/10/2005). A one day workshop for individuals, artists and organisations on open source software and using FOSS. http://openmute.org
The v-mOb Video Workshops for Mobile Phones are intended to provided a creative and technical platform for developing media directly from the camera technologies that are now common place in mobile phones. Aimed at a wide range people from young to old, the workshops and this accompanying website support the development of micro movies, stop frame animation, video montages and any number of creative solutions for using your mobile phone. http://www.i-dat.org/projects/v-mob/
(22/09/2005). RA located in i-DAT to develop an Immersive Vision Theatre. The University of Plymouth has won funding from Hefce’s Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning initiative to create an Immersive Vision Theatre in the planetarium on the Plymouth campus. We wish to appoint an innovative and creative graduate to develop the protocols necessary for creating immersive, dome-projected images from a variety of digital inputs. The post will be for one year in the first instance. The appointee should be available to attend an immersive cinema workshop in Portugal from 5th September 2005. The closing date for this post is Thursday 18th August 2005. http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/cetl
i+DATA exposes the ways in which data is instituted in a variety of contexts, de-fragmenting issues related to the production, control and distribution of digital media across the cultural industries. The i+DATA Exposition seeks to de-fragment practices and digital activities across the public and private sectors that define the cultural industries within the South West region and beyond. Partitioned into a series of seminars, practical workshops, presentations and screenings, the exposition provides a rich environment for focused critical discussion on the future of digital media. http://www.i-dat.org/projects/idata/
