Culturescope.ca - Interactive Screen: Cultural policy dispatches from Banff

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Friday, August 18, 2006

The final day of Interactive Screen 0.6 featured a second keynote address, this one given by Montréal writer and director Daniel Canty who deconstructed our human tendency to tie emotions up in technology: fitting since many have vested hope that participatory media will transform our notions of community and empowerment.

The evening before, Bonnie Thompson, an Edmonton-based producer with the National Film Board of Canada, discussed how an institution like the NFB is taking advantage of this new trend in citizen media creation and are creating films outside the traditional distribution and broadcast model. She introduced CitizenShift, an NFB website that features forums, blogs, podcasts and information related to independent filmmaking and new media creation.

Thompson also gave a preview of the Gary Burns and Jim Brown satirical documentary, Radiant City (2006) which sends up Calgary’s suburban sprawl and Anne Marie Nakagawa’s filmic study Between: Living in the Hyphen (2005) that addresses diversity in Canada.

Convergence of art, law, government and academia

Many participants concluded that IS 0.6 was notable for its mix of academia, legal experts, government representatives, funding experts and a plethora of digital artists who work in various disciplines and various capacities.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

What are the new definitions of mobility, community and citizenship in a contemporary world where new media technologies are affecting our understanding of these notions?

This was the focus of Carleton University lecturer Anne Galloway’s well-attended keynote address on Thursday afternoon.

First, Galloway began her talk by defining differing types of mobile groups from the tourist to the refugee and defining community is its strict definition: as a group of people with some shared commonality. Then she asked the audience to stray from this traditional notion. Considering that new media technologies can explore different ways of belonging, could a community be group of people who have nothing in common; if it was based on the fact that we can’t be the same?

Galloway expounded on this idea of respecting or accepting differences in others in defining citizenship. She quoted Nick Stevenson’s “Cosmopolitanism, education and citizenship should be judged by the extent to which they enable citizens to learn from one another and engage with the other.”

The talk engendered much discussion and commentary during and after the allotted hour with many applying these concepts and definitions to their practice or personal definitions.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Reflections on Intellectual Property

The topic of copyright hasn’t had a big spotlight at this week’s Interactive Screen save for some notable exceptions.

Intellectual property as it relates to technology was the focus of a lively legal panel discussion on Sunday where Toronto lawyer Stephen Selznick cautioned that, in his opinion, the legal system was not the best arena to deal with disputes involving copyright related to technology and advocated using alternate dispute resolutions instead.

Toronto lawyer Ravi Shukla contrasted the highly disruptive nature of the Internet with the relative conservatism of the legal system, and also made the interesting point that two of the arguably great success stories of the Internet – Apple’s iPod and iTunes, and Google -- have profited from their own intellectual property. This is in seeming contradiction to the perceived trend of citizen authored content and open source (read: free or affordable) software being the brave new world that the Internet has ushered in.

However, copyright as it relates to content has so far only been brought up by academic Anne Galloway who has pointed out that “reciprocity is never equal” and also cited the relationship of people who submit free content to sites and the owners of such 'user-generated” sites.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Smart eLearning

What place do interactive games have in the classroom and what role do they have in learning in general where some of the questions raised by the panel on “Serious Games”.

Presenter Owen Brierley of Edmonton’s Hotrocket Studios noted that the idea of a game has morphed from simple activities (i.e. checkers) to complex digital environments where children can do high-level cognitive activities that have real consequences such as Pax warrior (More on Pax Warrior).

Unlike profit-motivated entertainment games, serious games are often commissioned for niche market learning tools by the military, medicine, business and government.

Other points opined by Brierely and University of Calgary PhD student Michael Magee included:

Current education is not a transformative experience. Instead what many students have learned is the game of passing exams.

Learning should be attached to the fun that you’re having.

Even serious games require a facilitator (i.e. a teacher).

The smart gaming industry is desperate for new thinking to support new learning. A role that new media artists could play?

The cost of creating games is coming down thanks to affordable tools available to developers.

Monday, August 14, 2006

“When the public starts to make things, who will decide what constitutes quality?” Anne Galloway, PhD Candidate and Lecturer, Carleton University

Now that we know that pervasive computing is almost here and that there are more people creating and consuming their own media on sites like MySpace and Flickr, what is the new power relation between the new media producers (i.e. the public), traditional media and the powers that be? According to the panelists on Monday, the relationship is not neutral.

Academic Anne Galloway, who has researched pioneering participatory sites such as Urban Tapestries and Social Tapestries in the UK, cautions that power relations taint almost every exchange and public authoring sites are no exception, particularly for sites where people create content for little to no reimbursement.

She also noted that notions of taste and quality may have to change as we move from a "professional" model of cultural content production to a more “public” one. It’s a topic she’ll expand upon in her keynote address on Thursday.

Jan-Christoph Zoels, Senior Partner of Torino Italy’s Experientia, continued on this dominance and submission theme, outlining the power struggles that happen with mobile technology that are inherent in the interface such as how we use cell phones to intrude into the lives of our friends and family.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

New media has moved outside of the framework of specialization and institutions.

The potential for content creation is now in the hands of everyday citizens.

Pervasive computing (a term for the ubiquitous integration of computers into everyday life) is not quite here but we must act as if it is.

So what impact do these trends and others have on cultural policy, on funding, and on regulation?

It was a heady first day at Interactive Screen 0.6, the Banff New Media Institute’s (BNMI) annual new media development think tank with panels tackling the business of new media, the convergence of media and the limits of law related to intellectual property.

But even before the roughly 50 participants who had come from all across Canada, and the UK, Argentina, Finland, Italy and the U.S. to the Banff Centre’s “campus in the clouds”, could delve into these and other issues, BNMI Director and Executive Producer Susan Kennard offered an overview of the new media industry summary which indicates that the industry itself is a shape-shifter: the field is changing rapidly and is now open to diverse practitioners (i.e. you and me). One can’t say there is one industry, one activity or even one definition of new media. (Note: Want to tie up new media professionals for a couple of hours? Ask them to define “new media”, “convergent media” and “multimedia”.)

The focus of this year’s Interactive Screen focuses on today’s “digital bazaar: what is new media, what’s happening on the margins and where is it migrating to? In the six days ahead, these debates will be interspersed with digital art performances and presentations from 12 scholarship participants.

Other opinions of the day:

True convergence of media hasn’t happened yet.

New media has to follow a path of regulation that will likely redefine regulation.

Web producers are viewed as service providers, not content providers but they should be driving content creation for the Web.

The Internet is highly disruptive.