University for the Creative Arts

About: University for the Creative Arts is a education organization based out in Farnham, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Politics & Computer science. The organization has 85 authors who have published 120 publications receiving 722 citations. The organization is also known as: University College for the Creative Arts & UCA.

Projecting the voice: observations of audience behaviours in ICT-mediated contemporary opera

Abstract: This paper examines how audiences experience live opera performance and the behaviours they exhibit during live-streaming of the performance. It aims to contribute to our understanding of how audiences, who increasingly inhabit an environment saturated with digital media, respond to contemporary opera performance. Based on a comparative study of audience experiences and behaviours during a live opera performance and the streamed opera screening, we investigate whether digital mediation affects audience appreciation, and whether streaming live opera means the same thing to an audience as the unmediated performance. We firstly outline the conception, design and performance of a contemporary opera and its simultaneous streaming to nearby digital screens. Then, we report the evaluation of the project as measured by a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods during the rehearsals, the live performance and the screening. As one of the few social studies of contemporary classical music in Britain, our study of opera audience behaviours sheds light on the challenges and opportunities afforded by digital technologies for opera companies. Understanding how audiences appreciate digital operas offers practical advice on how theatres and opera companies could respond to new forms of digital activities.

Entanglement, affect and experience: Walking and wearing (shoes) as experimental research methodology

Abstract: Wearing is fundamental to our experience of cloth and of clothing; though we experience our garments through other senses it is a relationship predicated on touch. It is through the tactile experience of our garments that we come to know them; to comprehend texture, fit and form. Drawing upon both a phenomenological and a psychoanalytic approach to touch and wear this article examines the possibility of wearing as a methodology for practice and performance based research, wearing as a means of ‘doing’ research. This article presents the act of wearing, the embodied experience of clothing and the body together, as a tool for developing knowledge, of ‘being in’ or ‘being with’ rather than observing from outside. Building on the work of phenomenologists Schilder and Merleau-Ponty, it proposes a methodology of entanglement – a methodology that draws upon and abstracts the idea of participant observation. This article explores the possibility of a wearing-based research, as an addendum or adjunct to the more widely understood practice and performance based research. It asks if wearing as a research practice might open up new avenues in fashion and textile knowledge, uncovering different aspects of our lived experience of cloth and clothes. What might the parameters of wearing as performance practice be and how might it differ from wearing as a habitual embodied experience.

The Courtyard House: Can a Sustainable Future Learn from a Context Relevant Past

Abstract: This paper looks at the courtyard house as a traditional urban dwellings of yesteryears with a view to explore its potential in informing the housing developments of the future. Â In order to address the question, the paper starts with a historical overview of this built form as an urban dwellings that fulfilled its functional and spatial requirements in times gone by. It then goes on to highlight the inadequcy of post colonial housing solutions in Algeria and to look into two important aspects of this traditional housing typology; its socio-cultural relevance and environmental performance. The analysis is carried out using both secondary research in the form of three examples from the literature. and primary research carried out as field work in the form of temperature measurements inside a house, during the hot season, in Boussaada (Algeria). The discussion and concluding remarks attempts to make an arguments for re-considering what could be learned from such traditional housing typology to inform future urban development that would subscribe to the values of sustainable development. Â Courtyard house, urabn development, typology, cultural relevance, environmental performance, traditional architecture, sustainable development

Data Journeys as an approach for exploring the socio-cultural shaping of (big) data: the case of climate science in the United Kingdom

Abstract: The paper reports on a pilot study aimed at developing, and assessing the utility of, a data journeys approach for critically exploring the socio-cultural shaping of interconnected data infrastructures. At various points along the journey of a (metaphorical) datum from production through processing, re-use and intersection with other data journeys selected organisations and projects are brought into focus and empirical data about the socio-cultural values and practices shaping the life of data within that particular space are collected using a variety of qualitative data collection methods. These empirical data are then critically and thematically analysed in relation to the broader social context. This paper outlines the rationale for the data journeys approach prior to presenting initial findings from The Secret Life of a Weather Datum research project which applies the approach to explore the socio-cultural values and practices interacting with weather and climate data as they move through a variety of data infrastructures. The initial findings presented in this paper focus specifically on weather data production and climate science at Weston Park Museum Weather Station in Sheffield, UK; the Met Office (the UK’s national meteorological organisation); the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK (a world leading climate research institute); and the Old Weather Project (a citizen science project involved in historical weather data recovery and rescue). Emerging themes of vulnerability and resilience within the weather and climate data infrastructure are presented. These initial findings highlight the importance of situating our understanding of data infrastructures firmly within the social. Through drawing on the data journeys concept to guide and inform the selection of sites for data collection, we begin to demonstrate the utility of the approach for beginning to build a picture of the “contingent and contested” (Dalton and Thatcher, 2014) relations between people, interconnected in time and space through data infrastructures, that are core to the development and shaping of climate data and knowledge. We also begin to draw out the interrelations between local and global spaces and infrastructures; and to ground amorphous ‘big’ data infrastructures in local sites and cultures of production.

Hacking the Body 2.0: dancing between commercial and DIY wearable technology

Abstract: This paper features the creative practice from the long-running collaborative research project, Hacking the Body and Hacking the Body 2.0, between media artist/researcher Camille Baker and media artist/choreographer Kate Sicchio. It focuses on our ongoing concerns to combine, rework, reconstruct and evolve our performative research on the use of wearable technology and smart textiles in performance. By exploring both the technologies that are commercially available and those that are custom made, we have developed improvisational dance performances that use biosensing and haptic feedback to influence the performers, and also structure choreography around interactive affordances that may be embodied or sensual. This practice is part of a long heritage of work that explores not only the possibilities of sensing technologies but also the effect of wearable technology on movement and choreography.