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#media2012 : Blueprint for #london2012

2010.10 – Update: follow @media_2012 and browse http://www.media2012.org.uk for further updates to the project

This page articulates a proposal for the London 2012 Games, to assemble the social media people of the world and to create an open media environment, where culture, sport and local stories can be told across international zones. The proposal aspires to create an Underground Media Zone, which will link the United Kingdom in physical and virtual space. For more details, please read on….

The first public launch of the proposal will take place on October 4 at the Abandon Normal Devices (http://www.andfestival.org.uk) festival of digital culture in Manchester, an ‘inspired by 2012′ event, based in the Northwest of England. To book your place, please click here

The event will be streamed here…

This event is co-sponsored by the AND festival, the London 2012 Creative Programmers network and the University of the West of Scotland. It forms part of the research and development activity for the WE PLAY 2012 EXPO in the North West, supported by funding from Legacy Trust UK.

If you are interested, please Join the mailing list and read this primer at the Huffington Post

Here’s the final programme for the day:

SCHEDULE

10:15 – Opening Session
Introduction – Dave Moutrey, CEO – Cornerhouse
Ruth Mackenzie, Director, Cultural Olympiad
Prof. Andy Miah: Media Blueprint for London 2012
Q&A

11:20 – Panel Debate: Past, Present & Future Games
Join this exciting debate about Olympic and Paralympic Games, past and present, to find out what has been possible to achieve with independent media platforms and what other countries envisage to be possible.

Vancouver 2010: Kris Krug
Sochi 2014: Alexander Zolotarev
Rio 2016: Josi Paz
Q&A: Focus on London 2012

13:30 Panel Debate: Journalism, Sport & Culture: Integrated visions?
What do the 2012 Games cultures of sport, cultural expression and media have in common? Is there scope to develop a common vision that promotes a wider contribution to the civic society? This panel will bring together perspectives in sport, art and journalism to discuss what aspirations could surround the reporting of London 2012.

Paul Newman, director of communications, Peel Media
Scott Dougal, Olympics Editor, the Press Association
Dr Beatriz Garcia, University of Liverpool, author of The Olympic Games and Cultural Policy (2011).

14:45 Breakout Sessions
Group 1
Ana Adi – New Media. New Games. Lessons from the Beijing Olympics
Jennifer Jones – Social Media and Mega-events: Archiving Vancouver’s Alternative Voices
Dave McGillivray – Social Media and the 2010 World Cup
John Coster, CitizensEye – Organising 2012 Community Media Reporters

Group 2
James O’Malley – Citizen broadcasting for London 2012
David Goldblatt – Sports reporting without a press pass – blogging from the 2010 World Cup
Gill Ridgley – Archiving the Olympics
Kiratiana Freelon – Chicago 2016: The Olympic Bid and Social Media

15:50 Plenary session

The day will close with a work-in-progress screening of With Glowing Hearts, a feature film about the social media scene around the Vancouver 2010 Games, and its impact on social justice and the traditional media (and we will talk to the film’s director in Vancouver via Skype).

Speaker Biographies (incomplete)

SPEAKERS BIOGRAPHIES

Ana Adi

Ana Adi is a doctoral researcher in the Faculty of Business and Creative Industries at the University of the West of Scotland where she investigates the framing of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games as done by public relations practitioners, online non-accredited media outlets and online readers. She is also an alumna of the International Olympic Academy and a post-graduate grantee of the Olympic Studies Centre of the International Olympic Committee. Prior to her doctorate, Ana completed a Fulbright scholarship at the University of Missouri-Columbia, USA.

Ana is also an independent Public Relations Consultant specialised in new media and online communication strategies. Previous clients include the pan-European social network Netlog; Sport in Society (Northeastern University, US); Hewlett-Packard and Deloitte (Hill & Knowlton, Washington); and Coca-Cola Romania (McCann Erickson). Ana is also a regular contributor to the online magazine, Culture @ the Olympics.

John Coster

John Coster is the editor of the Citizens Eye Community News Agency covering Leicester & Leicestershire. Founder of the Community Media Hub project recruiting 2,012 Community Reporters to provide coverage of communities during the London 2012 Games and editor of Soar Magazines ‘Community’ section.

John Duffy.

John Duffy is the Marketing Director of Nemisys, ipadio paretn company. John has been enthusiastic about what the web can do for organisations and for individuals since 1997, when he promoted an online environmental conference with over 12,000 registered delegates from all over the World. His work with Nemisys involves over 80 amateur sports organisations, many of whom are national governing bodies for Olympics sports, including Paralympics GB, BADMINTON England, England Hockey and England Athletics. Projects vary from full scale web sites to participation projects encouraging people to try sports. John also work with several of these sports bodies to see how ipadio can best be used to cover their events

Scott Dougal

Scott Dougal is Olympics Editor at the Press Association. He I joined the Press Association in 2000 and has spent the last 10 years covering UK and international sport. The 2012 Olympics will be his sixth multi-sport event.

@scottdougal

Kiratiana Freelon

Kiratiana Freelon is a Harvard Graduate who has traveled to more than 25 countries and appeared on the Travel Channel as an expert on Paris. The Chicago native’s, sport and culture led her to work on Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Since the bid ended she has dedicated herself to utilizing social media to promoting social causes and travel, which included social reporting for the Vancouver Olympic Games. She recently published the book, Kiratiana’s Travel Guide to Black Paris and blogs at Kiratianatravels.com. Her goal is to help more people become social reporters for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. She can be reached at Kiratianatravels@gmail.com and @kiratiana.

Dr Beatriz García

Beatriz is currently a member of the Culture and Education Advisory Committee of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games and adviser to the London Development Agency Olympic Research Programme. She is also member of the IOC Olympic Studies Centre postgraduate grant selection committee and the London 2012 meta-evaluation peer review team. She is the author of The Olympic Games and Cultural Policy (2011).

David Goldblatt

David Goldblatt is a sportswriter, broadcaster and teacher. He is the author of the World Football Yearbook (DK, 2002, 2003,2004), The Ball is Round: a Global History of Football (Viking, 2006) (‘A tour de force of brilliant writing, historical colour and sporting vignette’ – Observer) and, most recently, co-author with Johnny Acton of The Football Book (DK, 2009). He has also worked on a variety of illustrated books, including DK’s E-Encyclopaedia. He writes the Sporting Life column in Prospect magazine, covering a wide variety of sporting issues, and wrote Prospect’s own guide to the 2008 Beijing Games (attached). He teaches a course in the sociology of sport at the University of Bristol and has recently reported for BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service on the economics of baseball in the Dominican Republic, the politics of football in Israel and Kenya, and the rise of Indian cricket. He won the Sports Story of the Year at the Foreign Media Association Press Awards 2009 for a BBC World Service documentary on Mathare United, the first team from Africa’s urban slums to win a national title.

Jennifer Jones

Jennifer Jones is a PhD researcher within the School of Creative and Cultural Industries at the University of the West of Scotland and a Visiting Lecturer within the Media School at Birmingham City University and DeMontfort University. She is working on projects closely tied to the Vancouver 2010 and London 2012 Olympic Games, in the context of emerging media landscapes and changing labour practices within the creative industries. She specializes in new media methods for data capture, collection and archiving, in particular around social media and mega-events, whilst focusing on the continuous link between digital practice and theory.

www.jennifermjones.net @jennifermjones

Kris Krug

Kris Krüg is an international photographer who is a fervent evangelist for open culture and empowerment through technology. Constantly challenging himself by shooting diverse subjects from emerging rock bands to Olympic athletes, Kris uses his engaging personality to break down the barriers between lens and subject. Because of his unorthodox approach to his art, Kris’ has had his photos featured in the Wired, National Geographic and the LA Times. Time after time his lens perfectly mimics his eye’s approach to catching the serendipitous moments in life.

Andrew Lavigne

Andrew Lavigne’s career began 20 years ago as a Community TV Producer In Ottawa. In that time he has worked in various capacities of the business including Directing, Editing and Producing. From 1996-2007 Andrew worked in Vancouver on set as camera assistant (IA669). Standing next to some of this generations best filmmakers and observing how they told stories inspired Andrew to begin telling his own.

Since then andrewlavigne.com was created to showcase his various projects. Shooting his own material on film, video or digital technology Andrew always meets evolution head on, pushing boundaries, building new roads and defining this unknown landscape. Interested in honesty and the power of the human spirit. Telling compelling stories by transforming ideas into visions. Sharing pieces that are insightful with cinematic style describes Andrew’s directing

Ruth Mackenzie

Ruth Mackenzie OBE is director of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Formerly an expert adviser on broadcasting and cultural policy for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, her previous roles include General Director of the Manchester International Festival and of Scottish Opera, Chief Executive of Chichester Festival Theatre and Nottingham Playhouse.

She has also worked as consultant for the BBC, Tate, Barbican Centre, London Symphony Orchestra and Arts Council of England amongst others. She is a Visiting Professor of City University, London, and has sat as a non-executive director on many cultural boards.

Dr Dave McGillivray

Dr David McGillivray is a Senior Lecturer in Events Policy at Glasgow Caledonian University. He is currently writing a book titled Events Policy: From Theory to Strategy for Routledge (publication date in early 2011) and his other research interests lie in the field of event experiences and sports event tourism. David has undertaken a number of evaluation studies of events and festivals for public and private agencies in Scotland and takes a keen interest in bridging the gap between academia and industry.

Prof. Andy Miah

Professor Miah is Chair of Ethics and Emerging Technologies at the University of the West of Scotland, a Fellow at the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology and part of the Programming Committee for the Abandon Normal Devices Festival, an ‘inspired by 2012’ event, funded by the Legacy Trust.

Professor Miah is an Olympic scholar and writer, having undertaken research into Olympic media at every summer and winter Olympic Games since Sydney 2000, at which he has also worked as a journalist. He has been a visiting Professor at the International Olympic Academy, a Visiting Scholar at the International Olympic Committee museum in Lausanne and teaches Olympic Studies at the University of the West of Scotland, supervising PhD students whose work focuses on Olympic media. While at the Vancouver 2010 Games, he wrote for The Huffington Post, facilitated cultural collaborations between London 2012 and Vancouver 2010 and was on the steering committee for the creation of two independent media centres. He also writes for the Guardian. He is currently completing a book called A Digital Olympics for The MIT Press.

@andymiah / email@andymiah.net / +44 (0) 757 898 4147

Dave Moutrey

Dave Moutrey has been Director and Chief Executive of Cornerhouse since April 1998. Cornerhouse is Manchester’s international centre for cinema and contemporary visual art and in one of the leading multi-disciplinary arts organisations in the UK.

He joined Cornerhouse after eight years as Chief Executive of Arts About Manchester (now All About Artists) the regional arts marketing and audience development agency. Dave had previously managed the Abraham Moss Centre Theatre in North Manchester. He is a qualified drama teacher and an artist and theatre producer who has worked on over 30 community productions with Greater Manchester based groups. Recently Dave has played a leading role in developing a network of Cross Art Form venues in England and chaired three successive Shift Happens conferences focusing on digital innovation in the arts. He has presented recently arts industry leaders for the Mission Models and Money programme, Tate Connects, Arts Marketing Association and City University London on new business models for the arts.

Dave is a Fellow of the RSA and a member of the Chartered Management Institute, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the Association of British Theatre Technicians and the Arts Marketing Association. He is a Trustee of Urbis, Manchester (Manchester Millennium Quarter Development Trust), and Company Secretary to the Association of Independent Cinema Exhibitors, Cross Artform Venues and exposures Film Festival. He is a Board Member of AND Festival, Pilot Theatre Company (currently Chair) and The Corridor Partnership.

In 1994 he won the Manchester Evening News Theatre Award for services to Theatre.

Paul Newman

Paul Newman is director of communications at Peel Media, the developers of MediaCityUK at Salford Quays. Paul joined Peel from the Liverpool Culture Company, where he was communications and public affairs director for European Capital of Culture 2008. Paul also had a three-year stint as director of communications at The Football Association. Prior to The FA, Paul spent 20 years as a television news correspondent for the BBC, ITV and Sky News, including three years as sports correspondent for the BBC’s Six O’clock News.

James O’Malley

James O’Malley joined ipadio in August 2009 after receiving an MA in International Relations from King’s College, London. As web editor, James is the first point of contact for customers and clients contacting ipadio, and he has worked with all their many sporting and National Governing Body clients to assist them in using ipadio as a tool to broadcast their news and updates to fans

Dave Olson

Dave Olson is a mixed media storymaker and chronic documentarian from his earliest days. Published on topics from Hemp culture in Japan to Telco de-regulation, Dave also makes handmade literary chapbooks, static montage art and renegade documentary podcasts. After covering Olympic games in-person from SLC, and afar for Turin and Beijing, Dave co-founded a ground-breaking project for social media coverage during the Vancouver Olympics called the True North Media House.

“DaveO” graduated in Inter-disciplinary Studies from Evergreen College and works as an community director for a noted social web tool. He frequently presents at events including SXSW and Northern Voice, and appears in the media discussing technology, hockey and culture. Now spends his time telling stories and listening to vinyl on the back porch whille gazing at mountains and trees.

True North Media House http://truenorthmediahouse.com

Dave Olson: http://uncleweed.net

Josi Paz

Josi Paz is a visiting student from University of Brasília at Nottingham Trent University - sponsored by Capes Brazilian Foundation (Ministry of Education). Josi has a background in advertising and has worked as Communication Advisor for the Brazilian governement from 2001 to 2010, when she moved to England to complete her PhD in Sociology, following on from a Master in Social Communications.

Gill Ridgley

Gill Ridgley is a curator in the social sciences section of the British Library and is the subject specialist for sport. She edits the British Library’s Sport & Society website.

Alexander Zolotarev

Alexander Zolotarev is SochiReporter.ru Founder and CEO, and an Associate Professor in multimedia journalism at the Faculty of Journalism, Moscow State University. He is teaching to the Russian and international students, and is a regular attendee of the world’s leading conferences on new media, such as Interactive Editor & Publisher conference in the USA, the Next Web in Amsterdam, the Russian Internet Forum in Moscow, Future of News and Civic Media conference at MIT Stata Center, organized by the MIT Media Lab and the Knight Foundation.

Alexander is 2008 Knight News Challenge winner. His project, SochiReporter.ru, received a $ 600, 000 grant from the Knight Foundation.

In 2007-2008 Alexander spent 11 months in New York as a Fulbright Scholar, working on his PhD dissertation on Journalism 2.0, convergence culture and virtual communities at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He is now continuing his research in Sochi and Moscow focusing on the interaction of the Olympics and the new media. Alexander blogs about the development of his project, SochiReporter.ru, at the PBS Media Shift/ Idea Lab.

Alexander graduated from the Russian-Norwegian High School in Moscow. He wrote the first ever in Russian 224-page guidebook to Norway, worked as staff editor in the Russian edition of the Esquire magazine, where he also covered techno gadgets and hi-tech innovation. He was special projects editor in 9 magazines including Harvard Business Review (Russia), National Geographic (Russia), National Geographic Traveler (Russia) and was also staff correspondent in the entertainment and pop-culture program ‘All at once!’ at NTV Channel (one of the leading channels in Russia).

a.b.zolotarev@gmail.com / az@sochireporter.ru

About SochiReporter

SochiReporter is one of the winners of the 2008 Knight News Challenge contest, an initiative taken by the Knight Foundation to shape the future of news. SochiReporter was launched on October 27, 2009 enabling the people of Sochi, the Russian resort city hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics, to use the latest online tools to both discuss and influence the impact of the Games. A website and database allow the community to track and debate how the plans are changing life there over a five-year period. The idea is to help residents better prepare for the Olympics, to inform the media about the city’s issues and to use discussions about the games as a way to improve life in Sochi. SochiReporter is the first ever initiative to build a unified multimedia archive about the preparation of a host city for the Olympics.

___

If you like the plan, please tweet: Follow @andymiah Media Blueprint for London 2012 http://bit.ly/media2012 #media2012

Thanks for the #media2012 tweets, view archive here

and please consider coming to Manchester on 4th October, 2010, the event will be free, we’ll unconference part of it, giving everyone a chance to pitch, have a photo/blog walk, see some great art work, meet amazing people and generally have a good time while making something new happen. To register for the event, please contact hello@andfestival.org.uk If you wish also to propose a presentation for the unconference, please also convey this in your mail.

…and here’s a pdf of the proposal (v.1.1)

Open publication - Free publishing - More london2012

…and a list of the public meetings where the proposal will be discussed:

2010.11.09 Olympic Conference, HLST Annual Conference, Oxford Brookes University
2010.10.04: Abandon Normal Devices festival @ Cornerhouse Manchester (proposal launch)

#Media2012: Blueprint for #London2012

A proposal by
Professor Andy Miah, PhD

University of the West of Scotland

[v1.1, 2010.09.06]

1. Context

1.1 In 2009, the IOC indicated its intention to develop a new strategy for its role in a time of radical media change. London 2012 will be the first Summer Games to be informed by this new approach to promoting the value of social media

1.2 The London 2012 Games coincide with the scheduled targets set by the Digital Britain report & Race Online 2012, indicating a new era of potential media engagement. This provides an opportunity to re-think the new media infrastructure within the United Kingdom.

1.3 The Games represent the largest media event in the world, with broadcasters from over 200 countries covering what happens.

1.4 I envisage the Games as a media festival rather than a media event, where the media are enabled to report much more than just the sports competition. The Cultural Olympiad should be at the heart of this festival of ideas.

1.5 Olympic & Paralympic media centres have the opportunity to shift from being spaces of information and mediation, to becoming factories for creativity, collaboration, and engagement, which can amplify the Olympic mission.

1.6 The London 2012 Media Landscape will include 13,000 broadcast journalists, 7,000 print journalists, who will cover sport. There will be an additional 12,000+ non-accredited professional journalists who will want cover all non-sport content. However, the largest population of reporters will be citizens, not just 60,000,000 people wanting to shoot footage, report and upload content to the web, but organized communities of self-designated citizen reporters who want to organize their content.

1.7 If the Olympic movement can expand media participation without jeopardizing its financial base, then it can more adequately fulfil its role as a progressive social movement.

1.8 Olympic cybercitizens are already taking ownership of reporting their Games and they will need a structure for their participation in 2012.

1.9 In this context, the London 2012 Games can be a moment for realizing a new media legacy for the United Kingdom, built on the idea of citizen media reporting and the recognition that the Games are more than just sports competitions. They are social movements with high humanitarian and cultural aspirations.

1.10 To achieve a broader media participatory culture, it is necessary to develop an extended media network for Games time reporting, which builds on the strategic development of non-accredited media centres at previous Games, linking them to citizen media projects.

1.11 Such a network would be founded on principles of ‘open media’ and will facilitate community legacies and build stories about London, the Nations and the Regions that reach an international audience. It will focus on reporting all non-sporting legacy stories, locating culture and art at the heart of its practice. Its work will transcend national boundaries in ways that no other Games has achieved before, by promoting peer-to-peer conversations.

2. A Nationwide Independent Media Backbone

Reaching out to all regions, starting with hubs in Scotland, the North West and the South West of England, a network emerging from a Vancouver 2010 collaboration with these regions.

This apolitical dream space will bring into force the full commitment of Olympic ideology to promote social change for the good of humanity. These values accord with the philosophy of Olympism.

2.1 Funding is in place to develop the initial scoping for these infrastructures, by identifying partners and commitments from institutions who would host and stage reporters. Principally, this will involve staging an event for potential partners and contributors at the Abandon Normal Devices digital media Festival on October 4, 2010.

2.2 We will focus discussions on operational challenges, collaboration logistics and infrastructure aiming to bring representation from the IOC and LOCOG and the potential UK partners.

2.3 The media who work in such centres should have a local interest but an aspiration that is based on global values or the desire to build opportunities to share globally. Transcending national boundaries is the biggest task. We’re not yet global, despite digital culture

3. Goals

3.1 Augment the Olympic media narrative towards portraying broader dimensions of the philosophy of Olympism

3.2 Create public engagement around Games time

3.3 Promote community legacy for the nations and regions

4. Research Led

4.1 The centres will function as real-time experiments, providing focal points for understanding the social media community and its interface with mass media.

4.2 Coming to terms with the politics of the citizen journalist will greatly assist future event hosts, like Glasgow 2014, Sochi 2014, Rio 2016 and World Cup 2018

4.3 The International Olympic Committee can focus its conversation with citizen media around these hubs

5. Values

5.1 Through the Olympic & Paralympic Games, we want to create space for intercultural dialogue and collaboration.

5.2 We value the Olympiad as a time to address issues of critical social importance for Britain.

5.3 We will support communities to tell their Olympic & Paralympic stories and work with professional journalists to meet their needs.

5.4 We want to expand media privileges to concerned citizens.

5.5 We promote responsible and fair journalism in an open media culture, where content is shared and power distributed.

5.6 We will respect the right of groups to express their political views and support different voices in being heard

6. Need

6.1 The Olympic & Paralympic media are focused on sports almost exclusively during Games time, but this can and should encompass broader legacy stories.

6.2 Digital media has given rise to a proliferation of citizen journalists who want to report the Games.

6.3 Legacies for the Nations and Regions, along with London’s story need other media centres to have space to explain what the Games have meant to them.

6.4 These centres raise a number of questions. Who should fund them? How should they relate to the Olympic & Paralympic infrastructure more broadly? Can they even exist given their desire to build into the intellectual property of the Olympic & Paralympic Games?”

7. How this fits with the nations’ aspirations for London 2012

7.1 The bid promise from London 2012 was to create a national Games, but we would be the only media centres to tell those stories.

7.2 We celebrate Olympic & Paralympic values by promoting the broad ideology of the Olympic & Paralympic Games as a social movement.

7.3 We are a not-for-profit infrastructure, fostering educational practice and public engagement with the Games.

7.4 Through our network, we will constitute the largest network of social media producers throughout the UK and reinvigorate the core media partners of the Games.

7.5 Our content will reach international networks that other media will not reach.

7.6 Our journalists will produce the largest volume of Olympic content and influence trending topics on social media platform, crating the largest Olympic and Paralympic archive of any Games.

8. Why accredited Olympic media will need us

8.1 Media organizations in the UK will traverse the country around Games time, requiring facilities and stories we can provide, particularly around the torch relay.

8.2 To fully report on the London 2012 Games, it will be necessary to see what is happening in the Nations and Regions.

8.3 The Olympic Games is a social movement, not a sporting event. What happens in the country will become its central legacy

8.3.1 CASE STUDY: For example, NBC is setting up a media space around Birmingham City University, as the USA team will be based here. The local community media can interface with this. For example, NBC is setting up a media space around Birmingham City University, as the USA team will be based here. The local community media can interface with this. As well, the CitizensEye in Leicester will create a community media centre that will operate around Games time. Team GB will be in Loughborough. Creating an infrastructure to bring about media change could markedly change how the Olympics works

8.4 While the proposal should aspire to build a network that includes all nations and regions, it will be useful to begin with a hub of centres based on known interests.

8.5 These centres will draw stories from each other to communicate what has been happening and what is happening during Games time. However, events should also build on global networks, particularly previous Games experience to develop the idea of a cultural legacy that extends beyond London. Satellite centres will provide programmatic content during the Games.

9. What was achieved at previous Games: Vancouver 2010

9.1 True North Media house accredits a 5 yr old as a journalist and an Olympic mascot.

9.2 W2 is the first independent media centre to work with an Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games.

9.3 VANOC appoints a number of young people to be its official citizen journalism team during the Games

10. What will these media hubs look like?

10.1 The influence of any specific media centre will be restricted by its funding, its technology and its community, but primarily the latter. Hub centres can be high-tech facilities with large venue space, but all should aspire to similar networked facilities to maximize participation. We all should be able to plug into each others’ space at any time to deliver audio, visual and interaction.

10.2 Imagine

High technology facilities
Networked Infrastructure
Community Generated Content
International Media Attention
Lasting Media Legacy

11. Opportunity

11.1 As part of the initial scoping, we will identify primary partner vehicles, which may be digital media centres around the UK that could have the capacity to deliver a media centre during Games time. However, communities should also be evaluated on their networked potential ie. How prolific are they online. Amplifying their content will be our biggest asset to achieve our goals.

11.2 With 2 years before the Games, this is the time to establish permissions and funding. However, this is still a relatively short amount of time to build partnerships with larger organizations, those who may decide to allocate their programme budget to such a project. This may be the primary route towards ensuring the proposal is realized.

11.3 In closing, this proposal brings together the primary instigators of independent Olympic & Paralympic media centres and creative, artistic practice from the last 10 years of the Olympic & Paralympic Games. With the right support, it has the potential to tell the full story of the London 2012 Games

Stay in touch, join:

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/media2012

About the Author

Professor Miah is Chair of Ethics and Emerging Technologies at the University of the West of Scotland, a Fellow at the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology and part of the Programming Committee for the Abandon Normal Devices Festival, an ‘inspired by 2012’ event, funded by the Legacy Trust.

Professor Miah is an Olympic scholar and writer, having undertaken research into Olympic media at every summer and winter Olympic Games since Sydney 2000, at which he has also worked as a journalist. He has been a visiting Professor at the International Olympic Academy, a Visiting Scholar at the International Olympic Committee museum in Lausanne and teaches Olympic Studies at the University of the West of Scotland, supervising PhD students whose work focuses on Olympic media. While at the Vancouver 2010 Games, he wrote for The Huffington Post, facilitated cultural collaborations between London 2012 and Vancouver 2010 and was on the steering committee for the creation of two independent media centres. He also writes for the Guardian. He is currently completing a book called ‘A Digital Olympics’ for The MIT Press.

@andymiah

email@andymiah.net

+44 (0) 757 898 4147

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Underground Media Zone

During the London 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games, we will organize an underground media zone, accrediting citizen journalists and inviting professional journalists to tell the full legacy story of the nations, regions and host city.

This visualization precedes the articulation of this zone, if you’re social and you like media, then sign up

www.jiscmail.ac.uk/media2012

We will take it from there. For now, mark your calendar for October 4, Manchester, Abandon Normal Devices festival of new cinema and digital culture www.andfestival.org.uk

Andy

Nanoscaled

Thanks to Cat Kramer, Zoe Papadopolous and Dr Anthony Mark Cutter for their participation in the Nanoscaled Salon at #ANDfest last month. fun times gassing about nano icecream (pictured above).

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Abandon Normal Devices

The next installment of AND is underway this month. Two Salons are scheduled which I’ll Chair, the first took place last week and was packed out. It was titled ‘Diagnose‘ and included Hans Bernhard from Ubermorgan, featuring their new work ‘User Generated Illness’

On 10 April, we’ll be in Blackburn at the Haworth Art Gallery for a salon with The Cloud Project and Dr Anthony Mark Cutter. The title is Nanoscaled.

Abandon Normal Devices

The AND festival of new cinema and digital culture kicks off next week and I’ll be running the critical debates during the festival. Below is an overview of them, including biographies of our speakers. Lots of top notch contributors here, so try to get over to Liverpool for one of them. They are all free and open to everyone, but there is limited seating…

AND?

Dates: 24- 27 September, FACT Liverpool

Time: 12.00-1.30pm

Location: Chameleon (found at the rear entrance of FACT in Art House Square)

Featuring: CONTRACT: Charlie Beckett, James Wallman INFECT: Anders Sandberg, Dan Glaser; COMPETE: Natasha Vita-More, David James; DESIRE: Trudy Barber, Nina Wakeford

The AND? salons interrogate ideas about social justice, human rights and equality in a period of widespread, collective moral transgression. Our neglect of ethical considerations is intimately tied to subtle normalizing processes within social systems, which distract us from critical engagement. How are these devices imposed upon us and what systems of thought must we adopt to abandon them?

Using ethics as a broad foundation of thought, AND assesses the invisible social contracts we live by to open up questions integral to our time, from matters of biopolitics to our transition into a controlled and contested society, where our bodies, minds and communities are constantly under formal and informal devices of control. Split into four themes, Compete, Desire, Contract and Infect one fundamental question drives this inquiry: are we complicit in accepting normalization or do we seek to challenge?

Debates are Chaired by Professor Andy Miah, University of the West of Scotland & FACT Fellow

CONTRACT | Thursday 24 September

Social contracts exist in various guises, though perhaps our most celebrated is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which aspires to guarantee fundamental freedoms. It emerged during a period of globalizing humanitarian movements, where promoting justice, peace processes and cooperation were apparent. Yet, in the last two decades, there has been a widespread state-wide erosion of citizenship by media monitoring, matched only by our own complicity in digital self-surveillance. What are the consequences of these transformations for how we think about liberal democracy and the future of an increasingly digital Britain? Are we really global now?

Discussants: Charlie Beckett, James Wallman

INFECT | Friday 25 September

Traditionally seen as an impairment to normal functioning, AND reads disease as an overarching state of disruption to social order. Our desire to transcend our biology is inextricable from the complex ways in which our own resilience can be suddenly brought into question, as manifested by the ‘swine flu’ pandemic, itself a new(s) virus. These moments draw society back into a state of primitive vulnerabilities. They question whether society can be ‘fixed’ or whether utopian projects are all merely processes of normality maintenance. Are we persistently drawn back into a maligned condition of existence?

Discussants: Anders Sandberg, Daniel Glaser

COMPETE | Saturday 26 September

‘Faster, Higher Stronger’; Today, we compete with ourselves, through self-augmentation and manipulation. Our biological apparatus is in flux, vulnerable, yet being re-imagined through technology. Looking specifically at what it means to be able bodied or disabled we consider how society will look in an era of genetically modified athletes and surgically sculpted children.

Discussants: Natasha Vita-More, David James

DESIRE | Sunday 27 September

How will sex and sexuality look in 2020? In the 1990s, in an era when HIV and AIDS reached public attention, digital sex was described as the solution, as it promised to free us from the biological burden of disease and infection. But what is the state of our cybersexuality today? What will we desire and will sex be further sanitized in the future? Have digital liaisons become our primary mechanism through which to learn or mis-learn about sex?

Discussants: Trudy Barber, Nina Wakeford.

Biographies

Dr Trudy Barber created an immersive VR Sex environment in 1992 as part of her BA Fine Art studies at Central Saint Martins College of Art. She went on to gain her PhD at the University of Kent with her thesis on Computer Fetishism and Sexual Futurology. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Media at the School of Creative Arts, Film and Media, University of Portsmouth. Current research interests include: human-computer-interaction; new media development and content; consumer generated content; online social networking; sexuality and sexual subcultures; science fiction, cyberpunk and the future; immersive and non-immersive virtuality (such as Second Life and gaming), the convergence and customisation of communication technologies and issues surrounding theory and creative digital practice. Further information see:

http://www.port.ac.uk/research/ceisr/members/title,69965,en.html

Charlie Beckett is the founding Director of Polis, the journalism think-tank at the Media and Communications Department at the London School of Economics. He is author of “SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save The World” (Wiley-Blackwell 2008). He was a film-maker and programme editor at the BBC on programmes like Panorama, On The Record and News 24 and spent 8 years at ITN’s Channel 4 News before joining the LSE in 2006. He broadcasts and writes regularly on media and politics in the UK and International media and blogs at www.charliebeckett.org and can be followed as CharlieBeckett on Twitter. He specialises in Media Change issues and the way that journalism is transformed by digital technologies and Web 2.0 communications into a more networked and participatory practice. Beckett’s work at Polis has also dealt with media matters as diverse as Media and Development, Political Reporting, Celebrity journalism and Financial Media. The Polis website is www.polismedia.org

Dr Daniel Glaser is Head of Special Projects in public engagement at the Wellcome Trust. His team directs activities with young people inside and outside school, considers education policy, engages with the broadcast media and examines interactions between scientists and non-scientists of all sorts. His scientific background involves the use of fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to examine how experience, prejudice and expectation alter the way we see the world. He comes from an unusual academic background having studied maths and then English literature at Cambridge, doing a masters in cognitive science at Sussex University, and graduate work in neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. In 2002 he was appointed ‘Scientist in Residence’ at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. This was the first appointment of its kind at an arts institution. In 2005 he was in the first cohort to receive a Cultural Leadership Award from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA). As well as presenting a television series for the BBC on how science really works, he has made numerous appearances on national and local radio and has featured in articles in daily newspapers. He co-chairs the Café Scientifique at the Photographers’ Gallery which is the London branch of a national series providing a new way for scientists to interact with a general public

Dr David James is a Senior Lecturer in Sports Engineering at Sheffield Hallam University. He leads the University’s MSc in sports engineering and maintains a wide range of research interests. David is a leading science communicator and was recently awarded a prestigious Fellowship in Public Engagement from the Royal Academy of Engineering. David has a mechanical engineering background with a PhD from the University of Sheffield that focused on modelling the complex bounce of a cricket ball. He has been privileged to work in a world leading research centre for nine years and has published extensively in a range of sports engineering areas. David’s team use fundamental research and the latest ‘cutting edge’ technologies to provide athletes with information and equipment to enhance their performance. Recent projects have included the development of elements of British Cycling’s highly successful Olympic track bike, and the creation of a complete mathematical model to explore the impact of technology on the game of tennis. David’s current research is focusing on the historical impact of technology in track and field events and the ethical considerations of an increasingly scientific sporting arena.

Professor Andy Miah, BA, MPhil, PhD, FRSA, is Chair in Ethics and Emerging Technologies in the Faculty of Business & Creative Industries at the University of the West of Scotland, Fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, USA and Fellow at FACT, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, UK. He is author of ‘Genetically Modified Athletes’ (2004 Routledge) and co-author with Dr Emma Rich of ‘The Medicalization of Cyberspace’ (2008, Routledge) and Editor of ‘Human Futures: Art in an Age of Uncertainty’ (2008, Liverpool University Press and FACT). For correspondence: email@andymiah.net

Dr Anders Sandberg is a researcher, science debater, futurist, transhumanist, and author. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Stockholm University in computational neuroscience, and is currently a James Martin Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. Sandberg’s research centres on societal and ethical issues surrounding human enhancement and new technology, as well as on assessing the capabilities and underlying science of future technologies. His recent contributions include work on cognitive enhancement [1] (methods, impacts, and policy analysis); a technical roadmap on whole brain emulation[2]; on neuroethics; and on global catastrophic risks, particularly on the question of how to take into account the subjective uncertainty in risk estimates of low-likelihood, high-consequence risk. He is well-known as a commentator and participant in the public debate about human enhancement internationally, as well as for his academic publications in neuroscience, ethics, and future studies. He is co-founder of and writer for the think tank Eudoxa. Between 1996 and 2000 he was Chairman of the Swedish Transhumanist Association. He was also the scientific producer for the neuroscience exhibition “Se Hjärnan!” (“Behold the Brain!”), organized by Swedish Travelling Exhibitions, the Swedish Research Council and the Knowledge Foundation, that was touring Sweden 2005–2006. In 2007 he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University, working on the EU-funded ENHANCE project on the ethics of human enhancement.

Dr Nina Wakeford is a Reader in Sociology and an ESRC Research Fellow 2007-2010 at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her previous research projects include studies of internet cafes, women’s discussions lists and the use of ethnography by new technology designers. Amongst her publications are papers on virtual methodologies, queer identities, digital communities and public internet access provision. Along with colleagues at INCITE she is interested in the ways in which collaborations can be forged between ethnographers and those from other disciplines, such as engineering and computer science. She is particularly concerned with the ways in which critical social and cultural theory can play a part in the design process, including the challenges which feminist and queer theories pose to collaborative projects between designers and sociologists, as well as technology studies.

Natasha Vita-More, media artist and theorist, is currently a Ph.D. Candidate, Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth. Her research concerns transformative human enhancement and radical life extension, focusing on converging nanotechnology, robotics, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive and neuro sciences within electronic-based design and biological art practices. Natasha’s future human design “Primo Posthuman” has been featured in Wired, Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, Net Business, LA Weekly, and Village Voice. She has appeared numerous televised documentaries on the future, and exhibited at National Centre for Contemporary Arts Brooks Memorial Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art, Women In Video, Telluride Film Festival, and Moscow’s “Evolution Haute Couture: Art and Science in the Post-Biological Age”. Natasha is a proponent of ethical means for human enhancement. She is published in Artifact, Technoetic Arts, D’ARS, Nanotechnology Perceptions, Annual Workshop on Geoethical Nanotechnology, Death and Anti-Death. She has a bi-monthly column in Nanotechnology Now, and Guest Editor of The Global Spiral. Formerly president of Extropy Institute, Natasha is Visiting Scholar at Twenty-First Century Medicine, Advisor for LifeBoat Foundation, Fellow of Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and has been a consultant to IBM on the future of human performance.

James Wallman was formerly Senior Trends Analyst at The Future Laboratory, where he consulted for companies such as Absolut, BMW and Coors, and appeared on radio alongside Dylan Jones discussing the future of men. With an MA in classics from Oxford University and an MA in journalism from the London College of Communication (LCC), he now writes the futurology column for tech magazine T3, making entertaining sense of complex topics such as the future of money, augmented reality and synthetic biology. Recent movements he’s analysed and described include the shift to bionic humans, the new prohibition era and the technosexual revolution – for T3, The Future Laboratory and GQ. He gathers the insights he comes across at CollectedIntelligence.net.