Technology Strategy Board funded art and culture -led projects
June 9, 2010
Posted by Clare in: Innovation | Bristol | 1 comment so farThe Technology Strategy Board have funded some great projects led by arts and cultural organisations, but unfortunately they didn't have permission to publish details of the early rounds. I get asked a lot about projects that have been funded so have collected some that I know about here. Do add in any others you know about.
Extended Theatre Project (Fast Track), Watershed, Bristol Old Vic and HP Labs
The Extended Theatre Experience was funded by The Technology Strategy Board as an exploration of how technology can extend and ultimately enhance a live performance experience, like theatre or a music concert. Click here for more info.
Projecting Holograms (Feasability Study), iShed and AntiVJ
The next seismic shift in visual technologies will be to 3D. In 2009 iShed and AntiVJ (projection experts whose 3D mapping technology is already in use in exhibitions and installations across Europe), completed a Technology Strategy Board Feasibility Study Grant to produce a new working software tool-set for stereoscopic content. Click here for more info.
Unlocking markets for content delivery (Collaborative Research), Watershed, Calvium, Bristol Old Vic, Historic Royal Palaces, Bristol City Council
Two major technology trends are reshaping the creative industries: Web 2.0 has created a rapid growth of User Generated Content which is changing the way content is made and delivered and networked and context-aware channels promise to change the way content is accessed and consumed. How will the consequences of these trends be commercialised? In November 2009, Watershed began an 18 month Research and Development project to develop software and prototype pervasive media services. Click here for more info.
The Dramatic Potential Of Pervasive Media, Ralph Hoyte
Ralph’s TSB feasibility study aims to scope ways in which pervasive media can provide new dramatic platforms for explorations in the categories currently known as ‘art’, ‘literature’, ‘poetry’, ‘drama’, ‘music’ and ‘dramatic interpretation’ (eg in the heritage sector); and to set up scratch scenarios to demonstrate some of these capabilities. Click here for more info.
Mobile Social Game Engine (MSGE), SlingShot (was Simon Games)
A cross platform game management system, that integrates mobile comms (sms, email and Twitter) with GPS tracking and Facebook. SlingShot games involve real people and real places and deliver immersive, meaningful experiences. MSGE connects that experience to online social networks and conversation. This creates value for players and the organisations we work with.
Bristol Harbour: An Interactive Experience, Interactive Places
This ran from 1st-26th April 2009, when Interactive Places invited people to take an interactive stroll around Bristol Docks and become part of a story set in 1885. Read more.
New Digital Markets | ARKive and Wildscreen Trading Ltd, Nature Picture Library, VID Communications
This feasibility study will explore the challenges and potential for novel business models and technical applications to address the future management and distribution of a specific range of digital media content (video & images), with the aim of finding a fair and efficient flow of revenue across the value chain, from content suppliers to consumers/visitors to the ARKive site.
How Can Augmented Reality on a Mobile Device be Used by Historical Places to Deliver Content which Informs, Entertains, and Directs the User? | Mobile Pie
A study into how the use of Augmented Reality (AR) on mobile devices can improve the ways that public information available on existing networks can be brought to users in a useful and immediate context. In particular the study will concentrate on using 3D characters overlaid on real world real-time camera input to make users aware of historical sites and facts. It will also look into how the technology could be taken further to distribute more information, through micro-payments and allowing user generated and user shared content.
Movies on the Move, Wonky
WÖNKY has carried out R&D into the creation of location based film experiences having secured funding from the Technology Strategy Board. Read more.
The Question | Extant
The Question is a collaborative and immersive theatre project that explores haptic technology in relation to navigation, perception and knowledge. Currently in a research and development phase, which culminates in a showing in June 2010 at BAC (Battersea Arts Centre), The Question is a collaboration between Extant (the UK’s only professional performing arts company of visually impaired artists), BAC (a space for cutting-edge theatre) and the Computing Department of The Open University. Read more.
Theatre Sandbox announcement
June 3, 2010
Posted by Clare in: Watershed | Innovation | Technology | Bristol | arts | Add a commentiShed is delighted to announce the six recipients of this year’s Theatre Sandbox commissions, supported by Arts Council England.
Each of the six successful recipients receives £10,000 to develop their groundbreaking projects at prestigious partner venues across the country ready for public events and testing in September. This will be followed by a final showcase event at Watershed in November.
Theatre Sandbox seeks to grow an active community of experimentation and learning and includes a structured programme of commissioning and knowledge exchange to grow awareness of technology in the theatre sector. IShed aims to encourage innovation and to leave a lasting legacy as part of the scheme.
The commissions were selected following an intensive application period, during which 275 theatre makers attended nationwide introductory workshops and almost 100 applications were received.
The commissions:
Proto-type Theater
Hosted by Bristol Old Vic
Fortnight is a two-week long performance experience located in the spaces, technologies and occurrences of our daily lives: an unfolding adventure into the limitless 'local'.
Proto-type Theater is a company of multi-disciplinary artists interested in live and digital performance. Proto-type has created demanding, intricately crafted original works, differing in scale, subject and medium for a diverse audience of intelligent, modern humans. FFI www.proto-type.org
Mind the Gap
Hosted by Contact, Manchester
Mind the Gap will make a sonic maze where the audience are moved through a space, attracted and repulsed by sirens. Mind the Gap makes professional theatre with learning disabled people. FFI www.mind-the-gap.org.uk
Analogue
Hosted by The Junction, Cambridge
Analogue will use 21st century connectedness to explore disconnections between ourselves in the present, and the semi-remembered events of our childhood. The audience will navigate through events in May 1985, beginning with a phone call that has long since vanished from history.
Analogue aims to produce challenging, highly inventive via theatrical traditions from the past.FFI www.analogueproductions.co.uk
Ed Collier & Melanie Wilson
Hosted by Lyric Hammersmith
The Observatory is an audio led adventurous fairy tale for children aged between 7 and 10 and their adults. Staged both on a high street and in a theatrical playspace it is about a parallel magical world that exists alongside the city. It can be heard only by those who want to hear it and glimpsed through keyholes and cracks in the pavement by a lucky few. The Observatory will be made Ed Collier of China Plate and award winning theatre and sound artist Melanie Wilson.
FFI www.chinaplatetheatre.com / www.melaniewilson.org.uk
Tin Bath
Hosted by mac, Birmingham
Sophie Woolley and Gemma Fairlie of Tin Bath are developing a new comedy called You’re So Happy I Want to Die. The project experiments with dynamic, evocative captioning that responds to the live nature of theatre. Tin Bath produces exciting interactive theatre that is accessible to deaf and hard of hearing people. FFI www.tinbaththeatre.com
Duncan Speakman & Uninvited Guests
Hosted by Soho Theatre, London
Duncan Speakman is an artist who creates experiences in public spaces, often using mobile audio technology. He is collaborating with Uninvited Guests, a Bristol based company whose recent work blurs the line between theatre and social festivities. Together they are exploring how audiences can collectively imagine utopian futures in real locations using performance and networked maps
FFI www.duncanspeakman.net / www.uninvited-guests.net
Theatre Sandbox is originated and produced by iShed, part of Watershed. It is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, and delivered in partnership with Bristol Old Vic, Soho Theatre Lyric, Hammersmith, mac, Contact and The Junction.
Advancing the Arts: How Arts and Cultural Organisations Innovate
June 2, 2010
Posted by Clare in: Innovation | arts | Add a commentDo the arts act as a beacon for innovation? The notion of innovation and the arts is a difficult one: newness (and sometimes innovation) is achieved when a piece of art is produced, but arts funders are asking organisations themselves to be more innovative and it is often unclear what this means.
Am live-ish blogging my thoughts at the launch of Hasan Bakhshi and David Throsby's Cultural Innovation research paper at NESTA. Working with National Theatre (on NT Live which broadcasts theatre live into cinemas) and Tate (on Colour Chart which had a significant online presence), the research explores the ways cultural organisations innovate in audience reach, artistic frontiers and the creation of value, looking particularly at new technologies as a vehicle of innovation.
I should start by saying that I think NESTA do some very useful and important research in the cultural and innovation space and i haven't yet read the whole of this report, however the "executive executive" summary presented didn't offer any massive surprises; it is obviously an in-depth and rigorous study but I rather think International Future Forum's Producing the Future offers some less conventional insights (but then I would). Both NT Live and Colour Chart showed an increase in audiences, identified new opportunities to create revenue and new ways to explore cultural value. One interesting finding was that the projects attracted greater audiences from lower income groups than the organisations usual attendance levels.
Some observations Nicholas Hytner on NT Live: "This research reinforces that we were right to ignore ancient prejudice"
- NT live audiences reported greater personal connection with what they were viewing
- NT live audiences are more likely (rather than less) to go back to 'real' theatre
- the liveness is less important to audiences than they may have thought
- NT Live is not technically or creatively very adventurous, it is about new distribution opportunities
Someone asked during the panel session whether it is the responsibility of national organisations to be on the bleeding edge, which would have been interesting to explore more. And about risk. Organisations like Tate and NT are well resourced and I think they have a responsibility to take risks and share learning in ways that smaller organisations can't.
The event was standing room only with the great and good of the arts world in attendance. Funders, policy makers and organisations alike are clearly looking for guidance and inspiration in this area but it was a bit light on game-changing examples. Julian Bird from Tate said "Innovative art needs innovative business models". I think we may need some more innovative case studies. And maybe some diversity (in organisation size, region, gender, ethnicity) would help.
