Digital North Workshop Presentations

The relationship between creative practice and technology is not a simple one. Most artists in most fields are trained in an analogue practice, and are rarely steeped in the engineering, science and technology disciplines required for understanding their encounters with the tech. There are significant differences in approach, especially where the language of the Arts and that of technology appears to mean something similar. This presentation is about understanding those differences, and drawing on the experiences of working within a technological framework for creative ends. That artists should engage with the transforming force of technology is right, but forcing them to do so on the terms set out by the technology industries is less productive, whether this is in the form of hardware, software, user behaviour of the legal framework. This makes artists more vulnerable to the forces they engage with, and the presentation was an attempt to identify some of the problems and propose some solutions to these issues.

Gregory Sporton's presentation

Triggered by plans to celebrate the 800^th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta at Durham in a programme of events on the theme of ‘Rebellious North’ (in 2015, also the year of a General Election), this talk explored the possibility for a series of eight linked research and public engagement programmes in the N8 area. The project would scrutinize ‘the North’ and ‘rebellion’, drawing upon arts and humanities research with a view to both examine and promote political engagement. The idea emerged in discussion from the first N8 meeting in Durham and it was agreed to carry it over to the Sheffield meeting.

With computers and music as central concerns in numerous N8 universities we aim to investigate a number of avenues of collaboration across emerging fields of research. Current research at Sheffield investigates compositional methods in electroacoustic music. After establishing more concrete channels of communication we propose to facilitate: Concerts - and shared listening experiences; Compositions – including joint commissioning of new work and development of new software tools, widening participation and engagement through closer collaboration with the Arts Council of England.

Digital exclusion is an element of contemporary social exclusion whereby citizens have no access, or limited access, to the Internet and where they lack the skills or resources to make full use of online systems and services. Social housing tenants are more likely than other community members to be digitally excluded. Despite this national and local policies are now orientated towards “digital by default” which assumes that online interaction will be the primary method for undertaking transactions with government. Government efforts towards digital by default are driven by the potential to reduce the costs of transactions.

A failure of social housing residents to take up digital government services will prevent the major cost savings of digital by default from being realised.  At the same time research has demonstrated substantive quantifiable educational, financial, cultural, civic, and health benefits can derived by citizens with Internet access and digital skills. Digital exclusion can therefore also add to other forms of existing social exclusion and marginalisation.  The arts and humanities have a key role to play as a major route to engagement with digital technologies is through creative and social uses of technology – from arts to media production to community history.

Simeon Yates's Presentation

Marion Leonard and Jacqueline Waldock's presentation

This presentation considers the issue of digital technologies in a global context, looking particularly at how uses of digital technologies in non-metropolitan contexts may differ from our expectations. The presentation firstly looks at some of the hype around digital technologies that has frequently posited such technologies as ‘global’, and then proceeds to look at some of the problematizations of this notion, flagging up issues such as connectivity, infrastructure, language and visibility, amongst others. The presentation ends with a set of questions or challenges for the researcher when designing research projects with digital inequalities in mind.

Claire Taylor's presentation