Wendy Keay-Bright to present at ‘By Us, For Us, About Us': A Children and Young People's Festival of Participation in Research

11th March 2009

Millennium Stadium, Cardiff

Cardiff University in association with the Children's Commissioner for Wales and Children in Wales are holding a one-day event which aims to engage children and young people in debates about children's role in research. The event will showcase current and recent research conducted with or about children and young people and forms part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2009.

Keay-Bright (Sensory Design) is one of 20 exhibitors selected to present findings from their research to an audience of children and young people (aged 10-20) from schools and groups across Wales. The interactive presentation "ReacTickles: Re-discovering playfulness with technology", will demonstrate the findings of the Reactive Colours project, which has been developing customizable sensory software, ReacTickles, and investigating the impact of embodied user interfaces on social communication and learning for children with Autistic Spectrum Conditions (ASCs).

Wendy Keay-Bright is also working with Autism Cymru, Wales' National Charity for Autism, on the development of strategies to promote play, creativity and communication in Foundation Phase Key Skills.

Performance and Screen Media Research Group seminar with Maureen Thomas: Screen/Visual Media/Storytelling/Interactivity - How I learned to stop worrying and love digitality (with practice-based research as an aphrodisiac)

11th March 2009, University of Wales, Newport
4pm -5pm Room H8A Rathmell PhD Clinic
5pm - 7pm Room H8A Invited lecture

Maureen Thomas is a Senior Research Fellow (Screen Media, Interactivity and Performance) at Churchill College, Cambridge as well as an acclaimed dramatist/director.

After two decades of working in film, theatre, opera and dance, Maureen discovered interactive digital media in the mid-nineties. Her recent work combines layered manipulated video with dramatic narrativity, based on oral performance techniques and chance operations. In this lecture (exemplified by her own work) she looks at how traditional approaches to art, design and performance inform digital media, how interactivity and cross-platform delivery can transform and transcend them and how practice relates to research in this arena.

The Inherently Interdisciplinary Nature of Visual Arts Research

Visual arts research is inherently interdisciplinary, argues Clive Cazeaux, Reader in Aesthetics at Cardiff School of Art and Design. In his article 'Inherently Interdisciplinary', just published in the Journal of Visual Arts Practice 7.2, Cazeaux reviews four book-length studies of art and design research: Carter (2004); Gray and Malins (2004); Hannula, Suoranta and Vadén (2005); and Sullivan (2005). Present in all four books, he finds, is the thesis that art is uniquely placed to generate research on account of the fact that it combines different subjects and methods. However, while all four books set out ideas relevant to this view, none provides a fully worked-out theory. To fill the gap, Cazeaux turns to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and to recent examples of fine art research at Cardiff, to show how intersecting perspectives at work in art can create occasions for reality to surprise us and for new knowledge claims to be made.

The abstract and journal details are available here.

Tim Brennan English Anxieties Exhibition

13th March, Ffotogallery, Pennarth

English Anxieties is an exhibition and book originated by Ffotogallery & Photowork, in association with the Mass-Observation Archive at the University of Sussex and eCPR at UWN.

The exhibition sees Brennan's encounter with the MO archive configured as a multi media response to history, combining vinyl drawings, original archival material and the re-working war-time MO responses.

English Anxieties is accompanied by an artist's book presenting elements of Brennan's work in the archive, with essays by Russell Roberts (eCPR) Andrew Biswell (University of Manchester) and Peter Davidson (University of Aberdeen).

Significant Surfaces: Material or Immaterial

11.30am until 5.30pm Wednesday March 18th

E10 Rathmell Building, University of Wales Newport Caerleon Campus

This Symposium sets out to explore a cross disciplinary approach to the image and its production within the fields of Fine Art, Photography and Computer Games. A central thread running through the day will be the ongoing fascination technology has with painting, or the pre technical image, and the importance and challenge for photography in the age of information technology.

The speakers each have a particular relationship to process in their work and to the construction of the image as part of its meaning which could be seen as a revelation or critique of the increasing force and gathering speed of the current of technical images which surround us.

Professor John Goto studied painting before moving into photography, and has been working digitally since 1992. His interest is in story telling through pictures and he considers himself variously as a contemporary history painter, and a folk artist. Recent subjects include Jazz Migrants; the Iraq War; History & Contemporary Dance; and The Flood.He is currently Professor of Fine Art at the University of Derby.

David Surman is Senior Lecturer in Computer Games Design and Course Leader of the BA (Hons) Computer Games Design degree at the University of Wales Newport. He holds degrees in fine art, animation and film. He is primarily interested in the relationship between theory and practice in digital visual culture, with an emphasis on computer games design. His writing on games has featured in The Times, The Boston Globe, Gamasutra, Edge and Vertigo.

Mary Maclean is an artist working with photography. She initially studied painting at the Royal College of Art and has worked for many years with silver gelatin directly onto aluminium surfaces. She exhibited her work at the Jerwood artists platform in London and recently At Civic Gallery33 in Berlin. Maclean teaches Fine Art at the University of Reading.

Dan Hays is a London based artist who has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally. Currently he is researching for a PhD titled Painting in the Light of Digital Photography at Kingston University. Academic websites with recently published articles include Culture Machine and /Seconds.

They symposium will be Chaired by Helen Sear is an artist and Reader in Photography and Fine Art Practice at the University of Wales Newport.

The Symposium is free to attend, but places are limited. To book a place contact Joan Fothergill.