Author: michaelkissick

Plymouth University this week finds itself at the centre of a hacking campaign with vital Government data being accessed and opened up for hundreds of watching eyes right across the UK.  Hackers in the UK’s Ocean City are swiftly searching through the data and identifying clever new ways of thinking and working which could change the way the Government operates in the future.

Panic over however.  The first sentence of this release is completely true but the five people at the centre of this ‘scandal’ are aged just 16-18 and they are happily hacking away with the enthusiastic coaching and mentoring of Plymouth University’s acclaimed i-DAT department and team.
http://things2do.ws/index.html

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23YRS2013&src=hash

The sharp, youthful programmers are part of the innovative Young Rewired State 2013 team and are joined right across the UK by others in 50 cities and towns.  Young Rewired State is a network of software developers and designers aged 18 and under with a clear focus to its find and foster the young children and teenagers who are driven to teaching themselves how to code, how to programme the world around them. The overall aim is to create a worldwide, independent, mentored network of young programmers supported and supporting through peer-to-peer learning. Ultimately solving real-world challenges.

This entire week specifically aims to make powerful, important public data available to imaginative young developers – such as those working away in Plymouth University. At the end of that, the developers should have improved their skills while showing government and the older programming community some fresh new ideas sourced from their own time on laptops, most likely in their bedrooms.  All of the Plymouth-based young people will then make their way to join their hacking and programming colleagues at The Custard Factory in Birmingham this weekend where they will get access to globally renowned speakers and spend the weekend sharing their optimum work and learning from everyone else around them.  Last year the Plymouth contingent was shortlisted for the ultimate winning award, and it is hoped that this year’s crack team will go all the way.
In the South West, Young Rewired State has hooked-up with i-DAT, Plymouth University’s catalyst lab for playful experimentation with data, and the i-DAT team is leading the local coders in their exciting week and resultant learning and work.  i-DAT at Plymouth University is a National Portfolio Organisation of Arts Council England.

Plymouth University is no stranger to innovation in this sector however.  For the past 20 years the Digital Arts & Technology (DAT) course within Plymouth University has been producing global leaders in the field and a number of pioneering digital and media companies have been fostered within the university walls as a result.

i-DAT Director of Operations, B Aga, says, “We’re all about encouraging these local young people to ‘hack’ and code and to showcase their own, mostly self-taught, skills whilst experimenting and learning alongside their clever peers.  The coding and programming sectors are obviously huge growth sectors yet very little of this vital teaching is being done in schools.  We want to find these coders of the future now and start integrating them into the opportunities that we have here at Plymouth University and with i-DAT.”

B continues, “This type of swift and clever programming changes and evolves from day-to-day as new technology moves and develops and its natural that these young people are right ahead of the curve and often creating the curve.  Young Rewired State takes all this energy and sharp thinking and puts it in one room with open source Government data.  We’re amazed by what this Plymouth crew has come up with so far and we can’t wait to see what morphs out in the next few days.”

Chris Hunt, a graduate of the DAT course at Plymouth University and now a member of the team at i-DAT is leading this year’s team on the ground.  Chris says, “Every year I’ve mentored and hosted Plymouth’s Young Rewired State, I never cease to be amazed by the breadth of talent on show at their age. These guys have the drive to keep building and exploring. It gives me faith in the future of the technology industry in the South West.”

“Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.”
W. C. Fields

http://qualia.org.uk/
i-DAT is collaborating with Cheltenham Festivals and the University of Warwick(with a little help from Facebook) on the NESTA Digital R&D funded Qualia Project. Qualia Smile will be running from the 1-6 May 2013.
‘Qualia Smile’ is a playful smile counter that encourages the audience to participate in measuring the collective happiness of the Jazz Festival. Qualia Smile gamifies the collection of qualitative data, generating a benevolent feedback loop – smile and the festival smiles with you. The harvested smiles generate an aggregated visualisation of the mood of the festival – that Jazz feeling.
Qualia Smile incorporates image analysis techniques found in most common cameras and phones. These open software libraries are used to create a playful and participatory measure of happiness at the Jazz Festival. If this were a Blues Festival, would we have to turn the camera upside down?
Qualia Smile works within one meter of the display screen and requires direct participation. The system only records instances of smiles and not individual faces. The smile harvesting takes place in real time and is layered over the live video. Just like a mirror, the screen clearly shows who is looking at it and encourages the viewer to pull appropriate faces (commonly called ‘smiles’). The dynamic data graphics visualise that Jazz feeling.
Qualia Smile is the first manifestation of the Qualia Project. Funded by NESTA, Qualia will be a real-time system to capture and display how audiences feel. Qualia extends contemporary audience evaluation processes by incorporating techniques to harvest, analyse and visualise more emotive/qualitative data. This unique trans-disciplinary collaboration aims to enhance engagement and enable arts organisations to reflexively programme cultural events, thereby enhancing their economic, cultural and social impact.
 

Babbage 213, Plymouth University, Plymouth, PL48aa
Part of the BA/BSc (Hons) Digital Art & Technology Visiting Speaker Programme.
http://visiblespace.com/blog/?page_id=911
Dr Paul Thomas, has a joint position as Head of Painting at the College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales and Head of Creative Technologies at the Centre for Culture and Technology, Curtin University. Paul has chaired numerous international conferences and is co-curting a show of Australian artists for ISEA2011.  In 2000 Paul instigated and was the founding Director of the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth.
Paul has been working in the area of electronic arts since 1981 when he co-founded the group Media-Space. Media-Space was part of the first global link up with artists connected to ARTEX. From 1981-1986 the group was involved in a number of collaborative exhibitions and was instrumental in the establishment a substantial body of research. Paul’s research project ‘Nanoessence’ explored the space between life and death at a nano level. The project was part of an ongoing collaboration with the Nanochemistry Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology and SymbioticA at the University of Western Australia. The previous project ‘Midas’ was researching at a nano level the transition phase between skin and gold.
Paul is a member of i-DAT’s Advisory Board and will be in the UK en route to Mutamorphosis (http://mutamorphosis.org/2012/)