Head South by South Coast this May

February 27, 2012
by Karen Woods

Dr Lorraine Warren from the Southampton Management School is passionate about innovation in the digital economy. In particular, she is an enthusiast for developing the ideas that bubble up from tech-savvy people in every walk of life.

“Good ideas are no longer merely the province of computer scientists. With the advent of sophisticated technology for all such as smart phones and superfast broadband, anyone with creativity can come up with amazing things.”

Lorraine is urging people who work in the creative industries to seize the opportunities now available to collaborate and achieve their full potential.

She is organising South by South Coast (#SxSC) an all-day informal event on 18 May 2012 at the University of Southampton Students Union building for anyone involved in the region’s creative industries. “Come and meet some great people with interests in the creative industries and digital media. Geek out, talk, hear some inspiring speakers, and enjoy our music and beer, all for free. If the weather is nice you can even sit outside in the patio area,” she says.

South by South Coast is sponsored by: the University of Southampton’s Digital Economy Strategic Research Group and supported by the Centre for Strategic Innovation.

To book your FREE ticket: http://creativedigifest.eventbrite.co.uk

Is digital technology transforming the humanities?

February 23, 2012
by Karen Woods

Challenges lie ahead for all academics as digital technologies bring innovative ways of working and spreading research findings to the wider world.

Dr Leif Isaksen has joined the Faculty of Humanities at Southampton as Lecturer in Digital Humanities. He is working across the disciplines to highlight potential opportunities, bring people together and support initiatives.

“Digital technology is a broad concept, stretching from blogs and twitter to complex computational structures,” he says. “To succeed, you need a certain willingness to experiment and to explore the unknown with a digital perspective.” But Leif is aware not everyone will be an enthusiast “The Internet has been part of our lives now for around 20 years. While most academics have some degree of familiarity with computers, we recognise they may need specialist knowledge to make their ideas come to life; collaboration could provide the answer.”

A Philosophy graduate from Cambridge, Leif worked as a computer programmer before taking a master’s in Archaeological Computing at Southampton and a job at Oxford Archaeology. He then studied for a PhD in Computer Science at Southampton; he is now an enthusiast for bringing people and technologies together.

Much work is already underway at Southampton. Professor John McGavin’s project to create a searchable database of London theatres before 1642 uses interactive digital technologies to bring academic research to a wider audience. Multi-disciplinary work is also showing promise. David Owen Norris, Professor of Keyboard links with researchers in Health Sciences to show how motion capture cameras can track how a musician plays the piano.

“This is a growing field. Up until the early 2000s, humanities computing was a small specialist community, a niche discipline. Now, people expect to see and interact with research findings online; openness and access are real issues we must consider,” he adds.

The Faculty of Humanities is already well-represented on the University’s Strategic Research Group on the Digital Economy with several projects already in the pipeline.

A free event – #SxSC gathering 18.05.2012

Come and meet some great people with interests in the creative industries and digital media. Geek out, talk, hear some great speakers, music, beer – FREE. If the weather is nice you can even sit outside in the patio area.

What is SxSC?

SxSC is an ad hoc informal gathering aimed at people in the creative industries/digital media who want to share their knowledge and learn about new developments.  It is an intense event with a series of discussions, demos, participation and interaction from attendees.

You can be part of it – you can offer a talk, or a demo in one of the informal slots, or just come along and watch, talk to people, demonstrate kit informally in the bar area – it’s up to you – the key word here is INTERACTION.

The idea is to get people talking and build up an informal network in the region, where beginners and experts can learn from each other, and make new connections – no boundaries, as long as you’re broadly in line with the overall theme.

We will be involving participants in designing the event right from the outset, so if you have suggestions for topics for the informal sessions, or speakers, or ideas for a hacking task or contest, let us know – we’ll do our best to accommodate, subject to demand, and fit.

Anyone can attend, as long as you have an interest in developing new technology and new user  applications with a Creative Industries/Digital Media flavour, including (but not restricted to):

mobile/smartphone • social media • visual media • visualisation • gaming •

augmented and mixed reality • metadata • webscience

linked data • motion capture • arduino • architecture • archaeology • design • advertising

 creative arts • performing arts • TV
film and video • music • publishing • video games • history • collaborative working

• Wifi, data projector and audio will be available.
• Perspectives that encourage value creation (biz/tech, uni/industry) are welcome.
• A small ‘trade stand’ space will be available.
• Food will be available throughout the day at the bar.
• The event will be tagged for Twitter, Flickr etc and will be blogged before, live, after) #SxSC

A FREE event May 18th 2012 from 10am – 4pm in Southampton University Student Union Building

February 21, 2012
by Graeme Earl

Come and meet some great people with interests in the creative industries and digital media. Geek out, talk, hear some great speakers, music, beer – FREE. If the weather is nice you can even sit outside in the patio area.

Continue reading →

Workshop on 3D Heritage on the mobile web

February 15, 2012
by Graeme Earl

Angeliki Chrysanthi from the Archaeological Computing Research Group has written three blog posts about a workshop held this month in Brighton:

“The aim of this Workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners from diverse fields of both the production and consumption of 3D content for cultural heritage. Together they will explore the opportunities and challenges offered by the type of experiences that are enabled by mobile technologies and which might be different to those experiences enabled by more traditional devices such as PCs, 3D TVs or large scale installations.” http://culturalinformatics.org.uk/?q=3dmobilewebworkshop

The three posts are available via the sotonDH website:

• Workshop on 3D Heritage on the mobile web – Part One
• Workshop on 3D Heritage on the mobile web – Part Two
• Workshop on 3D Heritage on the mobile web – Part Three

The human factors in innovation and making choices

February 14, 2012
by Lisa Harris

Current issues in Digital Economy research were discussed as part of the University of Southampton’s Multidisciplinary Research Week initiative.

Dr Lorraine Warren and Dr Luke Greenacre from the Southampton Management School presented their work to an audience which included some members of the public who were interested in finding out more about the work of our University Strategic Research Group.

Lorraine spoke about temporality, emergence and value in the creative industries: questions of theory and methodology. She explains: “It should now be easier than it has ever been for everyone to not only access and use new technologies, but to extend them, customise them, develop new combinations, to improve, radically innovate and disrupt how we live our lives and create new value, new futures. However, the roadmap for inductive thinking that will create value in novel and unforeseen ways in new contexts and settings is not clear; classical models of innovation may be too focused on economic value creation at the expense of wider societal benefit.”

Here is an introduction to Lorraine’s work

Luke joined the University of Southampton in 2011. He has previously worked at the Centre for the Study of Choice and the Marketing Discipline Group at the University of Technology in Sydney; the University of Sydney; the University of Western Sydney; and the Australian Institute of Music.

His presentation outlined the theoretical and methodological basis for a new approach to predicting online referral networks: “Through the integration of choice experiments and agent-based modelling techniques, it is intended to build models of how individuals actually behave in real markets, and then observe how this behaviour aggregates at the network level. This could allow us to understand how small changes in communication decisions by individuals can alter market outcomes.”

MRW12: The Science of Music (H.A.W.K. Demonstration)

February 1, 2012
by Graeme Earl

As part of Multidisciplinary Research Week see how the same motion capture that was used to make ‘Lord of the Rings’ is being used to understand the different ways in which musicians use their hands to play the piano.

Links:
http://www.davidowennorris.com/
H.A.W.K.
Professor David Owen Norris
Dr Cheryl Metcalf
Video clip here: University of Southampton Youtube Channel

H.A.W.K. on the BBC: Southampton pianists scanned using new technique

Press Release: January 2012

MRW12: Digital Humanities: Where Digital Technology and Music Collide

February 1, 2012
by Graeme Earl