Introduction to Fulldome (6 Dec)

Friday 6th December, 11am-5pm at Kaleider Studios

Introduction to Fulldome (6 Dec)

FUTURE HISTORY EXHIBITION:

Date: Friday 29 November–Saturday 11 January

Time: Monday–Friday: 10:00–17:00 and Saturday: 11:00–16:00 (Closed Thursday 19 December–Sunday 5 January 2020 inclusive)

Venue: The Levinsky Gallery, Roland Levinsky Building {https://goo.gl/maps/qsLB9mwPe12sjxJVA}

FUTURE HISTORY is a two-phase project. Version 1.0 takes a look in the rear-view mirror as we accelerate through this post-digital phase of our cultural evolution. It celebrates the last 25 years of radical innovation in arts practice, education and research and locates Plymouth at the centre of it all.

Version 2.0 projects forward, sending out cultural mycelia and predictive algorithms to envision the future of creative endeavour.

Rooted in the cybernetic, telematic and interactive behaviours defined by Roy Ascott, FUTURE HISTORY maps this influence on the emergence of contemporary art forms: the digital, wearable, immersive, biological, and artificial.

FUTURE HISTORY sits at the nexus of a planetary network and maps chains of influence that have catalysed the development of new artistic directions and shaped a generation of transdisciplinary practitioners. It presents a series of exhibitions, symposia, online experiences, living labs and creative commissions which recover and redefine a future history.

DATA PLAY #10:

DATA Play 10
Past, Present and Future

Rolle Marquee, University of Plymouth

Friday 1 November 2019
9.30am to 4.30pm

DATA Play 10 is coming soon and we want you to get involved!

We’re excited to be running another DATA Play day on the 1 November 2019. Once again we will be working with local talent and tech companies to explore how open data and technology can be used to help the Council deliver services in new ways. Impact Lab and the Police Stop and Search department will also be joining us to see if our DATA Play community can help with their challenges.

DATA Play is about working with local talent and tech companies to explore how open data and technology can be used to help us deliver services in new ways. Visit the DATA Play page to see what’s happened at previous DATA Play days.

You can play as a team, meet people on the day or experiment on your own – whatever works for you! It’s free to join, so whatever you’re good at – coding, analysis, mapping, graphics, thinking – come along and join in the fun!

http://www.dataplymouth.co.uk/data-play-10?helm_rd=1

Challenges

Natural Infrastructure

Help us create Parks for the future: parks that celebrate nature and biodiversity; parks that deliver healthy environments for people; parks that are fit to adapt to climate change and parks that celebrate Plymouth’s local history and character.
Come and share your ideas for how technology can help us do this. We hope to be able to award funding to some of the best ideas with practical applications.

Some of our challenges/ideas. Feel free to expand and develop these, or come up with your own:

• Digital noticeboards to tell people what is going on.
• Maps you can ask questions of.
• Ways to capture data in the park such as air quality/bird/people movements and share it meaningfully and creatively to influence use and maintenance of the park.
• We are planting an arboretum for the future at Central Park – can you help us show the public what it will look like in 50/100 years’ time?
• How we can use mapping/GIS data (linked with smartphones) to interpret historical, wildlife and other features of interest around the Hoe?

Devon and Cornwall Police

We want to use this Event to find new ways of improving the way we use Stop & Search powers which reduces crime whilst maintaining public confidence.

• We want ideas about how we can use this data and visualise it in ways that help people see what is being delivered, how and where.
• We want to present data in a way that engages people across the city, whilst presenting some of the key facts and messages around Stop & Search.
• We want to use data to help us communicate with the right people, in a way that encourages them to talk back.
• We want to know what data can tell us about which communities and demographics are most affected by the use of Stop & Search powers.
• We want to find connections between those affected by Stop & Search and other services they may use in the city. This will allow us to shape our prevention work within our communities and build confidence with those who may experience Stop & Search.

Data Sense

How come, with the not inconsiderable investment in environmental data science and climate change modelling, we are so surprised by the Climate Emergency? For all our data literacy, our ability to ‘feel’ data is a missing ingredient in our ability to change our behaviour.

As Allegra Fuller Snyder suggests “Literacy creates distance”, how can we dive into data meaning using human data narratives, game play and storytelling to ensure things are felt a little closer to home, rather than somewhere far away? Its not just about numbers, what playful strategies can be developed to give data meaning.

Behaviourables and Futurables

Many of our challenges are about enabling people to change behaviours. By looking at our past behaviours we should be able to understand why we are behaving so badly now, and possibly imagine our potential futures.
Behaviourables and Futurables anticipate design strategies for visualising and modelling urban and rural activity, drawing on a variety of data sets (environmental, civic and financial) to build models of the past, present and potential futures.

“We are very much concerned with generating futuribles – maybe that’s because the more we can dream up alternative futures the more changeable the present can become.”

Roy Ascott, BEHAVIOURABLES AND FUTURIBLES. Control, London, 1970, Nº 5

• How can we understand complex human behaviour by exploring the entanglement of multiple data sources?
• Are there things we can wear, share and show that reveal the complex interplay of reveal our complicity in our shared behaviours?

{October 2019}

Blast Theory welcome Christiana Kazakou as a new resident:

NEW BLAST THEORY RESIDENT:

“During her residency, she’ll be developing ‘narrative as research’ methodologies through action, reflection, process, people and form based on Blast Theory’s multi-spatial practice. Taking the role of a ‘social explorer’ she will navigate performative citizenship through participatory systems of representation, politics of technology and alternative vocabularies of interpretation within art and science discourse.

Overall my work explores interconnectedness and the open-ended dialogue between art and science, by combining scientific concepts, laws and theories from different disciplines with an arts practice. Using free association to discover the mirroring of scientific theory and concept with social, formal and physical sciences; including mathematics, architecture, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, astronomy, astrometry and the philosophy of time & space. Both art and science require imagination and original thinking, a sense of inquiry and concern about human nature & society. Whilst science investigates how the world operates, in art this information is interpreted and expressed from a unique individual perspective. My interests lie in abstraction, curiosity and those complexities arising from the inter-relationship between science and art that have the ability to influence perceptions lurking beneath ‘known’ definitions.”

Framing Immersion, Stories from an Emerging Market.

South West Creative Technology Network Immersion Theme publication.

Written by: Mark Leaver

Edited by: Hannah Brady & Jon Dovey

Published by: SWCTN Watershed, 1 Canon’s Road, Harbourside, Bristol, BS1 5TX

https://swctn.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/SWCTN_Immersion_Showcase_Publication_D.pdf. 07/2019.

Mike Phillips bit: Wonderful Instabilities.

Ascii here:

THINKBOX 4 

WONDERFUL INSTABILITIES 

Let’s be honest, if we wanted to make the kinds of immersive experiences we dream of, we wouldn’t have built these clunky technologies. In most cases they are an accident of history and a stuttering step along an evolutionary path. The kinds of immersive experiences we dream of are not fettered by resolution, frame rates and compression codecs, let alone the tethered isolation of an HMD. We are witnessing the emergence of something, not the culmination or a fixed and steady state. And this emergence has been a long time coming, from ancient domed architectures, a peek into the spherical heavens of the Flammarion, the globes of Gottorf and Wyld, Nagy’s Vision in Motion, the domes of Zeiss and Fuller, and the breath taking submersive immersion of Davies’ Osmose, all baby steps on the path to total immersion. Such a long history and yet it seems so new and shiny. This collective cultural amnesia was probably ignited somewhere in the early 15th century when Alberti threw a major spanner in the works. His Della pittura radically reduced our field of view and constrained our outlook by squeezing everything into a rectangle. A perspectival shift that placed us here and the world somewhere over there, totally unimmersed. He ignored the spherical world, the dome of the cosmos overhead, and the sphere of the eye, even, over time, the circular lens became constricted by the rectangle of the photographic plate. This persistence of a particular type of vision became entrenched through the forms of Cinema and Television and lingers into the mindset of VR production. The hegemony of the culture of the eye has been framed by the Albertian window at the cost of things outside our normal frame of reference (the micro and the macro and the small far away) and technologies that simply don’t fit. Although predating perspective, immersive experiences and the technologies that enable them provide a new unstable perspective on the world. This instability requires new practices intertwined with new technologies. They allow creatives to embrace lensless digital imaging technologies that provide access to a photon from the edge of the universe and the atomic forces that bind the molecular substrate, a whole new vocabulary for articulating the world. Pure data from Atomic Force Microscopes, Scanning Electron Microscopes, X-ray computed tomography and Radio telescopes open up new immersive experiences, as more dimensions are unveiled, more realities are modelled and more truths envisioned. There are more things in heaven and earth than currently understood in our media philosophy. Immersion is the George Kaplan of media forms, a Macguffin of ubiquitous proportions, something so dominating to the plot that it isn’t really there. So, which came first the experience, the audience, the creative practice or the technology? You can’t make immersive media without breaking some forms. What this wonderful instability does is spark new production pathways, new tools, new practices, new work, new experiences, new distribution platforms, new license models, new audiences and new histories to be rediscovered. We can all now sit at the centre of our own shared spherical umwelt, inside something rather than once removed. It’s curtains for the Albertian window. 

Mike Phillips Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at Plymouth University, the Director of Research at i-DAT

Local pdf here:

EVENTBRITE BOOKING: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/impact-lab-immersive-data-visualisation-workshop-tickets-63041079566

Date And Time: Fri, 19 July 2019 / 10:00 – 13:30 BST

Impact Lab: Immersive Data Visualisation Workshop

Building Experiences for Businesses

• Date and time: Friday 19 July 2019, 10:00 – 13:30
• Location: Immersive Vision Theatre, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AA

Join Luke Christison and Mike Phillips for this half-day workshop to learn more about how immersive vision can help support your business. No prerequisites for this workshop are required.

Eligibility

• Those working with The Environment Futures and Big Data Impact Lab project
• Devon-based Small to Medium Sized Enterprises.

If you would like to register for this workshop but don’t meet the criteria, please email impactlab@plymouth.ac.uk.

Programme

10:00 – 10:30 Welcome, registration and refreshments

10:30 – 11:30 Immersive Vision Theatre demonstration

11:30 – 12:30 Immersive experience discussion

12:30 – 13:30 Unity Gamification workshop

FAQs

Where is the Immersive Vision Theatre?

The Immersive Vision Theatre is based on the main University of Plymouth campus in Plymouth City Centre. A map of the campus can be found on the website. The Immersive Vision Theatre is located in square F3.

What are my transport options for getting to and from the event?

The University of Plymouth is right at the heart of Plymouth, just across the street from the city’s extensive shopping district and surrounded by great culture, heritage and entertainment.

You can explore all of the main routes into the city, including information about travelling by car, train, ferry, coach, bike and air are available on the University of Plymouth travel page.

What are my parking options?

There are plenty of car parks in the city centre within walking distance of the University. A full list and car park maps is available from Plymouth City Council. The nearest are Mayflower House Court, Mayflower Street East and Regent Street. Park and Ride is also a good option for getting into the city centre if you’re travelling by car. Services run Monday to Saturday from three locations around the city.

Civic Duty

Carolyn Lazard, Sam Lipp, Adrian Piper, Donald Rodney