DCRC - Digital Cultures Research Centre

This is a slightly delayed weeknote following a hectic end to last week. We were lucky enough to host a great workshop and a guest speaker [see below] and were also busy with finalising the last few bits and bobs for our Summer School for Creative Producers of Pervasive Media, the first day of which is currently in full swing!

The week began with the rounding off of the last few jobs associated with the 2009/2010 academic year. Jon Dovey was flitting between campuses and Sam Kinsley successfully defended his doctoral thesis at the University of Bristol.

In the middle of the week we were privaleged to host a workshop with Seth Jackson, director of PIAS Mobile (formely Indie Mobile), on PIAS' fantastic Gorillaz Augmented Reality app for the iPhone. The workshop forms part of DCRC's Pervasive Media Knowledge Transfer Fellowship and produced some interesting insights into how value is produced and curated in novel platforms using mobile media. More documentation of the fellowship is available from the Pervasive Media KTF blog.

On Friday we were delighted to welcome Professor Sue Thomas, from IOCT at De Montfort, to the studio. On the invitation of DCRC Senior Research Fellow Mandy Rose, Prof. Thomas gave an interesting and engaging talk on the 'open source' concept: 'transliteracy', which provoked some great discussion. Further considered reflection of this will no doubt feature on this blog in the coming weeks.

Finally, as the inevitable British summer deluge subsides, we are in the process of running a summer school for pervasive media creative producers. This intensive five day course at the Pervasive Media Studio, run by DCRC, is aimed at those who have some experience working in digital media and want to explore using context aware platforms to deliver a project. We have a diverse range of keen and engaged 'students' who are brimming full of ideas that we're sure will make for a fascinating week.