Timecode: A Seminar Series in Media

Run by the Communications, Culture and Media research group in the Bradford Media School at the University of Bradford, this regular seminar series explores the increasingly important relationship between media, technology, culture and society. The School of Computing, Informatics and Media has a long tradition of operating across artistic and scientific academic disciplines and is continually expanding its creative portfolio. Hosted by the National Media Museum (pictured), and supported by their superb facilities, the series recognises the importance of the National Media Museum as a forum for these critical debates.

For further information please contact Dr Mark Goodall.

HAUNTOLOGY (17-April-2013)

Date: 17-April-2013
Time: 10:00
Location: National Media Museum
Speaker: VARIOUS

Synopsis

HAUNTOLOGY: 20 YEARS ON

"The spectres of Marx. Why this plural? Would there be more than one of them?"(Jacques Derrida)

'Hauntology: 20 Years On' is a one-day symposium organised to mark 20 years since the publication of Jacques Derrida's 'Spectres of Marx'.
Hauntology defies easy description but embodies the idea of the 'past inside the present' and the border between nostalgia and the enigmatic remoteness of real or
constructed pasts.

This event is part of the 19th Bradford International Film Festival

http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/BradfordInternationalFilmFestival.aspx

The keynote speaker will be cultural theorist Mark Fisher, editor of the 'Capitalist Realism', the K-Punk blog and author of 'Ghosts of My Life' a forthcoming book on hauntology.

Programme

10.00- Welcome and Introduction

10.15- KEYNOTE - Hauntological Melancholia (Mark Fisher, author of Ghosts of My Life)

11.00 - The Haunted Remake: Film of the Same Name (Philip Sanderson and Steven Ball, British Artists' Film & Video Study Collection/London South Bank University)

Break

11.45 - Spectres of Barthes: The Hallucinatory real of the photograph after the post-continental turn (Chris Heppell, King's College Aberdeen)

Lunch (own arrangements)

13.30 – The Logic of the Spectre (Ben Roberts, University of Bradford)

14.00 - Maintaining the Spectres: the Radical Possibilities of Electronic Voice Phenomena Recordings (Carrie Clanton, Goldsmiths College)

Break

14.45 - Curating Hauntology (Sean Albiez, Southampton Solent University)

15.15 - Early Television and the Séance (Iain Baird, National Media Museum)


The symposium will be accompanied by screenings of 'hauntological' films including:

DECASIA
Dir. Bill Morrison, USA 2003

SANS SOLEIL
Dir. Chris Marker, France 1983

DREAM OF WILD HORSES
(Le songe des chevaux sauvages)
Dir. Denys Colomb Daunant, France 1960

THE STONE TAPE
Dir. Peter Sasdy, UK 1972

This is a FREE EVENT but with limited places so please reserve a space by contacting Mark Goodall (m.goodall@bradford.ac.uk)

The Music of Human Speech (23-January-2013)

Date: 23-January-2013
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum
Speaker: Trevor Wishart

Synopsis

What are the musical properties of spoken language and how can we use the computer to tease out these musical features and use them to create musical works? Trevor Wishart will talk about "Globalalia" (using syllables from the worlds' languages), "The Division of Labour" (using a text from Adam Smith) and, especially, the recently completed "Encounters in the Republic of Heaven" (capturing the melody, rhythm and sonority of spoken phrases across an entire speech community in the North East of England, in a sound-surround environment) from both a musical and technical point of view.

TREVOR WISHART is a composer and performer specialising in sound metamorphosis and constructing the software tools to make it possible. He has lived and worked in Australia, Canada, Germany, Holland, Sweden, and the USA but spends most of his time in Yorkshire, where he was born. His aesthetic and technical ideas are described in the books On Sonic Art, Audible Design and Sound Composition (2012). He is also involved in community, environmental and educational projects. His Sounds Fun books of musical games having been republished in Japanese. He was recently awarded the Giga-Herz Grand prize for his life’s work.

For further information consult:
www.trevorwishart.co.uk.

White Noise (13-December-2012)

Date: 13-December-2012
Time: 15:00
Location: Leeds College of Music
Speaker: David Vorhaus

Synopsis

David Vorhaus is a pioneer of electronic music. Born in America, he originally studied physics and electronics and worked as a classical bass player with symphony orchestras. In the late 1960s he met Brian Hodgson and Delia Derbyshire from the legendary BBC Radiophonic Workshop, forming the highly regarded electronic rock group White Noise.

As a major experimental musician of this time, Vorhaus built his own instruments including early synthesizers, sequencers and the Kaleidophon, a double-bass-like instrument using four home-made ribbon controllers instead of strings. David Vorhaus has written music for many high-profile TV commercials and themes and film scores (including the sci-fi classic Phase IV). He still performs live under the White Noise mantle. A true musical innovator, David Vorhaus’ thoughts on music, technology and sound design are both pertinent and inspiring.

Additional information wil be available over the forthcoming weeks at http://postgraduate.lcm.ac.uk/leeds-international-festival-innovations-music-production-and-composition

The technology-image (14-November-2012)

Date: 14-November-2012
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum
Speaker: Felicity Colman

Synopsis

The activation of technology is contingent upon the human body. But that contingency rests upon not just any body, but upon the specificities of participatory bodies. Connecting Bergson with Foucault we can articulate the matter of the bio-political body whose fate is inevitably linked to its contemporaneous technology. Situation provides the analytic data of this body’s historical issue and nature of participation (what, how, when), but does not answer the god-question of why? With Bergson, I call this body a technology-image among other images. As Foucault identified, technologies of security control the territorial movement and produce of technology-images. These images are locked down into performing their determined fate within collective locations, with and through the actions of other images. This body is no ‘privileged’ body, rather it is just a platform augmenting technology. In action, the technology-image facilitates what individuals call ‘human experience’, but it contributes to the formation of distinct groups of bio-politicized human bodies. This state of the mediatization of life is recorded and narrativized by other images. The questions concerning technology-images, as feminists have activated, involve the predication of social differentiation categories (‘sex’, ‘porn’, ‘DNA’, ‘gender’, ‘race’, ‘nation’), the measurement of change, the implementation of new languages and new laws. Analysis of the situation of technology-images is freely available for participants, yet the image controllers continue to insist on spatialized hierarchies to differentiate and enslave. In this paper, I will examine components of this technology-image through examples of where the perception of social difference is acted out.

Felicity Colman is Reader in Screen Media and Centre Leader of the MIRIAD Media Research unit at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is the author of Deleuze and Cinema (2011 Berg), editor of Film, Theory and Philosophy: The Key Thinkers (Acumen Publishing 2009) and co-editor of Sensorium: Aesthetics, Art, Life (Cambridge Scholars Press 2007).

Architecture, Media and Politics (25-April-2012)

Date: 25-April-2012
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum
Speaker: Owen Hatherley

Synopsis

In Lindsay Anderson's The White Bus, a vehicle carries middle class passengers around to see the parts of the city they usually ignore - factories, council estates, slums. In post-war cinema, the urban landscape of the North of England was intensely explored, as a place undergoing rapid modernisation and change, from the new housing estates of The White Bus to the technocratic new coffins in Billy Liar. By the 1970s, these had become unpleasant if often thrilling dystopias, in films like Get Carter or The Offence; but by the 1980s, in the likes of A Very British Coup, that same landscape could represent a space of resistance. Today, that space is evoked as ambiguous nostalgia, in the likes of This is England '86 or Red Riding; but there are few attempts to get to grips with the present urban landscape, and the perhaps equally drastic redevelopments of the last decade. This talk will consider a few examples and pose the question of why the contemporary architecture of the UK seems so unappealing for filmmakers.

Owen Hatherley is a regular contributor to Building Design, New Statesman and New Humanist and has also written for The Guardian, Icon, Socialist Worker and Socialist Review. His book A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain was published by Verso in 2010.

'Out of Sight: Anatomy of Violence and the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation' (14-March-2012)

Date: 14-March-2012
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum
Speaker: Martin Levy

Synopsis

The Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation took place in London during the summer of 1967 against a background of rising student agitation. Organised by the American Joe Berke and his colleagues in the Institute of Phenomenological Studies, it was a bold attempt to ‘demystify violence in all its forms, the social systems from which it emanates, and to explore new forms of action.’

The congress emerged out of Berke’s involvement with the free universities movement in the United States and his engagement with R.D. Laing’s anti-psychiatry.

In this seminar, Martin Levy will introduce a rare screening of Peter Davis’ documentary about the congress, Anatomy of Violence, and discuss the congress’s significance. What did it achieve? What relevance does it have for young people today?

Martin Levy has authored three books, including Love and Madness, a study of an eighteenth-century crime of passion. Presently he is completing a book about the congress, provisionally titled Out of Sight: Joe Berke and the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation.

Subversion and Transgression in Polish Exilic Cinema: The Cases of Borowczyk and Zulawski (25-January-2012)

Date: 25-January-2012
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum
Speaker: Michael Goddard

Synopsis

Pre-1989 Polish cinema, when it is remembered at all, is usually still seen in terms of a national cinema strongly engaged with historical and social themes, and is associated with the key names of Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kièslowski and the 1970s 'Cinema of Moral Concern'. This talk will, in contrast argue that the real 'dissidence' was elsewhere, in the work of a range of exile Polish directors for whom aesthetics were not subordinated to anything, and whose films are not only more aesthetically radical than their 'national' contemporaries but also may have more to say politically, even if they do so in proximity to 'low' genres like pornography or horror. This talk will focus on the films of Walerian Borowczyk and Andrzej Zulawski. In the case of both these directors, it will be shown how their uncompromising and subversive cinematic aesthetics and their transgressions of the limits and norms of European art cinema have resulted in their work being under-appreciated if not invisible.

Michael Goddard is a lecturer in media studies at the University of Salford. His current research centres on Polish and European cinema and visual culture and he is reviews editor of Studies in Eastern European Cinema (SEEC).

What is a Film School For? (05-December-2011)

Date: 05-December-2011
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum
Speaker: Duncan Petrie

Synopsis

Over the last decade, the education and training of practitioners in film and television in the UK has been dominated by a skills agenda embodied by Skillset/UKFC training strategy ‘A Bigger Future’ which was initiated in 2003. Whatever the pros and cons of the strategy, it paid no attention to the historical role and contribution made by films schools in the UK and elsewhere, a context that arguably could have informed the policy in quite useful ways.
In this presentation Duncan Petrie will attempt to identify elements of that missing context by considering the development and role of some of the more high profile films schools in Britain, notably the National Film and Television School, the London Film School and the Royal College of Art.

Professor Duncan Petrie has authored six books including The British Cinematographer (BFI, 1996), Screenining Scotland (BFI, 2000) and Shot in New Zealand (Random House, 2007). He has also edited many books, most recently The Cinema of Small Nations (Edinburgh University Press, 2007), co-edited by Mette Hjort. He is co-principal editor of the Journal of the British Cinema and Television and is a member of the editorial board of Studies in Australasian Cinema.

Visual Regimes: from where come the pressures on a knowledge-relation to the world? (02-November-2011)

Date: 02-November-2011
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum
Speaker: Robert Galeta

Synopsis

This seminar will look at visual hierarchies from the middle ages to the change with the high renaissance and the next change with high modernism, all related to the contribution of visual form to knowledge and understanding. The talk will include a discussion of Jean-Luc Godard's auto-cinebiography JLG par JLG as an example of the centrifugal or dispersive legacy of modernist collage.

Robert Galeta is a theoretician, artist and translator who worked on the English version of Gilles Deleuze’s Cinema 2. He currently teaches on the MA Visual Arts course at Bradford College.

The Philosophy of Software: Code and Mediation in the Digital Age (13-April-2011)

Date: 13-April-2011
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum
Speaker: David Berry

Synopsis

As software increasingly structures the contemporary world, curiously, it also withdraws, and becomes harder and harder for us to focus on as it is embedded, hidden, off-shored or merely forgotten about. The challenge is to bring software back into visibility so that we can pay attention to both what it is (ontology), where it has come from (through media archaeology and genealogy) but also what it is doing (through a form of mechanology), so we can understand this ‘dynamic of organized inorganic matter’. This talk presents some of the arguments of his new book The Philosophy of Software but also thinks through some of the implications of code/software for the changing nature of the university itself.

'Dangerous Knowledge: film, media and politics' (08-December-2010)

Date: 08-December-2010
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum, Bradford
Speaker: David Malone

Synopsis

In this talk David Malone examines the work of the documentary filmmaker in the digital age and how global geopolitics is affecting artistic expression in the 21st century.

David Malone was born in North Shields, England in 1962. In his mid-20s he embarked on a career as a documentary maker at the BBC following in the footsteps of his father, Adrian Malone, whose work included The Ascent of Man with Jacob Bronowski, and Cosmos, with Carl Sagan. At the BBC he developed what the critics called a "disturbingly lyrical" style and established a reputation for television of the highest quality. Since becoming an independent filmmaker he has continued to produce and direct single films and series for both the BBC and Channel Four.

His series Testing God was described by The Times as "moving and startling - as close to poetry as television gets." The sequel series, Soul Searching, was described as being "good for the soul of television itself.”

More recently David has also begun presenting his own films including High Anxieties -The Mathematics of Chaos and the feature length film Dangerous Knowledge, both for BBC4.

David Malone is the author of The Debt Generation and the Golem XIV blog http://golemxiv-credo.blogspot.com/

Fag-Ends and Lollipops: The BBC Radiophonic Workshop (20-November-2010)

Date: 20-November-2010
Time: 10:00
Location: 'On Location', National Media Museum, Bradford
Speaker:

Synopsis

A day of talks, a hands-on workshop and screenings of rare material examining the work of the legendary BBC Radiophonic Worksop.

Featuring original workshop members Dick Mills, Roger Limb, Brian Hodgson and Steve Marshall plus presentations on the work of Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram.

ADMISSION £10/£8 concessions
Refreshments and Screenings provided

To reserve a place call 0844 856 3797 or to get more information on the TIMECODE series contact: Mark Goodall (m.goodall@bradford.ac.uk) Tel +44 (0)1274 236071
http://bms.brad.ac.uk/research/timecode.php

FANTASMA (04-June-2010)

Date: 04-June-2010
Time: 10:00
Location: Cubby Broccoli Cinema, National Media Museum, Bradford
Speaker: Various

Synopsis

A one-day Symposium on Fantastic Films for the 9th Fantastic Films Weekend

Friday 4th June 2010, 10am-5pm


Speakers include:

Jeremy Dyson (author, director, screenwriter) – ‘Writing Horror’

I.Q. Hunter (De Montfort University) – ‘British Sex Films’

David Robison (U of Bradford) – ‘The Infected Idyll: The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue’

Russ Hunter (Independent Scholar)- Italian Horror Films

There will also be a screening of the rare 1970s witchcraft documentary Secret Rites featuring Alex and Maxine Sanders. Introduced by Mark Goodall.

ADMISSION FREE

For more information about the Fantastic Films Weekend see here:

http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/fantastic/2010/

To reserve a place or to get more information on the TIMECODE series contact: Mark Goodall (m.goodall@bradford.ac.uk) Tel +44 (0)1274 236071

http://bms.brad.ac.uk/research/timecode.php

Unsettling the Score: Musical Thinking Along the Lines of Cornelius Cardew (12-May-2010)

Date: 12-May-2010
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum
Speaker: Marcel Swiboda

Synopsis

Unsettling the Score: Musical Thinking Along the Lines of Cornelius Cardew

British composer, improviser and activist Cornelius Cardew (1936-81) became recognised as a major figure in twentieth century music whose relatively short career – curtailed by his untimely and suspicious death – included phases of post-serialism, avant-garde experimentalism, free improvisation and what he termed‘people’s liberation music’. Cardew’s fame and notoriety as a musical figure cuts across these diverse and often overlapping phases – not least of all in his radical approach to graphic musical inscription that is often so experimental that to call it ‘notation’ in any straightforward sense would be a step too far.
Trained in graphic design, Cardew’s musical ‘scores’ would employ a profound array of visual and graphic materials and in some instances (notably the work of the Scratch Orchestra) would literally incorporate found materials as part of an eminently original improvised approach to musical inscription.Cardew’s scores variously testify to a radical, ethically- and politically-engaged approach to music-making, and to his prodigious creativity in the areas of visual and graphic representation.
This paper will use examples of Cardew’s audio-visual practice as a sounding-board for exploring the question as to how one think ‘intermedially’ with a mind to conceptualising the complex counterpoint and interplay between visual, graphic, sonorous and textual materials across the conventional divisions between composition and (improvised) musical performance and reception, in order to gain access to some of the philosophical, ethical and political dimensions of such participatory approaches to music and auditory practice.

Architecture and Cinema (20-March-2010)

Date: 20-March-2010
Time: 10:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum, Bradford
Speaker: Various

Synopsis

Speakers include:

Murray Grigor (filmmaker)
David B. Clarke (author The Cinematic City)
Mark Tewdwr-Jones (UCL)
Richard Gray (Cinema Theatre Association)
Justin Jaeckle (Architecture Foundation)

ADMISSION FREE
Lunch, Refreshments and Screenings provided

To reserve a place or to get more information on the TIMECODE series contact: Mark Goodall (m.goodall@bradford.ac.uk) Tel +44 (0)1274 236071
http://bms.brad.ac.uk/research/timecode.php

Elvis and the synoptic panopticon: An exploration of Law and Popular Culture in the Information Age (24-February-2010)

Date: 24-February-2010
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum, Bradford, ADMISSION FREE
Speaker: David S. Wall

Synopsis

In this talk I draw upon socio-legal research conducted into the ways that intellectual property regimes that protect celebrity, music and also luxury fashion brands act in the information age. Using the specific examples of Elvis’s celebrity, and also music downloads and the counterfeiting of fashion goods I will explore the contemporary debate over intellectual property rights, then critique the orthodox theoretical arguments underpinning IP regimes. Arguments, which, it will be argued, grossly underplay and undervalue the creative role played by consumers in the life of an intellectual property today. This omission is to the detriment of both popular culture in general and also to the rights holder.

Outside The Box - Life On The Sidelines of Sports Journalism (26-January-2010)

Date: 26-January-2010
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum, Bradford, ADMISSION FREE
Speaker: Harry Pearson

Synopsis

Despite the fact that sport is one of the most popular and profitable
aspects of modern entertainment, the study of media communications
rarely touches on its power and influence. In this talk noted
journalist and author Harry Pearson reflects on the links between
media, journalism and sport through his reportage from the edges of
this vast industry. His forthcoming book is on cricket in the north
and so we hope that he will be made welcome in Bradford.

Harry Pearson has written a weekly sports column in the Guardian
newspaper for more years than anyone cares to remember and has been on
the staff of groundbreaking football magazine 'When Saturday Comes'
since 1989. He has written seven books - all published by Little,
Brown/Abacus - including The Far Corner (runner-up for the William
Hill Sports Book of the Year 1996), Racing Pigs and Giant Marrows
(runner up Thomas Cook/Daily Telegraph Travel Book of the Year 1997),
A Tall Man In Low Land and Achtung Schweinehund! He lives in
Northumberland with his partner Catherine, daughter Maisie and a
French dog named, Colin - the subject of Hound Dog Days. His latest
book Slipless in Settle - A Slow Turn Around Northern Cricket will be
published in June 2010.

http://www.harrypearson.co.uk/

Laurence Sterne and the world of hypertext (04-November-2009)

Date: 04-November-2009
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum, Bradford
Speaker: Patrick Wildgust

Synopsis

ADMISSION FREE

'The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy' is one of the great works of English literature. In this illustrated talk Patrick Wildgust, the curator of 'Shandy Hall'- Sterne's former house and now a museum to his life and works- discusses Sterne's legacy in relation to new media. The talk will promote the radical nature of Sterne's work, will review the various interpretations of his art and assess his place in 21st century culture.

Patrick Wildgust is the curator of Shandy Hall. His job is to look after the house and its collection of books, prints and paintings that refer to Laurence Sterne. Through exhibitions, lectures, teaching and consultancy Patrick promotes Sterne's Writings in any way that he can. He was an adviser on Michael Winterbottom's film about Laurence Sterne 'A Cock and Bull Story'.

TIMECODE
A Seminar in Media

Run by the Communications, Cultural and Media Studies research group in the School of Computing, Informatics and Media at the University of Bradford, this regular seminar series explores the increasingly important relationship between media, technology, culture and society.

For further information please contact Dr Mark Goodall (m.goodall@bradford.ac.uk)

Irreversible and the Question of Ill-being/Ludaesthetics/Lewdaesthetics: Wii Play and the Technological Imaginary (06-May-2009)

Date: 06-May-2009
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum, Bradford
Speaker: Patrick Crogan and Helen Kennedy (UWE, Bristol))

Synopsis

Irreversible and the Question of Ill-being

This paper will explore Bernard Stiegler’s diagnosis of the contemporary
technocultural moment as one in which Ill-being becomes the dominant modality
of what Heidegger called ‘Being-there’ in his account of the nature of human
existence. Gaspar Noe’s extraordinary and confronting film provides a means for
elaborating this diagnosis not only for its dark treatment of social life today
but for its reflexive and experimental realisation of this narrative of revenge
and social disintegration.

Ludaesthetics/Lewdaesthetics: Wii Play and the Technological Imaginary

This paper will engage with the Nintendo Wii games console as a contemporary
example of the role of play in relation to technology more generally. It will
draw on sources as apparently disparate as Walther Benjamin, Rosi Braidotti,
Jessica Benjamin and Vivian Sobchack in order to develop a more historically
grounded understanding of immersion, passivity, masochism and pleasure in
relation to our playful engagements with technology.

'The Fall Dossier' (25-March-2009)

Date: 25-March-2009
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum, Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD1 1NQ
Speaker: James Riley (Cambridge University)

Synopsis

James Riley is the archivist and literary executor for Peter Whitehead, one of Britain’s most unique filmmakers. James looks after Whitehead’s cinematic and literary collection. James’s task is to interpret Peter Whitehead’s ongoing research into the ‘word and the image’. In particular, this revolves around what is called ‘The Fall Dossier’ a journal/novel/notebook produced during the production of one of Whitehead’s most celebrated films. This seminar accompanies the 2009 Bradford Film Festival retrospective of Peter Whitehead’s work which will include a screening of The Fall.

Steinski: a History of Hip Hop (28-January-2009)

Date: 28-January-2009
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location
Speaker: Steve Stein

Synopsis

Steve Stein- AKA ‘Steinski’- is an acknowledged master of the art of collaged sound design. Originally a computer programmer, Steve was one of the founders of New York Hip Hop. Many of the recordings he produced with Douglas DiFranco (AKA ‘Double D’) are classics of old school cut-up DJ work. His work influenced many subsequent sound designers such as DJ Shadow, Coldcut and the Avalanches. Steinski still produces mesmerising and complex collages of sound, often as live mixes. He will be discussing his life and work, providing anecdotes, working methods and examples from his key role in the invention of modern dance music and totally unique personal oeuvre.
Steinski will also be performing a live set near the seminar.

Dick Mills: BBC Radiophonic Workshop (22-October-2008)

Date: 22-October-2008
Time: 18:00
Location: 'On Location', National Media Museum, Bradford - FREE!
Speaker: Dick Mills

Synopsis

Dick Mills is a British sound engineer and an original member of the legendary BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Dick has produced sound effects and music for an astonishing array of radio and TV programmes (The Goon Show, Quatermass, Dr Who, The Two Ronnies) working closely with other key figures from the workshop. Dick will be talking about his long career, the innovative (and often bizarre) working methods of the Radiophonic Workshop (his knowledge covers both hardware, software and the creative use of technology) and the difficult art of sound design. His presentation will be illustrated with archive stills and audio clips from his many projects.

Time, Technics and Togetherness (14-May-2008)

Date: 14-May-2008
Time: 18:00
Location: National Media Museum, On Location
Speaker: Jeremy Gilbert, University of East London

Synopsis

How do conceptions of time, different forms of technology and different ideas about it, influence our sense of what it means to be part of a group, a collective, a community (real or imagined)? How can Bernard Stiegler’s conceptions of ‘originary technicity’ - that is, human beings’ fundamental relationship to tools of all kinds - and his more recent critiques of our media-saturated culture help us to understand these issues? How far is our sense of individuality dependent upon our relationship to a wider network of belonging which is always a question of whose time-lines we share, whose speeds we go at, and what devices we use to measure the distance between now and then?

Mike Figgis (12-March-2008)

Date: 12-March-2008
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum, Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD1 1NQ.
Speaker: Mike Figgis

Synopsis

Mike Figgis is a British filmmaker with a unique vision and a strong reputation for experimenting with technology and creativity. Through films such as Timecode* and Hotel Figgis pushes technology to its limits, discovering new ways to tell stories and advance media language. These experiments, together with high-profile successes such as Leaving Las Vegas, promo shoots for the Agent Provocateur lingerie company, work as a documentary filmmaker and spells as a jazz saxophonist have made Figgis impossible to pigeonhole. This masterclass will be stimulating, reflective and challenging and will reveal precisely why this eclecticism is so vital to the cinema of the future.

Psychogeography: fifty years on (30-January-2008)

Date: 30-January-2008
Time: 18:00
Location: University of Bradford
Speaker: Dr Andrew Evans (University Of Leeds)

Synopsis

The year 2007 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of radicalartistic/philosophical movement the Situationist International a major influence on revolutionary actions (most notably Paris '68), critical thinking and subcultural movements. One of the central and long-lasting concepts emerging from this group was that of 'Psychogeography'- "the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment (whether consciously organized or not) on the emotions and behaviour of individuals". This concept has been applied widely across many disciplines and this seminar will introduce aspects of the psychogeographical pertinent to contemporary media and society.

Dr Andrew Evans (University Of Leeds) will discuss how landscape and geography (including the perceived and/or virtual) how been affected by the psychogeographic, while Dr Mark Banks (Open University) will address how the poetics of the original concept have become increasingly commodified just as the radical aspects of the term have almost disappeared. This seminar will be of interest to artists, political theorists, poets, geographers, media producers, social scientists and anyone with an interest in the urban milieu. Presented in conjunction with the Psychogeographical Research Group, a collaboration between the University of Bradford and De Montfort University.

Dwell-Time: Understanding Urban Screens in a Creative and Community Context (07-November-2007)

Date: 07-November-2007
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum, Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD1 1NQ.
Speaker: Led by Patrick Allen, University of Bradford

Synopsis

This seminar asks questions about the function of urban screens in the built environment. It does so in relation to the design of creative and artistic content that is projected onto urban screens, in relation to community engagement and participation, and in relation to the impact of this form of media on the urban environment and the management of creative content in public spaces. Whilst specific to urban screens the seminar will address general issues relating to the display of media content in the urban environment.

The seminar is intended for anyone interested in the use of urban screens (researchers, artists, planners) or anyone with a more general interest in media and visual communication and the built environment. The seminar will present some initial research findings as well as some examples of content and their production strategies for urban screens. Case studies will be presented with the intention of facilitating discussion.

Ancient Mysteries (09-May-2007)

Date: 09-May-2007
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum, Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD1 1NQ
Speaker: David Clegg

Synopsis

Since 2000 David Clegg has worked with more than 1000 people with dementia to produce a unique archive of stories, letters, drawings, films and music. David named the Trebus Projects in honour of Edmund Trebus, a Polish war veteran, who filled his house with things the rest of the world had decided were rubbish, convinced that in time a use would be found for them.
In his own way, David himself has now become a hoarder of the fragments and remains of the memories of people who have dementia. Working intensively and over long periods of time with the same people he has built up a fascinating record of lives that would otherwise have been lost to history. In a related project David has worked with musician Tommaso Del Signore to create an album of music and words ‘Songs and Stories from the Centre’.
The book Ancient Mysteries recording 28 life stories is being published with the assistance of the Arts Council of England. In this seminar David will talk about the background to these projects, using narrative, music and film.
http://www.trebusprojects.org/

The Image is Our Location (22-March-2007)

Date: 22-March-2007
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum, Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD1 1NQ.
Speaker: Godfrey Reggio

Synopsis

Godfrey Reggio is an acclaimed American filmmaker making visually stunning films concerned with the impact of technology on the lived environment. In this seminar he is offering advice and good practice on his working methods and themes to those interested in film, politics, technology, planning, and the environment. A major retrospective of Reggio’s films runs alongside this seminar.
http://www.qatsi.org/