This happened
Last week, we ran a second event with people from arts organizations, talking about Project Daedalus. As for London, we showed them a range of applications, discussed all kinds of issues surrounding drone use, even gave them an overview of Amazon's new delivery drone patent, awarded in just April 2015. Many of the things we played are located in this Project YouTube playlist, which covers some of the things that are informing what we are doing.
In the first of our Project Daedalus events with arts organizations, we all went over to the Pleasance in London to offer some demos, talks, and sandpit style discussion, thinking about how to use drones in creative contexts. Attendees had a chance to fly some micro drones and a Parrot Bebop using the iPad control interface, while also hearing about 360 degree film making, design for virtual reality interfaces, including Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear, and generally think about how to interate a range of digital technologies around drones, to create immersive, compelling, and different audience experiences.
Project Daedalus is a Digital R&D for the Arts project, funded by Nesta, Arts Council England, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It was born from a collaboraiton between myself, Abandon Normal Devices, and Marshmallow Laser Feast.
The second of three social media talks in a week, this one at the London School of Economics, focused on the early career researcher and how they can use social media to get their ideas out there quicker and make social media part of their research discovery process. When I was a PhD student, all we had to think about in terms of software was which bibliographic package we use.
Now, there are endless applications and key places where academics need to be, so that their work is discovered. Some of the key ones are ResearchGate, Google Scholar, Academia.edu, LinkedIn, and Twitter, but there are many more tools available that can help make our work more efficient, more accessible, and more engaging.
One of my key messages is that ignoring social media is like ignoring email in the 1990s. The question is not whether we do it, but how we do it well.
This week, I gave a talk at Kent Business School focused on the use of social media to generate research impact. It was a staggering sell out event with around 1/4 of the total academic staff of University of Kent in attendance.
One of the key things I covered in my talk was the range of socil media platforms that are out there, evidenced by my A to Z of social media for academia, which was first published in 2012. It has since been shared in countless places and the list keeps growing.
The platform I like most at the moment is Journal Map, makes me wish I was an environmental scientist. Maybe in a few years ;) Here are my slides from the talk...
Over the last few weeks, I have been working with the Manchester Science Festival and Electricity North West to launch a brief for a new artistic commission titled 'Electric Art'. We have just pushed out the copy and here it is. Please share and submit! The MSF is a fantastic context for new and provocative art work and a really great week to be in Manchester!
CALL FOR ARTISTS: ‘Electric Art’
Manchester Science Festival 2015, in Partnership with Electricity North West, and the University of Salford, Manchester.
This new £5,000 commission seeks to help realise a visual art work, developed through the theme of ‘electricity’ for exhibition during the Manchester Science Festival (October 22 - November 1, 2015). The final work will create public debate around the role of electricity in our lives and may engage. We are keen to hear from artists working across genres from digital and mixed media to craft and performance. Thematic areas may include attention to the future of electricity, forms of sculptural lighting, smart grid design, laser and alternative fuel sources.
Your Proposal:
We want to hear your ideas at this stage but would anticipate that the final piece will be informed by dialogue with Manchester Science Festival (MSF), University of Salford, and Electricity North West.
· Please write a 250-500 word proposal for your idea and include drawings and images where appropriate (PDF format). Include any information you can at this stage about what you need to make it happen (including time, resources and budget).
· Include a PDF of images and information to evidence your previous work.
· Articulate in which ways the work will stimulate public engagement with the science and technologies of electricity.
· The art works will be installed or performed within the Manchester Science Festival programme (location to be confirmed).
· Please let us know your anticipated technical and installation requirements.
· Projects must have a designated lead who will be the key contact with the Festival team and who will be responsible for submitting a brief evaluation report about the event upon completion.
· Please indicate your availability for the panel selection on 15th June.
Resources
Electricity North West - The Future
http://www.enwl.co.uk/about-us/the-future
The Science and Art of Electricity, 1914
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/electricity-the-science-and-art-of-1914/
Beyond/In Artists Who Engage in the Theme of Electricity and Alternating Currents
http://artvoice.com/issues/v9n43/art_scene/the_electric_company
Timetable:
Announcement of commission: Monday 11th May 2015
Deadline for Proposals: Monday 8th June 2015, 12.00pm
Selection Panel: Monday 15th June 2015 12.00pm - 2.00pm
Winner notified: Tuesday 16th June 2015
Development of project: 16th June – 3rd July 2015
Final details input into MSF online submission: Friday 3rd July 2015, 12.00pm
PR activity: September/October 2015
MSF Launch: Thursday 8th October 2015
Manchester Science Festival: Thursday 22nd October – Sunday 1st November 2015
Please send your submissions to msf*at*mosi.org.uk (removing anti-spam measures).
Yesterday, Anna Frew and I spent the afternoon testing out minidrones for some workshops we have on soon with the BBC, a disability group, a school, and some arts organization employees. Each of the workshops aims to provide a flight experience and an insight into some of the things that drones can be used for within an creative setting. Here's what we got upto...
and here's the full edit of our 2hour session.
This week, I took part in a dinner debate about media, ethics, and dementia. The conversation was run by the Dementia Festival of ideas, a year-long programme of events designed to interrogate key issues in dementia studies and research, along with an exploration of how to create novel forms of public engagement and public responsibility around the subjects. The debate took place with a range of experts fom different areas of interest, from journalism to medical ethics and was a really far reaching discussion. What struck me is how much has yet to be done, to ensure that care is adequate, and that social stigma around dementia is challenged.
Some possible interventions will follow from this event, including finding a way to empower families of suffers to take more decisive action to influence best practice and care within hospitals, along with developing a university alliance that can take strategic action in influencing policy, agenda setting, and generating research funds.
Wearable Technology, Augmented Reality, & Drone Cameras
Today's talk at #SportAccord went really well. It was the first time I'd used flight within a lecture and fortunately nobody got hurt. In actual fact, it was all very safe and I think it made much more real the way in which drone technology is becoming a part of the fabric of our lives.
Here are the slides from the talk
and finally, the lecture itself
Yesterday, I took part in a panel debate about what cities will look like in the future, what they need to do to deliver effective and compelling sports events, and how new forms of technological culture are changing audience expectations of urban life. My contribution focused on the Internet of Things, the role of Big Data, and the opportunities to nurture cultural change through technology.
Having been to 9 Olympic Games, I have seen a lot of change around how cities operate and yet there is still so much that can be done to use mega events as a catalyst for developing more digitally engaged legacies. I have yet to see a city that does this effectively and I think it has partly to do with the limited capacity of a city's people to own their digital legacy.
Consequently, my advocacy on this topic focuses on the need to create opportunities for data to empower people, rather than subject them to commercial exploitation. Sports have a key role to play given the growing economic impact around mobile health experiences.
Photo by Ksusha Kompan Photography
I was out flying again yesterday and managed to capture my son playing in the nearby islands. I find it really wonderful that he will have such films about his life captured in this way and it's another reminder of how drone technology is providing new memories of our lives. In the end, the best drone cinema experiences may be those simple, personal movies that are made, which tell us more about what life we have had. Oblivious to my filming him, or the wider perspective on where he is located, the film situated him within the place far more effectively than he could ever hope to perceive from ground level. I have no idea what he will make of a film like this when he is grown up, but, as his parent, I am sure I will find it very moving to look back and know more fully that he had all of this around him growing up and I think drone film making has the potential to make us feel this way, one way or another, wherever we live. That wider perspective we have on the world around us is simply breath taking.
freeflight-3-8d9ea9-h900
We are half way through the 12 month Project Daedalus, a Nesta Digital R&D for the Arts creative technology research prohect in which we have been exploring the creative potential of drones. Over this period, I've been learning to fly drones and am at a point where I feel pretty comfortable with control sticks, the conventional way of flying. However, the new Parrot Bebop drone uses a mobile device for flight. It's a very differnt experiece. The interface looks like this on the screen of the iPhone I use. The camera of the drone is visible as the background, with the controls overlaid onto it, from which you can control flight and camera.
So, after spending a few flights practicing, including some quite hair raising moments, here you have my first effort at shooting a dronie. One of the tricky things about the dronie is that controls are back to front, but this the first time I tried to think about film making while flying, which feels like a big step. Next is to choreograph an actual story.
ps. A Dronie is the new Selfie :)
My latest piece published in The Conversation takes a look at the Manifesto pledges from a digital point of view.
Yesterday, I spent the day at Chester Zoo, filming with our Brazilian PhD researcher Luiza Passos, who is working with the Golden Mantella frog, a species under threat in Madagascar, under the supervision of Professor Robert Young. In the afternoon, I gave a talk for Heads of Depts at the Zoo, talking about science communication opportunities. It was such a refreshing and engaging discussion and we've got so much to do, not least of which is working to build a really exciting and creative documentary programme around the amazing science that is happening at the zoo!
The morning started off without much expectation. I was Googling how to shoot the eclipse 15 mins before capturing this (nothing helped). Luckily, the cloud coverage was just right for this kind of shot.
Article published in Zocalo, picked up by TIME:
Students will be in the driver’s seat — Andy Miah
Technology will force universities to re-define their role within 21stcentury life, and this has a lot to do with the DIY generation, who figure out what they need to know via Google and Wikipedia. These platforms are the equivalent of the single-celled organisms that gave birth to humanity’s evolution.
In a world where learning experiences are ubiquitous and we rely less and less on institutions to deliver them, technology forces universities to re-think what they offer in the 21st century. Universities are no longer the gatekeepers of new knowledge, even less so with the rise of citizen science experiments, where non-experts can gather important data, and alternative qualification options, such as Mozilla Open Badges.
Students of tomorrow will want flexible, mobile-enabled learning experiences that are as compelling as film or theatre. The success of TED talks is indicative of the changing demands on teachers today and the changing attention economy of the new generation. Universities need to think carefully about how to curate learning experiences, making each lecture truly memorable and life-changing. The classroom now has to empower students to set the agenda and drive their own learning.
As we move into an era of sentient computing, universities need also to see technology not just as a vehicle for communicating ideas or enriching learning, but as a co-collaborator. Computers will become entities onto which students will project learning expectations. The machines will teach us, they will also learn, and they will spend more time with students than a lecturer ever can. If we want humans to remain at the heart of that interaction, we then need to really reconsider what we offer that they can’t.
Andy Miah is a professor and chair in science communication and future media at the University of Salford in Manchester, England. Follow him on Twitter @Andymiah.
My first talk for the School of Arts and Media at the University of Salford, Manchester ;)
As each month passes @SalfordUni, there is another amazing thing happening. The other week it was #SonicFusion, directed by Prof Stephen Davismoon who just happens to be best mates with Prof Eduardo Miranda, a remarkable composer and AI researcher at Plymouth, whom I have worked with and known for a few years now. There is a staggering amount of experimental innovation at Salford University and this weekend of really provocative and beautiful audio visual experiences was no exception. Here's what I grabbed during the weekend:
This week, I was in Seoul presenting at the Global Education Dialogue run by the British Council and co-hosted by hte Korean Council for University Education. The conference focused on the role of technology in the race for global talent and my talk developed the idea of 'intelligent learning systems' that can enable universities to get to a point where their staff student ratio is 1 to 1. Here's the @prezi
On Valentines Day, I was quoted in The Times for an article about the replacement of mirrors by screens. Here's a link to the article, but here's the full quotes I gave to Kaya Burgess, the article's author:
"As screens rapidly replace mirrors to occupy the reflective space in our lives, we find ourselves in a novel moment in history where we could, if we choose, actually see ourselves as others see us, rather than see the flipped version that mirrors generate. Yet, so far, we are sticking with the familarity of the reflected image. If selfie culture is realy about vanity and narcissism, then we might be smarter to use the screens to present us with what others see when they gaze in our direction and, if we do, the whole idea of reflection may become redundant. In 50 years, we might look upon our reflected selves with a degree of trepidation and anxiety.
"With the growing attention of the internet of things, the idea of smart mirrors is becoming ever more appealing. You could wake up in the morning and look into your smart mirror, which would quickly analyse your health and tell you if you are coming down with an illness, or whether you need to do a bit more exercise or get more sleep. Of course, these mirrors will not be mirrors at all, they will be ultra high definition screens, capable of providing all kinds of augmented reality content that will, hopefully, enrich our lives rather htan scare us all to death."
Today @SalfordUni, the Business School hosts a symposium on Digital Innovation, focusing on health applications. Here's my @prezi
