interactive media research centres
cSPACE
cSPACE uses the visual arts, media and cyberspace to support local communities, children and young people in the expression of their visions, dreams and aspirations around issues of regeneration. This is done through the production of collective, collaborative and participatory artworks in and for the public domain.
cSPACE is a charitable company based at the University of East London, a meeting point for cultural production, technological innovation and academic research. It developed out of The Art of Change community co-operative following the division of that organisation into separate practices in 2002, and builds on more than two decades of socially engaged practice in East London. This experience is now applied to the dissemination of opportunities offered by new technologies and the higher education environment within which cSPACE is based, for the benefit of the communities it serves.
One cSPACE project is VOLCO, a Virtual Online Co-Operative environment, an evolving virtual planet being constructed by children co-operating across the world. Hundreds of young people are creating the Volcan archives through interaction with others of different cultures and life experiences. The result is a growing and increasingly complex virtual society out of the imaginations of children. This is being developed into a transferable educational resource capable of supporting a wide range of subjects in the school curriculum.
London East Research Institute
LONDON EAST Research Institute (LERI) has been established to connect the University's research and consultancy strengths to issues of urban regeneration, drawing on a broad range of disciplines to provide strategic in-depth analysis of the past, present and future of the region. Our aim is to provide a single point of access to high quality research, consultancy and information whenever there is a proposed social and cultural planning initiative that will impact upon the Thames Gateway.
Our objective is to support a sustainable policy of economic growth for the region that:
- involves popular participation in the planning process
- delivers real benefits to disadvantaged and minority groups
- creates greater diversity within the cultural economy
- promotes social enterprise and new partnerships between the university and public/private sectors
- develops a green perspective on urban regeneration.
Our services are targeted at policy and decision makers and businesses, as well as local communities seeking a platform from which to address the changes which will take place in their midst. Areas of expertise include the cultural economy, public consultation and the effect of structural change on local communities.
MAGIC: Multimedia and Games Innovation Centre
MAGIC Multimedia and Games Innovation Centre, to be set up in 2006, focuses on gaming and knowledge transfer, particularly in these areas:
- Gaming for non-gamers. New audiences of 'casual gamers' are rapidly being drawn into online gaming, leading the industry to look beyond its traditional young male audiences for future revenue growth.
- Gaming beyond the console. In the future, we are likely to see games breaking free from their traditional delivery channels (consoles, desk-based PCs etc), with games, or game elements, becoming increasingly integrated with modern lifestyles (in schools, hospitals, gyms etc).
- Participatory approaches to gaming. Games already support the world's most vigorous and numerous online communities. As this trend continues, the development of games will be increasingly driven by users.
There will be a strong emphasis on gaming as an 'assistive technology', not just a means of entertainment, and articulating applications to support particular social and learning needs in partnership with communities, service providers and developers. MAGIC will be an active learning environment for a wide range of professionals, entrepreneurs and others who want to explore the expanding potential of gaming.
Professor Lizbeth Goodman, Director of the SMARTlab Centre, is directing the MAGIC Project in its hothouse phase. The centre launches in 2006.
Matrix East
The Matrix East Research Lab is concerned with digital arts and media, with issues of digital archiving of visual material, mass-content digitisation, and with new systems of automatically indexing, and with navigating and searching rich-media materials. Matrix East incorporates the activities of the newly established Broadcast Research Lab, set up recently for the purposes of initiating and enabling broadcast-based research projects, concentrating on terrestrial, cable, satellite and web-based radio and television narrow-cast and broadcast.
Matrix East provides an innovative intellectual framework, social support system and technological base for funded research work in the field of digital arts and new screen media. The Lab's approach is multidisciplinary, combining the activities of research, education and production, and developing a system of creative links between the arts, sciences and the humanities around specific research questions.
The work of Matrix East builds on strong existing research at UEL, in the areas of Metropolitan History, Cultural Studies, Digital Diaspora, Acoustic Cyberspace, Auto/biography, Cultural Studies, Cultural Production, Cyber-cultures, Virtual Architecture, Digital Media Art and Theory, Memory and Trauma Studies, Generative Media, and the Body-Machine interaction.
Matrix East encourages new and innovative approaches in methodology and technology, and advocates the social use of new technologies in the advancement of symbiotic and synaesthetic participation. As such, it assists the development of knowledge in and about communities which have been traditionally excluded from such activities.
The Rix Centre for Innovation and Learning Disability
The Rix Centre aims to improve the lives of people with learning disabilities and their families through the use of new media technologies. The learning disability community includes the poorest and most excluded people in society today. It also represents an untapped resource of talent, experience and insight. New technologies can help unleash this potential. The Rix Centre has been created to ensure that these exciting opportunities are grasped and explored, developed and realised for the full benefit of the learning disability community.
Rix Centre projects include The Big Tree, an online portal designed to link up the learning disability community with the best in multimedia and with those who develop and produce it. Our objective is to ensure that people with learning difficulties get the most from new media technology by establishing an inclusive web presence; highlighting innovation and good practice; linking developers and users to pool expertise; and creating a forum for ideas and debate.
The Rix Centre is also currently managing Project @pple (access and participation for people with cognitive disabilities in virtual learning environments). Project @pple explores and evaluates the terms on which people with learning disabilities can access and participate in the range of opportunities presented by the World Wide Web and other multimedia, information and communication technologies.
SMARTlab
The SMARTlab Centre for Site Specific Media, Performing and Digital Arts brings media artists, performers, technologists, scholars, engineers, policy makers and teams of medical doctors to sites around the world where the combined skills of these teams can make a real difference for communities, both locally and globally.
SMARTlab projects all begin with invitations to visit, to consult, to live and work with specific communities where particular needs for technology development or cultural-industry transfer of skills have been identified. Wherever possible, we work with local groups to create new technology and art-based solutions to help create models of sustainable development and modes of supporting local groups and maintaining information and knowledge-sharing networks online once our teams return to the UK. The work of the core lab team has been evolving for some 15 years, under a number of different titles, within and across sectors: universities, industry, hospitals, rehabilitation centres, women's shelters, children's centres.
Our aim is to create new technologies to connect creative people in all parts of the world, with all levels of literacy and physical ability. Towards that aim we provide free access to moderated safespaces online, technology training, performance-based community building workshops, and collaborative skill development 'labs' with local agencies and foundations worldwide. The aim is to provide equal access to art, cultural information and resources so that a more level playing field will be shared.
