Amplified Leicester

Amplified Leicester welcomes Andy Miah – Mashing up Computing & Biology Emerging Technologies - Session 5

Emergensight is the ability to prepare for and handle surprising results and complexity. This was explored by Professor Andy Miah who joined Amplified Leicester for the second half of the session to discuss the emerging era of human enhancement as an interface between cultures of computing and biology. Andy drew on the film Gattaca to illustrate the idea of society driven by the advancement of science and technology. He explored  the rise of the “bio artist” taking technology out of a sterile environment and merging it with art to make us engage with biology in unfamiliar ways. One of the examples he provided was the artist Eduardo Kac who created the BFP Bunny.

Andy described studies carried out around ethics, law and technology which lead him to discuss human enhancement and share examples from athletics, asking whether we can "develop a range of systems that reflect adequately the range of human experiences”? This stimulated a group discussion on the societal impact of biotechnologies and what we might expect to see in the future.

Andy's presentation

Amplification: Fishbowl – Session 5, 10th December 2009

As the last session before the New Year the group was encouraged to review which amplified characteristics they identified with and adopted during the process so far. We used a form of open space dialogue called the Fishbowl conversation to instigate discussion between the participants and provide the opportunity to outline any ideas or thoughts in relation to the mini-projects. The exercise provoked much debate and was enjoyed by the group. After a break the participants continued to talk amongst themselves and proposed a selection of draft ideas for the mini-projects. 

Amplified Leicester welcomes Sean Clark - From Social Media to Social Mapping – Session 5

Amplified Leicester was very happy to be joined by local technologist Sean Clark. As the group continued to ponder over creative and various web focused mini-projects exposing them to Sean’s knowledge and expertise on social media proved to be very beneficial for the project. He began the talk by introducing the importance of user location based services and explained that "location is starting to become the most important thing the Internet knows about you” and emerging technologies such as location-based search and social mapping are shifting the way the internet works. He recapped on key enabling technologies and provided some examples of such technologies including Smartphones and format standards like geoRSS. 

Sean then demonstrated how “using social media to represent the world as you and your community see it” can be achieved by using social mapping software local to Leicester. The example he shared with the group was the social media website Pineapster.  He then illustrated the use of more cutting edge technologies such as Augmented Reality to seamlessly combine digital content and the real world.

The opportunities and threats of such applications were discussed on a creative, social and commercial level. The group felt Sean’s talk answered many questions regarding the state of social media and the possibilities it offers various audiences.

Sean Clark: From Social Media to Social Mapping

Sean is a Director of Web company Cuttlefish Multimedia Ltd (www.cuttlefish.com) and arts/technology organisation Cuttlefish Digital Arts (www.cuttlefish.org) and a member of the Pervasive Media Research Centre at De Montfort University in Leicester. In 2007 Cuttlefish began to develop expertise in Internet mapping and mobile multimedia, leading them to produce their own social media platform called 'cSocial'. Sean has since begun to integrate this technology into his creative work and has recently started to use the cSocial platform as a vehicle for research into 'pervasive media' at De Montfort University (www.pervasive.org.uk).

His work focuses on the creative uses of digital technology, social networking, mobile multimedia, Web 2.0, collaborative computing and location-aware information systems. He has written many research papers and magazine articles. Sean holds an honours degree in Computer Studies from Loughborough University and a masters degree in Digital Arts from Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London. In October 2009 he started a PhD at De Montfort University researching the nature of interactivity in digital arts. Sean is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and a member of the Computer Arts Society (www.seanclark.me.uk).

Amplified Leicester welcomes JP Rangaswami - Preventing path pollution – Session 4

For the second half of Session 4, Chief Scientist at BT, JP Rangaswami spoke about Preventing Path Pollution. He began by giving a brief history of the internet from the 1960s to the present day, and explained how the web enables data-sharing, emphasising that  “it is really about us” and that  “the movement from analogue to digital, physical to virtual, atom to bit will simplify our lives.” He talked about how  opportunities to record and archive information are now extended to the ability to search for information using “time shifting technologies”.  The success of a social network requires a combination of critical tools; directory, communication, grouping, and scheduling. These elements are key to what he calls 'second life people', i.e. people living through social networks. He explained that evidence suggests, surprisingly perhaps, that 'second life people' spend more time in face to face situations because  they use social networking technologies to organise face-to-face contact.

The talk was followed by a lively and wide-ranging discussion, much of it focused on the future of communications and their impact on society. Nduka, for example, was concerned about the amount of energy used by data banks and whether this might present an ecological problem. JP's response was pragmatic and largely optimistic, and the group came away inspired and energised by his talk.

Watch the videos of JP's talk at the Amplified Leicester YouTube Channel.

Multi-capitalism & Cooperation Radar - Session 4, 26th November 2009

Sue introduced the fourth session which focused on two more characteristics of amplification: Multi-capitalism - fluency in working with different capitals (e.g., natural, intellectual, social, financial, virtual), and Cooperation radar - the ability to intuitively sense who would make the best collaborators on a particular task.  This was then put into practice in a workshop focussing on miniprojects to be conducted in early 2010.  The group had to agree on two objectives to supplement a core aim of the project, which is to provide practical examples of how collaborative technologies can be exploited in a city context. After some discussion they chose Objective 1:  to celebrate Leicester’s diverse communities and cultures and Objective 2: to be inclusive as possible as far as technology knowledge and its ownership allow.  They then turned to the list of 100 ideas they have been collecting in a private Googledoc and spent some time reviewing and discussing what proved to be a very eclectic set of suggestions. More work is yet to be done before the final miniproject topics are chosen, but the process is demonstrating the imagination and energy of this very hard-working group.

Chris Meade & Toni Le Busque: Small Wonders

A workshop exploring digital ways to tell short stories of Leicester life via YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, blogging tools, animations - and words. We'll look at how to get your message across quickly and collaboratively, then script our own one-minute wonders.

Toni Le Busque is a digital artist and writer. She has a Post Graduate degree in Fine Art and an M.A. in Creative Writing and New Media from De Montfort University. Born in Australia she has lived in several European countries and moved to the UK in 2000. She edits the biva.co.uk website and her work can be seen at lebusque.com

Chris Meade is a digital writer and Director of if:book, a think and do tank exploring the future of the book in the digital age. He was previously director of Booktrust and the Poetry Society. He has written plays, comedy and poetry, and his digital novella www.insearchoflosttim.net was described by the Independent on Sunday as "a jeu d'esprit and, just possibly, the future of fiction."

One of a series of private events for Amplified Leicester participants.