Category Archives: All Events

Conference: Philosophy & Serres

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The annual conference of The Society for European Philosophy and the Forum for European Philosophy (SEP-FEP 2020 Conference) will be happening on 30­–31 October and 6­–7 November 2020 – The programme is divided over successive Friday afternoons and full Saturdays. The wbsite is at https://sep-fep.com/

The SEP-FEP conference is the largest annual event in Europe, aiming to bring together researchers, teachers and students from different disciplines, interested in all areas of contemporary European philosophy. This year, to mark the passing of Michel Serres last June, the conference will feature a strand of presentations devoted to his work.

As part of this strand, Staffordshire Univeristy Professor David Webb interviews Christopher Watkin on Michel Serres.

 

Conference: Communities and Communication

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Staffordshire University’s new Department of Media and Performance (formerly Film, Media & Journalism, Humanities and Performing Arts)  is organising an international and interdisciplinary conference around the themes of Connections. It will take place online on 24th April 2021.

More information about the conference is at its own website.

This conference seeks to consider the ways in which creative digital communities start, develop and grow, what is created within those groups and how real connections are built through technology sharing and eventually within the virtual environment of online discussion and dissemination. We welcome contributions from across the sector from traditional print media forms to film and television, and gaming and interactive technology, offering the opportunity to explore both applied and theoretical explorations of this area of communities within the digital world. We aim to publish a selection of these contributions in an edited collection developed as a result of the conference. 

​Topics of interest:

  • ​Real-world versus digital communities 
  • Audio-visual communication practices
  • Interdisciplinary community-connections
  • What is the future of communities?
  • Visibility and identity in communities
  • Local vs global communities
  • Sports, digital media and communities
  • Healthcare and community
  • Community inclusion and exclusion
  • Performance

Deadline for submissions is 18th December 2020. For more details on how to submit please see the Call for Papers.

For any enquiries, please contact: Agata.Lulkowska@staffs.ac.uk

Culture 3.0: Arts, Culture, Diversity and Gatekeeping

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On 21 September 2020 Carola Boehm (Professor of Arts and Higher Education, Staffordshire University) delivered a 15 minutes introductory session on Culture 3.0 concepts, and how they relate to the challenges of making arts and culture more accessible and more diverse.

It provides a good introduction to Luigi Sacco’s Culture 3.0 concepts, and Carola’s own application of these concepts to the UK creative industry contexts.

Abstract

The homicide of George Floyd in America, the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo campaigns have increased both the urgency and the profile of tackling discrimination, exclusionary practices, and institutionalised racism and thus provide a momentum that allows us all to push harder towards  achieving a more inclusive society with fair and equal access to our arts and culture sectors.. In this talk, I will not only explore the details of existing inequalities but put forward solutions for  shaping arts and culture towards becoming more diverse.

My own area is music technology, in general dominated by individuals who identify as being male. The whole cultural music sector, including classical music, has only 32% female artists. Museums on the other hand have 57%. Dance is an artistic practice that has the highest diversity with 18% BME workforce, compared to Museum having the lowest with 6%. Theatre and Visual Arts have the highest of LGBT artists with 9% with Museums only having 3%. This can also be sliced geographically, with  London having the highest diversity (15% BME), the Southwest having the lowest (6%), Midlands having the highest workforce (53%) identifying as female and London the lowest (42%) (ACE, 2019)

As individual creative professionals we often tend to think that the arts are ‘colour-blind’, but increasingly we have to accept that our cultural organisations, our creative funding models and our markers of quality provide barriers of access that are unevenly distributed in society. In this talk, I will present some initiatives and projects that Staffordshire University is carrying out in this area, all aimed to support Equality, Diversity and Inclusion challenges within our arts and cultural sectors. Terms I will use in this talk are co-production, cultural democracy, co-ownership and “Culture 1.0 to 3.0 ecosystems” (Boehm, 2016, 2017).

ACE (2019). Equality, Diversity and the Creative Case. A data report. ACE 2018 – 2019. [Online]. Manchester. Available from: https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/ACE_DiversityReport_Final_03032020_0.pdf.

Boehm, C. (2016). Academia in Culture 3.0: A Crime Story of Death and Birth (but also of Curation, Innovation and Sector Mash-ups). REPERTARIO: Teatro & Danca. 19 (2). p.pp. 37–48.

Boehm, C. (2017). The end of a Golden Era of British Music? Exploration of educational gaps in the current UK creative industry strategy. In: R. Hepworth-Sawyer, J. Hodgson, J. Paterson, & R. Toulson (eds.). Innovation In Music: performance, production, technology and business. Taylor & Francis/Routledge.

The ‘Keep Talking’ in lockdown podcast

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A new podcast highlights the pioneering work of community researchers tackling poverty in Stoke-on-Trent.The new podcast Keep Taking About… looks at the role of a community researcher, identifies some of the challenges they have overcome, both in their own lives and throughout the global pandemic, and how they have built a community which has supported the group’s wellbeing and cohesion.

Nicola Gratton, the Lead for Civic Engagement and Evaluation at Staffordshire University, led the project in which community researchers continued to engage with the Keep Talking project in a range of creative ways, including poetry, photography and baking – even creating a book of recipes that helped people through lockdown. They share these experiences in the podcast series which covers isolation, disability, creativity, friendship and family, and community.

A full press release can be read here https://www.staffs.ac.uk/news/2020/08/community-researchers-keep-talking-in-lockdown-podcast

C3 Centre Research Seminar: Tim Anderson – The Death of Liveness

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Stupid, Bang, Stupid is a film by Tim Anderson with music by Corrin Jamal (aka Tim Anderson), exploring authenticiy, presence and liveness in a locked down workd.

C3 Centre Research Seminar

The Death of Liveness – Can Concerts and Collaborations compete with Computerised Choirs and Covid19

Tim Anderson (PhD Candidate)

Thursday 16th July 2020 14:00 – 15:00 (See MS TEAMS link below)


 Keywords:   Aura    Liveness    Presence    Collaboration    Performance   Coronavirus

 Artworks have been traditionally valued by what Walter Benjamin described as their aura – a “magic” property connected with their authenticity, made recognisable in their provenance.  With performance art, the equivalent quality is liveness, or presence.

In the current pandemic,  live performance is placed on hold, with co-performers and collaborators kept at arms’ length.  This seminar considers possible strategies to create multimedia artworks under lockdown conditions.

Select References

  • Auslander, P. (2002) “Live from Cyberspace”, Performing Arts Journal: 70 pp. 16–21. MIT.
  • Bolter, J.D. MacIntyre, B. Gandy, M. and Schweitzer,P. (2006) “New Media and the Permanent Crisis of Aura”, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 12, no. 1 pp.21–39.
  • Stupid, Bang, Stupid (20 June 2020) YouTube video, added by Corrin Jamal [Online]. Available at https://youtu.be/ULmvEEvduio [Accessed 1 July 2020].

 

16/07/2020 14:00 – 15:00 on TEAMS

 

Ass Prof Fiona Graham releases a podcast about an iconic WW1 crater

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Not Just A Big Hole in France is a podcast recorded during a walk around the newly accessible Hawthorn Crater on The Somme with Associate Professor and former BBC Producer Fiona Graham and Historian and First World War tunnelling expert Colin Winn.

The first day of the Battle of the Somme is infamous in British military history. Unique access to this heritage site in France combined with scientific and film technology methodologies are creating new knowledge about the battlefield. Graham led the documentary narrative in an international interdisciplinary team of forensic archaeologists, historians, chemists, and film makers to uncover and archive the Hawthorn Crater at Beaumont.

The podcast is a short insight into the project and provides a glimpse into the project and its impact to its surrounding communities.

The full press release can be read at at https://www.staffs.ac.uk/news/2020/06/not-just-a-big-hole-in-france-researchers-uncover-secrets-of-iconic-ww1-crater

Heatwork

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Heatwork is an Arts Council funded project brining together experimental music and video composers alongside local and international musicians. The first performance of Heatwork took place on 15th Noivember 2019 at Middleport Pottery, a working industrial site housing many craft businesses. Interviews of people involved in the industry were used to create electronic sounds which were played live alongside the Brass Band and Clarient soloist. Marc Estibeiro composed the piece, which was performed by Matthias Müller, on his SABRE system, and the championship TCTC Group brass Band. Live visuals were performed by Dave Payling using his own footage and supported by additional films from Staffordshire Film Archive and BCB Festival.

Heatwork has its own project webpages at http://blogs.staffs.ac.uk/c3centre/projects/heatwork/

NoiseFloor 2019 Call for Works and Proposals

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We are pleased to announce that NoiseFloor will once again be hosted by the Music and Sound department in our Cadman Studio Complex at Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent, UK.

  • Dates: May 7th and 8th 2019
  • Deadline for abstract submission: 18th January 2019
  • Deadline for Registration: 15th March 2019

NoiseFloor is an interdisciplinary event with a focus on experimental composition. This year we are pleased to announce our KEYNOTE PRESENTATION from SIMON EMMERSON, professor in Music, Technology and Innovation at De Montfort University, Leicester.

Our theme this year is Engagement.

“Who cares if you listen” is the title of an article from 1958, famously misattributed to the American composer Milton Babbitt. (Babbitt wrote the article, but the title was imposed by an editor).

60 years after Babbitt’s article, experimental or contemporary music is still often perceived as being “difficult”, “irrelevant”, or “out of touch”. To what extent are these conceptions and stereotypes merited? Should we as practitioners make more effort to engage with wider communities? Can this be achieved without diluting our work? Or is there an argument that our work should be governed by purely academic or aesthetic concerns? More generally, how can “challenging” art works or academic outputs reach wider audiences while still retaining their integrity? To what extent should our work engage with our social and environmental surroundings?

Works (compositions and performances) and proposals (for papers, lectures/recitals, panel discussions, workshops and other ideas) addressing this theme are particularly welcome. Of course, proposals for other relevant topics will also be considered. Submissions are invited from composers, academics, practitioners, individual researchers, postgraduates and any other interested parties.

Submissions should fall into one of the following categories:

  • 20-minute paper presentation (with 5 minutes for questions)
  • Fixed acousmatic works (up to 8 channel)
  • Acoustic instruments and electronics
  • Popular music and interactive systems (2 channel audio with video)
  • Fixed audio visual music (2 channel audio with video)
  • Workshop
  • Panel discussion

Please submit details of your composition, performance or proposal in the form of an abstract of between 250-300 words, together with brief biography (150 words), programme notes, and, where relevant, any links to audio/video examples of your work to our online submission form at:

http://staffordshire.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_57Tlg8B2e90P6At

Registration: The fees are £60 for presenters and for attendees, £35 for students. Concessions will be available for students of Staffordshire University. There is no submission fee.

Please note that you will need to provide your own performers and instruments and that contributors will be required to attend the event. More information is available at http://noisefloor.org.uk/ or by contacting a member of the organizing committee:

International Festival of Video Arts

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We are hosting the UK screening for the inaugural festival of video arts and visual music. This will involve same day world premieres of 10 works of Video Art and Visual Music in several venues around the world. The UK screening is a Stoke Film Theatre, on the University’s College Road Campus at 7pm on Wednesday 12th September.

Reserve a free ticket here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/international-festival-of-video-arts-tickets-48325756639 

VENUES

Cine Le Corbusier at French Embassy • Brasília, Brazil
MU.SA Museu das Artes de Sintra • Sintra, Portugal
Fonoteca Nacional de México • Ciudad de México, México
Reeves Theater, University of Tampa • Tampa, United States
Museo Artequin • Viña del Mar, Chile
Sala Concerti Pietro Sassu • Sassari, Italy
Stoke Film Theatre • Staffordshire, England

ORGANIZATION AND CURATION

Organized by

With the international curatorial support of

Events also taking place in Portugal, Sweden and Uruguay

More information: http://www.videoartes.org/

 

UNESCO’s INTERNATIONAL DAY OF LIGHT

In order to support UNESCO’s ideal of peace and contribute to improving the quality of education, the International Festival of Video Art and Visual Music 2018 will join to the activities of the International Day of Light.

It is important to emphasize that the involved institutions in the Festival, will contribute exclusively providing digital and local advertising around the activities. The accomplishment of such event reaffirms the role of the UNESCO and cultural centers in the promotion and socialization the following missions:

  • Education for Sustainable Development.
  • Peace and human rights.
  • Intercultural learning.

Noisefloor Festival 2018

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The experimental music and moving image Festival, Noisefloor, hosted by the music and film departments, begins next Tuesday 8th May. All events are taking place in our purpose built TV studios in the Cadman Studios complex, College Road, Stoke on Trent.

Noisefloor has become an important annual event in the experimental music and moving image calendar and attracts submissions and artists from around the world. It’s a chance for our own students to perform with other local and international artists and showcases some of the best talent around.

All events are open to the local community and we’re keen for people to take the opportunity to attend and experience some excellent concerts the see great facilities we have here.

See the full press release here: http://www.staffs.ac.uk/news/international-music-festival-comes-to-staffordshire-university-tcm4296364.jsp

The full concert programme is on the Noisefloor website here: http://www.noisefloor.org.uk/