Category Archives: Research Groupings

Staffordshire University’s film students document research into the plastic pandemic

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A new documentary series, made by Staffordshire University students, takes a deep dive into the global plastic pollution crisis

    The six-part online series Plastic Pandemic was created by Isaac Robinson and Jonathan Eley while completing a Master’s degree in Film Documentary. It demonstrates how documentary film making can really help to bring science research alive and communicate the importance of the increasing threats to the planet, people and animals.

    Fiona Graham, Associate Professor of Film Technology and Masters supervisor to Jon and Isaac, said the students spent many months developing their film project researching into Plastics Pollution and had pitched the idea to be a long form film. With the Covid pandemic and lockdown a year ago, this changed.

    She said:

    Jon and Isaac wanted to create a film about plastics pollution and to talk to people about the growing problem for the planet. Documentary form has the power to investigate, probe and tell stories that need to be heard and they were passionate to still do this despite the pandemic affecting film production. Staffordshire University’s Professor Claire Gwinnet was one of many contributors internationally to support their film.

    The film students wanted to explore new methods and processes in documentary film online, as they were emerging from industry and we developed ideas working through the problems and solving the technical and creative issues that arose.”

    They created an international research project for their Masters that had international contributors who may never have come forward before the pandemic.”

    Full press release at https://www.staffs.ac.uk/news/2021/03/new-online-documentary-takes-on-the-plastic-pandemic

    The website and the videos at https://www.isaacjonesrobinson.com/copy-of-plastic-pandemic-series-tra

     

    NoiseFloor 2021 Call for Works

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    We are delighted to announce that NoiseFloor will be returning to the Music and Sound department at Staffordshire University on 11th – 12th May 2021. Our theme for 2021 will be Collaboration.

    EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS – SUBMIT PROPOSALS BY FRIDAY FEBRUARY 26TH

    For details, see our dedicated NoiseFloor website at https://noisefloor.org.uk/

    NoiseFloor 2019

    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

    Running Naked: University and private equity partnership launch a feature film

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    Running naked is a feature film made in collaboration between private equity and Staffordshire University’s film production courses. The film has already screened at Beijing and Portland International Film festivals and is due for release in February 2021.

    Running Naked is the story of two lifelong friends, pushed together through cancer. The story explores a period their life as one discovers the cancer has returned and their adventures as his illness unfolds.

    The film was made in a unique way. The funding for the film came from private equity. This was combined with in-kind use of equipment, space, locations and crew from the University.

    We, Andy Paton and Mike Knowles successfully combined a crew of industry professionals who mentored Staffordshire University students. The Crew included, Oscar nominated and Emmy winning director Victor Buhler. He directed Running Naked and Mike and Andy produced the film. The film’s score was composed by Craig Potter from Elbow

    The film was all shot in and around the University in Stoke, utilising some of the buildings as locations and a production office, as well as many local businesses.

    The cast start Andrew Gower(Carnival Row and Black Mirror) Tamzin Merchant(Carnival Row, Salem and Pride and Prejudice) Matthew Mcnulty (The Terror, Jamaica Inn and Deadwater Fell)

    The project is an amazing example of how the University and private equity can be brought together to create a film that already has a distribution deal and international sales with an international release date in February 2021.

    Watch this space for announcement of first screenings!

    Professor of Ceramics exhibits new work in home of china clay

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    Whitegold winner Professor Neil Brownsword is joining makers across the world to exhibit his work in St Austell.

    In these artworks Neil explores the entangled histories of St Austell and the Potteries of North Staffordshire, bound together by the mining of china clay and its transformation into ceramics.

    ‘Relic’ is the culmination of five-years of research during which Neil has archived the incredible hand skills of Stoke-on-Trent china flower maker Rita Floyd. He has captured every stage of the hand modelling involved in mass producing the many types of flower that Rita has in her repertoire, and enshrined them in a series of porcelain fragments.

    A full press release can be read at https://www.staffs.ac.uk/news/2020/09/professor-of-ceramics-exhibits-new-work-in-home-of-china-clay

     

    Yet another podcast?

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    Prof Carola Boehm joins two co-hosts for the launch of a new podcast about education in audio, music production and music technology.

    A new Routledge supported podcast exploring the intersection between the Creative Industry and Academia has been launched this weekend with Staffordshire University input. Sound Learnings is a podcast  about education in audio, music production and music technology. One of the Co-Hosts is Carola Boehm, Professor of Arts and Higher Education from the C3 Centre of Creative Industries and Creative Communities. 

    “There are not many public discourses on how our contemporary worlds of industry and academia regularly interact, sometimes with specific frictions and sometimes with real positive impacts for both. We thought it timely and useful to do this in our area of creative practice, music technology and music production. And inviting various makers and shakers to our roundtable allows us to really go behind the scenes of how this connectivity between the two spheres play out in our creative sectors.” (Carola Boehm)

    All three co-hosts are educators, researchers and have professional profiles in music and audio. The podcast has been sponsored by Routledge publishers. Tim Canfer, who initiated the project, is a Lecturer at Barnsley College Higher Education, an Author, Tech Developer and Musician. His main area of research is developing reactive devices for live performance. Russ Hepworth is a part time Senior Lecturer at York St John University with a research area of audio mastering education. He has his own studio and continually works within the industry as a mastering engineer.

    In the first series of the SoundLearnings podcast, the co-hosts chat with guest from the world of either education or industry. The characteristic that connects them all is that they value education specifically, and that they relate to the world of industry.

    Being in pre-production since May, the next episodes to drop feature interviews from Flying Colors manager Bill Evans, mastering engineers Mike Cave and Katie Tavini, educator and mix engineer for Pete Waterman – Tim ‘Spag’ Speight, and educator, researcher and Eurovision Song Contest contender, ‘Stereo Mike’ Exarchos. 

    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

     

    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: