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CONFERENCE PROGRAMME                   16-18^th July 2012

Monday 16^th              2.00-4.30         registration                              HCI seminar room

                                    4.00-6.00         installation                               Barn

7.30-9.30dinner (at Methuen Arms) with main speakers

Tuesday 17th             9.00.-9.30        registration                              HCI seminar room

9.30-9.45     Introduction and outline of main themes.  Barn.

9.45-10.30       Mark Amerika                         Barn

10.30-11.15     Maria Mencia                         Barn

11.15-1145      coffee break                           Barn Foyer

11.45-1.15       speakers and workshops

                                    1.15-2.30 Lunch                                              Barn Foyer

                                    2.30-4.00 speakers and workshops

Sound Workshop.  Steve May and Paul Evans. 4.00-5.00pm  Barn

5.00-5.30pm tea and coffee Barn Foyer

7pm Introduction to Liberated Words, Pound Arts, Corsham

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Wednesday 18th        9.00.-9.30  registration                                    HCI room

9.30-9.46     Introduction and outline of day’s events  Barn

9.45-10.30  Tom Konyves                              Barn                 

10.30-11.15 Kate Pullinger                             Barn

11.15-1145 coffee break                                 Barn Foyer

11.45-1.15 speakers and workshops

                                    1.15-2.30 Lunch                      Seminar rooms 1 and 2

                                    2.30-4.00 speakers and workshops

4..0-5.0 pm tea coffee             Barn Foyer

5.00-5.30 Final Words.  Barn.

CONFERENCE EXTRA. Love, Letty. Interactive arts project

Third year Bath Spa Creative Arts student, Letty McHugh will take her Love, Letty project to the MIX conference. Love, Letty  is a Tumblr Blog where people ask her questions and she answers them with a typewritten letter and a piece of artwork. She says, “It’s a simple way to connect with the people who view my work, and it’s become more like a conversation than a project over time”

At the conference she will be running the  interactive art project Love, Letty live from the venue. She will take questions from the conference attendees and create work to answer these in real time. These responses and artwork will be uploaded to the project blog live as they happen. If they want to, the person whose question they answer can then take them home.  She will also be exploring the conference and crafting responses to talks, exhibits and other events throughout the day.

The website address is:  http://loveletty.tumblr.com/

KEY SPEAKERS.

Mark Amerika: Internationally renowned ‘re-mix’ artist and pioneer of internet art, digital video and experimental literature. Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Dr. Maria Mencia: Leader of practice led research in language driven new media/art/literature. Senior Lecturer at Kingston University.

Kate Pullinger “Spreadable Media: Writing in a Disintermediated Age

If it won’t spread, it’s dead’.  ‘Spreadable media’ is the name writer and academic Henry Jenkins has given to new forms of networked media that allow for, indeed, encourage, circulation via peer-to-peer networks.  Traditionally, publishing has been about the distribution of works via authorised outlets, like bookshops and e-retailers.  As traditional venues for distribution collapse and disappear, circulation via networks, both online and offline, becomes more important.  Using examples from her own work, Kate Pullinger will discuss what ‘participatory culture’ means for writers. 

 Kate Pullinger writes fiction for both print and digital media. Her most recent books include her collected short stories A Curious Dream (2011), and the novel The Mistress of Nothing which won the GG, Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, 2009.  Other novels include A Little Stranger (2006), and Weird Sister (1999).  Pullinger’s many digital fiction projects include her multiple award-winning collaboration with Chris Joseph on Inanimate Alice’,  www.inanimatealice.com

 and ‘Flight Paths’ www.flightpaths.net  Kate Pullinger is Reader in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University, Leicester. She lives in London, England.  Find her at www.katepullinger.com

Tom Konyves “Poetry and Film: State of the Union”

Avant-garde or experimental poetry in the 20^th Century is a story of poets discovering the visual and sound potential of their words, the potential for translating the reading of a poem, or hearing a poem read, into an audiovisual experience of poetry. As this new hybrid form of art came into being so did a new variegated form of artist: the poet/filmmaker. Early attempts at integrating poetry and film borrowed the text of poems as scripts for short narrative ‘illustrated’ films. Today, whether displayed on the screen or heard on the soundtrack of a videopoem, text as ceased to be an appropriation of a published poem; when abstracted and examined as an independant element, it can no longer be indentified as “poetry”. The poetry has become the result of the juxtaposed, measured use of text with imagery and sound. Tom will present his findings with excerpts from current works.

Tom Konyves was based in Montreal until 1083. He is most recognised for his mid-seventies association with the Vehicule Poets, a period distinguished by Dadaist/Surrealist/experimental writings, performance works and ‘videopoems’. In 1978 he coined the term ‘videopoetry’ to describe his multimedia work and is considered to be one of the most original pioneers of the form. His books of poetry include No Parking (Vehicule Press), Poetry in Performance (The Muses Company), Ex Perimeter (Caitlin Press) and Sleepwalking Among The Camels: New and Selected Poems (The Muses Company) He is currently living in White Rock, BC, Canada and teaches Visual Poetry at the University of the Fraser Valley.

LIST OF PAPERS

Jillian Abbot  “Beyond Text. Digital Stories and College Writing” Recent developments in multimedia software applications have broadened the possibilities of many students to meet course and programme goals. Jill explores the process of making digital narratives with first year students in Queens, New York City, a county with the highest number of foreign born residents. Jill is an adjunct lecturer at Queensborough College, a college of the City University of New York.

Joelle Adams. “Creative Learning and Teaching in a Digital Age.” Are digital technologies changing the way we teach and learn? How can we harness these technologies to improve creativity and learning? This session explores the digital revolution’s impact on education, particularly in creative subjects. Joelle will share examples of innovation at Bath Spa University and ask participants to share their ideas, concerns, challenges and successes with learning and teaching in the digital age. Joelle is the co-ordinator of the writing and learning centre at Bath Spa University.

Andrew Atherton   “The Archaeology of Digital Writing”. Hypertexuality as a forerunner to digital Writing with reference to the work of Michael Joyce and Shelley Jackson. Andrew is a PhD student from the University of Kent.

Julie Blake. “Apps and the Internet Poetry Boom” The internet has formed online communities of shared minority interests and this includes poetry. One digital context for this ‘boom’ is “apps” available to Apple iPhone and iPad users. The Poetry Archive is exploring ways in which it might develop new digital poetry. Julie Blake is the Education Manager of the Poetry Archive. She is currently working with web developers to design innovative new ways of engaging users. She is also a visiting lecturer in Education at Bath Spa University.

Doro Boehme and Kevin Henry. “Creating an i-pad Narrative” Doro and Kevin describe an artistic collaboration between an artist/writer, designer and programmer.

Doro is a lecturer at The School of Art Institute, Chicago and Kevin Henry is from Columbia College, Chicago.

Dr Antonella Castelvedere. “Performance Poetry Pedagogy.” The notion of ‘delicacy’ in the field of pedagogy. The discourses students engage with whilst reconfiguring their identities as readers, writers and creators/users of text. Antonella is a lecturer at University Campus Suffolk where she teaches poetry, critical theory and education

practice.

Jack Dean. “Poetry and Theatre” Former Bath Spa student, Jack Dean will explore his creative journey in creating the multi-media poetry/theatre show. Under Stokes Croft.

Luba Diduch. “The Layering of Space, Time and Meaning”. An experimental and process based approach to interactive media installations and an investigation into a project that explores architectonic systems that link to virtual space through the use of QR codes.  An interactive session. Luba is a Phd Student.

Eiliyas (Nicholas. A. Kelly)  “Assessing Cultural Relevance in New Media Art and its Governing Vocabulary.” How New Media Art is shaped by the tools that produce it.

Eiliyas is a Berlin based practitioner and has produced music/text/sound and performance installations.

Patrick and Kelli Fuery. “Frames, Screens and the incipient: Creative Writing, Narrative and the Digital.” How traditional models of creative writing are being challenged by the intervention of the digital, including the work between gaming companies and academic systems.

Patrick is Chair and Professor of English at Chapman University, California. Kellis is a professor in culture and New Media at Chapman.

Terry Flaxton. “Technology and the act of Transmedial Creativity.” A panel discussing the history of ‘fixing’ the image and the transformation from analogue through electronic to digital Media and what this might reveal about the relationship between Technology and Creativity.

Terry Flaxon is joined by Claire Reddington, Director of the Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol and Martin Reiser from De Montfort University.

Glenn Carmichael. “Creating multi-media Poetry”. In 2010-11 the mult-media poetry show Flash toured the UK. Glenn and Sarah-Jane Arbury discuss the challenges of creating and touring such an ambitious project. Glenn is the founder of the Bristol Poetry Slam, a spoken word artist and teacher. Sarah-Jane Arbury is a spoken word artist and organises poetry slams in the U.K.

Liz Green and Rebecca Tantony.  Former Bath Spa students Liz and Rebecca will discuss their current multi-media work. Liz and Rebecca have been instrumental in fostering a new generation of young poets/performers with their eclectic events Poetry Pulpit and Shh its a Sunday.

Dr Helen Gregory. “Youth take the Lead: Digital Poetry and the Next Generation”

Youth slams and spoken word programmes like SLAMbassadors have nurtured young talent. This paper explores their pioneers into digital forms by innovative teaching methods. Helen is a lecturer at the University of Gloucestershire and the organiser of the poetry tent at the Glastonbury Festival.

Philip Hartigan. “The Lucerne Project: Re-imagining Narrative Art in the Digital Realm.” This project is a multimedia investigation of narratives using images people had uploaded of themselves in Lucerne. This project investigates the relationship between the ‘real’ and the imagined and the translation between the digital and physical world. Philip is an artist,writer and lecturer at Columbia College, Chicago.

Dr Donna Hancox. “Teaching Transmedia Storytelling”. The setting up of the first transmedia storytelling unit in an Australian university. A reflection on this process and discussion on the future of transmedia storytelling in the classroom. Dr. Hancox is a lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane.

Dr. Teri Holbrook and Dr. Melanie Hundley. “Literacy in Motion: Bringing New Media into teacher preparation programmes.” How new media young adult literature is used as triggers for engaging future teachers in the creation of multimodal, digital composition. Teri is a lecturer at Georgia State University, Atlanta and Melanie is a lecturer from Vanderbilt Universit, Nashville. USA.

Dr Colin Harvey. “Transmedia Memory”. Using emergent theory from the field of media memory studies a theoretical framework for indentifing and understanding varieties of transmedia memory will be explores. This paper will focus on a range of distinct case studies and experience of working for Big Finish and design work for Sony. Dr Colin Harvey is adjunct associate Professor at the University of Sydney

Dani Landau. “Digital Storytelling: A method for making first person audio visual narratives” This session will cover the history of Digital Storytelling and survey the broad ways it is being used today. Case studies will be shown from a variety of workshops. Dani is a Bristol based digital storytelling facilitator.

Dr Steve May. “Words and Music”. Observations on the creative process involved in generating a John Cage musicircus version of Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus. Steve May and a team of writers used Cage’s prescriptions to derive text for this project led by BSU composer Professor James Saunders.

 Dr Steve May and Paul Evans “Wild sound: nature, music and narrative – new ways to drive story in audio drama.”

 BBC Radio drama is famous for its creaking doors, swooping seagulls and farmhouse backgrounds – all drawn from the extensive archive of sound effects, and therefore often strangely familiar – and unconvincing to the listener. This practical workshop explores new ways of using freshly captured natural sounds, music and location recording to inform and drive narrative in audio drama. Participants will be offered the chance to use freshly captured sound and live music to devise and capture mini-dramas.

 Paul Evans writes a Country Diary for the Guardian and a Nature Watch column for The Guardian Weekly. He writes and presents programmes for the BBC’s Natural History Unit on Radio 4 and has written three Afternoon Plays involving “wild sound.”

 Steve May is a writer, musician and composer who has written more than 50 plays for BBC radio, several of which have used live interactive music. He has also devised and performed the music for The City Lights jazz and poetry company since 1987.

Steve May is head of creative writing at Bath Spa University.

Lisa Mead  “Case Study: The Process of making Spoken Word performance with digital elements.” Apples and Snakes and the Birmingham Repertory Theatre present THE REMEMBERERS. Written and performed by Kenny Baraka this is an ambitious and dynamic site-specifics show combining rap, lyrics, projection, music and graphic novel illustration. Lisa discusses the process of making this complex piece of work and how it was inspired by the graphic novel genre. Lisa Mead is the creative producer for THE REMEMBERERS and for Apples and Snakes where she has produced performance and participatory spoken word projects. She is currently working on Simon Mole’s Indiana Jones and the Extra Chair, a live art spoken word experiment.

Dr Patricia McNair. “What’s the story? Getting back to basics in a digital age.” This workshop will guide participants through activities in writing and drawing in the pursuit of story. Once stories have been discovered we will consider various ways they might be enhanced. Patricia is a lecturer in creative writing at Columbia College, Chicago. She will be joined by Philip Hartigan for this workshop.

Phil Purves. “Don’t Forget the Future”. Are we entering a ‘post digital age?’ Can we safely drop the term ‘digital’from digital media? This paper will examine the huge outpouring of work from designers, writers and musicians based at the Real World studios in nearby Box and look at their impact as pioneers of digital forms and how they still address contemporary questions. Phil is a lecturer in Media at Bath Spa University.

Holly Pester “Inter/Into Media: A Paper on Poetry Mediated by Sound and Space.” This paper will explore the notion of ‘middling’; works that are situated in the midst of relationality and poetry that is written via networks, systems, abstract space and displaced sound. This paper will investigate work by Caroline Bergvall and Christian Bok.Holly Pester is a practicing sound poet and researcher at Birkbeck, University of London. Her PhD is on Sound Poetry’s speech, archives and analogue properties.

Bohdan Piasecki “The Use of Mixed Media in Performance Poetry Translation”

The live poetry scene is an international phenomena. As an increasing number of poets reach countries where audiences do not speak their language the issue of translation becomes more urgent. The widespread use of new media means that a number of renowned artists turn to digital media to enhance the meaning of their work, and the translation becomes an integral part of the performance. Bohdan is a spoken word artist and PhD student.

Katharine Reeve and Caroline Harris. “Digital Narratives: From Idea to Publication”

This workshop will introduce you to the process of developing a digital project either fiction or non fiction – from refining your intital idea to mapping out the content in various multimedia forms. There will be a prize of an hour’s consultation with a digital specialist for the best proposal received after the workshop. (closing date 30^th Aug.) Katharine runs the Publishing Degree at BSU and is a prizewinning food author. Caroline Harris is an author of non-fiction and a lecturer on the Publishing Degree at BSU.

Gerry Smith. “Question your tea spoons: Digital works in endotic research.” This paper will explore the artist’s recent work with reductive poetic forms and participatory artwork. It will show examples from Thaw and outline how its functions, both as a means of gathering information from everyday environments and as a media for drawing attention to those environments. Gerry is a text based artist.

Hazel Smith. “Sound Rites: Relationships between sound and words in new media.”

The paper will examine the different types of sound in new media writing from voice based performance of words to soundscapes and musical composition. The paper will refer to the work of John Cayley, Fox Harrel and Jason Nelson as well as the artist’s own discoveries and work with AustraLYSIS, the sound and multimedia group. Hazel is a research professor in the Writing and Research Group at the University of Western Sydney.

Dr. Anabella Speziale. “Video poems as the medium between symbolic expression, memory and technology in Argentina.” This paper explores the different approaches to produce discursive forms in Argentina today and how video can create new pieces that can be watched on a screen or can require displacements and intervention from its viewers. The work of various Argentinean artists will be discussed. Anabella is a Professor of Film Studies at the Universidad de Buenos Aires.

Richard Stamp. “Philosophy of a gadgeteer” This paper addresses a particular moment in the work of John Whitney, the US experimental abstract filmmaker and explores his status as a formative figure in the emergence of digital media. Whitney’s work inspired the visual effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Richard is a lecturer in music at Bath Spa University.

.Gabriel Stillwater. “The creating of Digital Motion books for iPad.” Gabriel will explore his practice based research into digital books. He co-mingles poetry with the elements of still and moving images, spoken voice as well as ambient sound and music. His aim is to create an interactive element new to poetry. Gabriel is a PhD student at Bath Spa University.

Dick Swart.  “The New Read” There have always been ‘new’ literary mediums that have enhanced or changed our reading experience right back to the clay formed tablets that contained Gilgamesh. Today digital narration is characterised by online reading devices that can provide the ‘lean back’ quality that computers cannot replicate. The influence of gaming on a new generation of readers will lead to less static and non linear literary genres. This paper explores the lasting effects of digital on the written story and how writers and readers can get used to new reading challenges. Dick is a lecturer in Journalism at the University of Utrecht.

Sarah Tremlett. “Motion as Rhythm is Conceptual Videopoetry”. Most of us are familiar with the rhythmic patterns of traditional poetry. However, through examining examples of the word flux from her own practice this paper will consider how the perception of motion might be described as a visual repetition.  The dynamic of appearance and disappearance will be analysed. Sarah is a PhD student at the Chelsea School of Art and co-organiser of the MIX conference.

Christine Wilks. “Writing for Playable Media”. This paper explores writing creatively for algorithmically driven media and working with others’ code frameworks. Christine examines how her own work has taken on more game-like characteristics and she will show a selection of examples from her key works. Christine is New Media author and her work has won awards and has been collected in online journals and anthologies.

Sheri. D. Wilson. “The Oral Tradition and the New Media Art Practitioner.” This presentation will explore the ways that oral poetry is being developed by new media technology and live processes such as Body Writing. What does it mean to be ‘live’? She will examine examples from her own work and those of other spoken word artists. Sheri is a Canadian spoken word artist. She organises the Festival of Spoken Word in Calgary.

Laurie Yule. “Return of the Subtitle. Digital Writing in Public Spaces.”

Video transmission is now widely used in public spaces such as museums, motorways, rail termini and institutional foyers. To transmit messages in such environments moving pictures need subtitles. The last ten years has seen an explosing in academic writing about subtitles, the art of subtitles and its political and transnational contexts. This presentation explores the poetic potential of writing with subtitles and how subtitles may shortly emerge as a discrete literary form. Laurie is a senior lecturer at The University of Surrey, Epsom.

Media Poetry is the first international anthology to document a radically new poetry
which takes language beyond the confines of the printed page into a
non-linear world of digital interactivity and hyperlinkage.

To order your discounted copy, please email Central books quoting code MEDMED12:

Central Books Ltd, 99 Wallis Road, London, E9 5LN
Tel: 44 (0)845 458 9911 Fax 44(0)845 458 9912
email: mo@centralbooks.com

Please click the image to see enlargement

Submissions are invited for video narratives of 3 minutes or less to be exhibited at The Pound Arts Centre, as part of the MIX Conference at Corsham Court, Bath Spa University, July 16^th – 18th, 2012. Curators Sarah Tremlett and Lucy English welcome entries which use any form of video-based text; however, following the discovery of a series of Fluxus-related prints at Corsham Court, (the original home of Bath Academy of Art and now a centre for postgraduate study), we would be particularly interested in videos which respond to the theme of one of the prints entitled Liberated Words (Parole in Libertà  by Eugenio Carmi, 1967).
Click here to download the entry forms, submission details and further information. Submission deadline: June 1st 2012

Sarah Tremlett on how the conference came into being – exciting information on the ‘Fluxus’ prints plus a run through a 100-year family tree (any omissions gratefully accepted) of visual poetry –  a kind of videopoetree! See Chance Operations pdf.

To download pdf please click here

The questions we will be addressing are: How can new media be used for serious artistic purposes and how can we create a suitable critical vocabulary for this? What is the relationship between digital writers and the commercial world of ‘gaming’. Who are the audiences for digital writing and how can they be accessed? We welcome submissions from those who work in digital media, concrete poetry, text art, poetry and performance, poetry and film, film poems, digital poetics, poetry and art, poetry and music, digital narratives, game writing, intermedia poetry, transmedia writing, language art, visual writing and installations.

The conference will produce an e-book of critical essays, examples of work and also an online forum where the debate can be continued. Confirmed Key Speakers are; Mark Amerika, Maria Mencia, and Tom Konyves. We invite proposals of 300 words for 30 min presentations and/or 90 min practical workshops.

Deadline Friday 30th Dec 2011. Conference booking opens 9th January 2012. Please get in touch for further details.