One-Day Conference: 29 June 2020

Co-organised by Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries & Centre for Media Research 

Funded by Bristol+Bath Creative R+D Partnership

Held at Bath Spa University, Newton Park Campus, Newton Park, Newton St Loe, Bath, BA2 9BN

Confirmed keynotes:

We invite proposals from a range of researchers, makers, designers and producers to showcase their research and creative practice, critically and creatively exploring how the uniqueness of emerging technologies is reshaping approaches to research across the creative industries.

Today’s emerging technologies present a unique proposition for the creative industries. Often characterised as disruptive innovations against the backdrop of enduring creative processes, emerging technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), projection mapping, location-based content, motion capture and spatial audio present rich avenues for the creative industries, gradually transforming media experiences. However, they also pose new kinds of methodological challenges for researchers and makers.

Academia and industry alike are now working towards developing an innovative set of aesthetic categories, terms, concepts, practices and methodologies to make sense of the uniqueness of emerging technologies in and across the creative landscape. With much research across the disciplines of media, performance, art, computing and beyond increasingly exploring the creative potential of emerging technologies and platforms, it is key that we also better understand the necessary approaches to researching these kinds of technologies and platforms.

How, for example, can we best engage with the innate hybridity of immersive technologies, given the way that VR or AR experiences incorporate elements from performance, games, film, gallery installations and even theme parks? What is the impact of this hybridity on our ability to define immersive technologies as an object of study? If AI is re-imagining relationships with daily life, then how is this technology reshaping research practices? More broadly, how do emerging technologies such as motion capture and projection mapping impact our interpretation of audience or user responses across the creative industry landscape? And is now the time to develop new kinds of hybridised research methods that better reflect emerging technologies?

This conference aims to engage with these questions by exploring the ways in which different disciplines and different corners of the creative industries are approaching the task of researching emerging technologies and their audiences, spanning VR films, experiential AR games and live experiences, AI and robotics, location-based transmedia productions, and so on.

Proposal topics may address, but are not limited to:

  • Platform-specific research into emerging technologies (e.g. VR film, AR games/apps, AI platforms, creative robotics, motion capture technology, spatial audio works, etc.)
  • Sector-specific research into emerging technologies (e.g. performance industry, film and television industry, games industry, computing industry, etc.)
  • Creative/practice-based approaches to working with emerging technologies (e.g. how can AI/automation practices enhance or facilitate forms of creativity?)
  • Theoretical approaches to researching emerging technologies (e.g. new frameworks)
  • Innovations in industry approaches to researching emerging technologies and their audiences (e.g. current trends and tensions in R&D contexts, start-ups, etc.)
  • Emerging and cross-disciplinary forms of audience research in the context of emerging technologies (e.g. across media studies, performance studies, psychology, etc.)

The conference is funded by the Bristol+Bath Creative R+D Partnership, a £6.8 million AHRC-funded collaboration between the University of the West of England, Bath Spa University, University of Bath, University of Bristol and Watershed, Bristol’s digital creativity centre. The partnership aims to connect the worlds of university research and creative business to collectively imagine and develop the future of the creative industries.

All creative work or papers presented at the conference will be considered for publication in a Special Issue of the International Journal of Creative Media Research (IJCMR), edited by the event organisers. IJCMR is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed and open access journal devoted to pushing forward the approaches to and possibilities for publishing creative media research.

Please send proposals of no more than 300 words (accompanied by a short biography) to Matthew Freeman (m.freeman@bathspa.ac.uk) by no later than March 29, 2020.

Travel bursaries:

We are pleased to be able to offer three travel bursaries (a maximum of £50 each) for PhD students confirmed to present at the conference. If you wish to apply for those of the bursaries, please indicate as such in your abstract.

About the keynote speakers:

  • Professor Graham Thomas is Section Lead, Immersive & Interactive Content at BBC R&D, where he leads a team of 20 engineers developing next-generation audio and video systems in ways that can offer new interactive opportunities for audiences. Graham helped establish the BBC Audio Research Partnership. He was a key player in the development of the award-winning Piero sports graphics system and the free-d camera tracking system for virtual studios. His earlier work included motion-compensated standards conversion, which led to the Emmy-award-winning Alchemist standards converter.
  • Professor Mandy Rose is Professor of Documentary & Digital Cultures at the University of the West of England, where she is Director of the Digital Cultures Research Centre. She is Co-Investigator on the EPSRC Virtual Realities: Immersive Documentary Encountersproject, a £1.2m 2.5 year project that interrogates the application of virtual reality for nonfiction. She is also co-convenor of the i-DocsSymposium. Mandy’s background is in TV and film production, sound recording, producing, and directing documentary and factual television.
  • Professor Darren Cosker is Professor in Computer Science at the University of Bath, where he is currently the Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Motion, Entertainment Research and Applications (CAMERA), funded by EPSRC/AHRC. His research cuts across different disciplines, such as Computer Vision, Graphics, AI and Psychology, including work on human motion analysis, recognition and synthesis, and data modeling. Applications of Darren’s research have been across the creative industries (including partnerships with the BBC and Aardman), the healthcare sector, and sport.

Full information about the conference can be found here. General enquiries can be sent to Matthew Freeman (m.freeman@bathspa.ac.uk).