After Neumark, Dr Eleanor Dare considers the software and processes through which Immersive Visual Storytelling (IVS) develops and unfolds as a medium and material in which we perceive, rather than ‘an object that we perceive’ (Neumark, 2017, p. 28). The critical and creative strategies Eleanor will discuss in this talk have the intention of surfacing the assumptions, affordances and dissaffordances of the technological and social terrain of IVS, to avert a critical vacuum in which immersion becomes a spell, arguably making us too beguiled to exert political and social agency. Dr Dare will preview scenes from an evolving project, Queer Psycho, part of several long term works which re-envision and re-evaluate aspects of Alfred Hitchcock’s films, often deploying artificially intelligent agents and automated cinematography as a critical practice.
Dr Eleanor Dare will be joining UCL in April as Lecturer in Practice Based Research and Media. Eleanor currently works at the Faculty of Education, Cambridge and was formerly Reader in Digital Media at the RCA and Head of Programme for MA Digital Direction. Some of Eleanor’s work, short stories and academic publications can be found here: https://rejectedshortstories.uk/2021/10/20/academic-publications/
After Neumark, Dr Eleanor Dare considers the software and processes through which Immersive Visual Storytelling (IVS) develops and unfolds as a medium and material in which we perceive, rather than ‘an object that we perceive’ (Neumark, 2017, p. 28). The critical and creative strategies Eleanor will discuss in this talk have the intention of surfacing the assumptions, affordances and dissaffordances of the technological and social terrain of IVS, to avert a critical vacuum in which immersion becomes a spell, arguably making us too beguiled to exert political and social agency. Dr Dare will preview scenes from an evolving project, Queer Psycho, part of several long term works which re-envision and re-evaluate aspects of Alfred Hitchcock’s films, often deploying artificially intelligent agents and automated cinematography as a critical practice.
Dr Eleanor Dare will be joining UCL in April as Lecturer in Practice Based Research and Media. Eleanor currently works at the Faculty of Education, Cambridge and was formerly Reader in Digital Media at the RCA and Head of Programme for MA Digital Direction. Some of Eleanor’s work, short stories and academic publications can be found here: https://rejectedshortstories.uk/2021/10/20/academic-publications/
So hello, and welcome to this month's practices research network and i'm very excited to have you all here and it's great to to connect with us, and where the YouTube channel as well. So in this seminar series for this month and I know that it's a little bit of an awkward date actually because we've got. A clash with the UCLA education conference which I didn't realize and and for some people it's already the Easter break which I also didn't realize when we booked these dates, so I do apologize for that. But, nonetheless, we have got a really exciting talk and prepared for us today, and that is held by Dr ELENA. ELENA is i'm going to be talking about art based research and immersive visual storytelling and i've had a slight sneak peek at her slide deck. It looks really, really exciting and interesting So do you do stay with us on that and ELENA is joining ucl as a lecturer in practice based research and math in media. And she is going to be teaching on the media program in the ucl knowledge lab so ELENA is in a way, you know I mean i'm quite sort of lucky really to to have her here because he's a new member of staff and i've kind of poached her already for the network. So, thank you very much for being with us and ELENA comes from the Faculty of education Cambridge and was formally also a reader in digital media at the RCA and head of program for me digital direction. And some of illness work short stories and academic publications can be found on the rejected short stories.uk web page and i'm going to make available that link. In the in the YouTube channel as well, so, with no further ado i'm going to stop sharing my screen now and i'm going to hand over to ELENA. And how we've planned it out is, as always we're going to listen to eleanor's presentation first and then we've got an opportunity to discuss some key points from the presentation, Elena just to let you know I am here i'm just going to mute myself in case i'm coughing and spluttering. I will, I am not going anywhere.
Eleanor Dare:Thank you so much, well, thank you very much, and thank you to everyone is toned up I know it's. i'm sure it's been a really long, hard term, so I really appreciate you being here and. I hope it will be interesting, and I hope that you'll be able to join in conversation about this. So I mean a lot of my work work i'm going to discuss today is is in some ways a reaction. Against sort of hyperbole, which I encounter over and over again and it's going to make this a bit more, because I also don't see you that I count over and over again around in particular impulsivity and virtual reality, so my work is in some ways, quite reactive. So i'm going to talk about a couple of recent projects. This one the life of Galileo, which is a sort of an experimental stage using mozilla hubs where we've been. Cambridge exploring performance but also using i've been using a breath the methodology of deliberate distancing to sort of to. to break the immersion and to surface in particular power relations entangled with technology practice analysis of technology and power seems more more than prescient to me now, especially with a lot of the metaverse discourse and and also discuss queer psycho. very engaged with using immersive spaces within my teaching and within my research, and this is a space i'm developing at the moment, which is a cup. Of almond punch curve fractal shape and it's for an idea of writing and developing Cambridge and, in fact, there is a space, which I thought, maybe I can invite everyone into two so i'm going to share this link. Ideally, if you haven't got headsets it would be good to mute your microphone when you get into harps i'm going to share the. Link there in the chat and then i'm going to stop sharing this and going to share my screen So if you talk into the space i'll show you what happens inside it. And if if you don't mute your microphone and you don't have headphones i'll be horrible feedback loop that least mute your microphone if you can't so i'm gonna i'm going to go into that space and then share my screen, as I go into the space. Here we. should start loading now. Here we go. So here I am should see some some other people joining. In this space. i'm really interested in in fact balls in the context of Hello everyone's but seeing the space. Oh somebody sort of Christmas message. fractals in the context of up based research as that which in some ways it fires classical framing of mathematics of geometry of categorization which are sort of a chat a kind of a challenge which I find useful and interesting for the backdrop of potential backdrop of positivism which. comes with Ai machine learning data an array of of tech or determining technologies which education is. entangled with. So i'm going to stop sharing that I can hear a feedback loop, you can stay in there, if you wish, and I will now see my PowerPoint sorry I just. saw this okay so i'm going to reshare my PowerPoint sorry, this is a typical strategy i've been using recently for teaching, but also for performance. Creating spaces in mozilla hubs of them starting to model them in blender or or I unity and i'm also working on a project. About Waterford county the city Award for the an island where i'm where i'm using an immersive space for workshops discussing smartness and smart cities and what they might mean, and this is a space in working on last couple of days. But what I wanted to so fabulous this project queer psycho. Which is. A reworking of Alfred hitchcock film from 1960 psycho a lot of my work for some reason is about hitchcock and. A number of pieces that i've where i've tested in particular, some of the empathy rhetoric around vr technology by recreating the motel room from psycho and then asking who are you empathizing with when you're in this old voyeuristic position of looking through the whole. Marion crying Why is empathy a good thing, under all in every circumstance and what does it mean to reduce to the individual that which may be systemic, for example, so. So I deploy querying strategies and a effect distancing effects in an attempt to break some of the canonical patterns and subjectivity of immersive technology and cinema. The open world of queer psycho is a form of exploratory narrative it's a paradoxical variant of exo theater and which players who I also think of as player drivers. This differentiates them from the non player or Ai drivers navigate the landscape of Aaron mountains motels and roadside cafes searching for their lost art now. That times are a surface the artificiality of this world revealing structures, its underlying geometries its lights it's fragment patients. The title might suggest we're psycho might suggest the idea that hitchcock's original film is not queer or was not clear. But watching it many, many times and analyzing many papers about psycho, including the unforgettable dude in her first elbows and our souls the angel work ethic in Alfred hitchcock's. psycho mariani and third not, not least bowtie thousand all support the assertion that cycle was already in many significant ways a queer or rather cleared phil and queer is taken to me in a processes edie sedgwick puts it, and as. Not following the set lines, the boundaries of heterosexuality or hetero patriarchy some people describe it, but it could also be a kind of perspective and academic approach and methodology to use quickness as a critical perspective. As a kind of methodology so. For doty querying has articulated is something apart from established gender and sexuality categories, not the result of confused or vague coding or positioning. And for Lomas l immersion and, in particular vr are inherently queer implicated in significant abandonment of agency once we put our words into the hands. Of audiences and we just want to play this opening scene it's there's nothing there's nothing there's no speech in it, but what I liked about it, is it is automated much of it is automated. Supposedly, Ai driven cars crowd scenes that are generated through through particular vector mathematics, rather than modeling each movement in traditional animation. there's something about it it's uncanny and people have told me there's an uncanny to it and can enos to it so i'm going to play this. So. we're psycho is top top game pop Cinematic experience part interactive narrative it's not straightforward for me to define at all. But it might come under Espinosa definition of an organic text. In the wider sense of texts beyond written words, the word agnostic. Is a combination of the Greek words for work and parts and i'll set uses it to define text in which the reader must work the find a path in which non trivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text that means. I think that that term Gothic means the most for me in terms of what this work is about. The effort is one of driving and noticing but also have exit Jesus on the part of player drivers, for whom the plots never fully revealed in explicit terms, but rather deconstructed put together again and repurposed a bit like as a deconstructed theater. form the shallow impression realism is, if anything, broken by uncanny automated agents and cut scenes and which i've deployed. API call vector mathematics to automate street scenes, as in the flashback i've just shown you before and here in this corner i've used this. sort of breaking up have to rain, so it loads optimized to load, as you drive through the scene, but actually there's a kind of a lag where you look across the landscape and see the absence of landscape and really uncanny way and. i've deliberately deployed that now, I have kept that because I liked the unfolding of the landscape, as you drive through a bit like this kind of theatrical events where you see what's going on, we see the structure of the play. anecdotally i've noticed an increase in turn to unreal engine most of my work here is is made in unity with bender. And anecdotally i'm wondering if that that use of unreal is in some ways, driven by an aspiration towards a particular type of realism. But it's important to question what really is a means, and to reflect on wrongs years observation that really ISM. claims to be that same attitude of mine that sticks who observable realities, but it is in fact something quite different it's the police logic of order which asserts in all circumstances, that it is only doing the only possible thing to do. there's clearly problematic as Austin observes construct of total immersion leads to tends to be an important and fishing in the making of these kind of immersive. Media, and I really liked his book which addresses a series of connections between the modes of production and productivity, the audiences are expected to subscribe to. An immersive performances and those subjects are expected to subscribe to beyond the supposedly total boundaries of another worldly world typically with regards to the liberal scheme of production. instituted in systems of government governance and which risks in position as an ultimate dimension of value and meaning for citizens, workers and leisure secrets to have to deal with its entrenchment. I know, with a degree of ironies the extent to which a form of emotional Labor is entangled with some education projects deploying immersive technologies such as punch drunk to name one of the most famous our home story. and wider enrichment projects for schools emotional Labor in this contact is taking has taken by me to mean entanglement of effect with work, such that an emotional response is a requirement of that work. In the case of children engaging in such experiences learning might be framed as their Labor. That extraction takes place when an emotional response is necessary, such that it risks alienation the super imposition of experiencing emotional states in the name of alignment to the needs of an organization. That Jamie a nation has even been linked to for healthy T cell and grantee 2003 just want to play seen here from queer psycho. Within a few minutes of my checking in the reception is norma was trying to convert me I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be created and live in this neck of the woods. I used to be like you, you don't have to be like you, are take this card and come to one of our meetings over in the Church, you can see it from here, I pretty much ran down the corridor and locked my door. And so, in staging queer psycho i've used artificially generated voices which do not display any fluctuations in emotion. The register of those voices is always evenly deliver flat and controlled aiming to distance where drivers from the emotional Labor of empathy and presence. Instead player drivers are invited to bring a systemic analysis to bear upon this open world of queer psycho. To understand the underlying structural and systemic tensions of that world and to formulate interventions, even the grand finale chorus at the end of queer psycho is sang without inflection. To highlight the presence of neoliberalism mercy for emotional economies queer psycho provide signposts literal and metaphorical pointing to the presence of immersive technologies. The presence of a fulfillment Center in the middle of this world also points to the often hidden Labor or ghost world of digital interaction. In keeping with our stern and grains fury new states elson states neoliberalism, in a post industrial era value arises in material forms of production, consumption that are based on the psychological and physiological capabilities of produce producers and consumers. The signposts in my world are designed to prompt as allison urges us reflection on the terms of nature of an audience's productivity and its attachment to certain kinds of participatory freedom that may not be as free as they first appear. splitting up the terrain of queer cycles I mentioned earlier, and loading it when player drives approach, a particular region. makes the both the more efficient management of this open world, but the visibility of the process also creates an explicit sense of seeing change. Such seen changes become visible to the audience as the software catches up with the player driver. In this vein, automated vehicles are present within this integral theory of queer psycho exerting and i'm comfortable force following the player driver and swerving to avoid collisions. Their presence is partly surveillance partly supernatural Alter Ego shadowing the protagonist. These vehicles are also engaged in a form of Labor or beer machine driven one that taps into fantasies of robotic servitude could protect by rural Benjamin Harrison atom. Is laboring yet emotionally and expressive elements of position here by me as transgressive actors countering the neoliberalism have much immersive discourse. Those of us in age groups, we proceeded unity and unreal engine often but damn programming immersive visual and sonic stories with flash or Java or Director. c++ may therefore be familiar with power struggles over the dominance of immersive software within education and the wider world. Is power struggles continue evident in both unity and unreal engine that the platforms which i've created this works. who have changed their business models away from educational licenses the personal licenses and one strategy intention is key to a nickel articulate it. is one of maintaining a relationship with developers for the duration of their working lives, this is a lofty ambition, given the forces which might impact software. Those of us who are attached to the workflow of fashion director so they're quite rapid demise once ipads and browsers stop supporting their plugins and players. Driven by apples desire to dominate the mobile web here at our light as their concerns about digital mono cultures. The further anxiety here is that if students only learn how to use one platform, then they might become more complicated perpetually stuck within its ECHO system so just play another. Are you getting my messages so can't seem to get through to anyone directly on my phone and the Internet has gone. it's getting cold up here too cold to go out can't wait to see you, maybe we have been too rash too quick to end things anyway, I miss you that's all I mean. So. The metaverse discourse of the 2020s has also been sadly lacking in critical grounding and it seems an array of child abuse scandals or read points of sober reevaluation. we're psychos countermeasures and specific strategies for querying immersive storytelling. deployed in array of features and processes, including these automated cars uncanny agents photographers shadowing the player drivers absurdly reminding them of the mediated ideological nature of emotion. Ai voices without the capacity for emotional inflections speak my scripts clear cut scenes angles and queer characters references to film history, such as the arbogast fulfillment Center here a little in the shop here. Are the gas is a private detective in psycho searching for the missing character and transgressive thief Mariana cream. In queer psycho time is nonlinear and often folds back into itself, you know bleeding player drivers to drive backwards into the narrative. Seen changes and computational efficiency measures such as splitting up the terrain are visible to play drivers reminding them of the underlying full sentences of digital mediation. So just play this scene as well. Why would they so many kids waiting outside the fulfillment Center so I was doing some work on child Labor just before we decided to have a break from each other, I wondered if the work was getting too intense those kids look tired. So. When this final scene is reached if it's reached by players Here we see all the last queer characters are discovered trapped in this warehouse. The digital actors come together to sing an emotionally flat final song your strategies are intended to ask questions of the software, such as how do we perceive within it after norma and ourselves, I should say. afternoon, Mr I consider the software and processes through which immersive narratives development on bold as a medium and material in which we perceive wrong when an object that we see. The critical and creative strategies outlined. Here, have the intention of surfacing the assumptions of audiences and disappearances of the technological and social apology of immersive media. To have a critical vacuum and which immersion becomes a spell arguably making us to beguile to exert political and social agency of just like to play this final grand finale see. We were lost, and now we are lost, again, we were lost, we lost we lost. We were lost, and now we are lost, again, we were lost, and now we are lost again. But it is a loss, and we are together we can separate because we want to, not because you were taken from me, but it is, I lost, and we are together we can separate because we want to, not because you were taken from me. Now we lost. We lost we lost. Yes, I think it's. Because the boys that group had 20 minutes is a normal man, will speak to.
Nicole Brown:Thank you very much, thank you very much. it's great to to have listened to your tube I really enjoyed that and obviously i'm going to invite everybody to kind of join in. That conversation and ask any questions, but I do have some questions of my own joey and if it's okay i'd like to kick off and one of the things that i'm particularly interested in is is this production process. practice. Or is it practice and research, or is it research based practice, how do you define it you see what I mean yeah. Well yeah line.
Eleanor Dare:yeah so I mean I think you're you're sort of struggled to articulate that the chain of causality and that relationship is is appropriate for me. I suppose it's it's all based research, but that is very entangled and complex process, such that. Such as they roll around each other, ideally, move forward as they roll around so yeah it is, it is research and it is by practice and it would be completely different if it was abstracted away from the practice of developing. The you know, using 3D software of using game engines of using code of using an array of different materiality is that. come into to bear upon this my understanding, would be completely different, so I think for me that is a useful working definition would it be different if I wasn't engaged in the practice, yes, completely is illustrating theory know those for me all the distinct distinct point.
Nicole Brown:Thank you, I don't I mean from my own sort of you know from from my conceptualization I don't think that you know the practice needs to necessarily miss needs to necessarily represent the organization as such. So I do again I quite empathize with what you're saying I certainly it certainly resonates with me. And now, in this series, and for this academic year we've kind of tried to focus on reflexivity and the role of the researcher practitioner in that process. And may I ask you, you know how do you deal with reflexivity if you saying that your work is is practice as research and it wouldn't, be it wouldn't be anything different because it is practice and. Research asked based research as you've defined it, you know where do you sit in that process and how do you make sure that it doesn't become too much the artists playground and and not enough, the researchers playground, if you see what I mean.
Eleanor Dare:yeah good question, and I mean are they you know, is there a sort of our. Is our I don't know to what, to what extent, if a conscious strategy I think i've been doing it for a really long time did a PhD by practicing msc by practice now may by practice, I suppose I deeply embedded with the with the relationship between risk research and practice. Such that I. think there is a balance, however, I would say i'm not i'm not with i'm not one one for reflection, I think it probably is diffraction not reflection. Reflection can be critiqued content in terms of a sort of a mirroring of oneself, which is quite hard to to see where where our relationship with others, or the other comes into that, so I think diffraction. I think teaching helps. helps. neutralize the worst of the bullshit that comes out in my head in terms of students and challenge. So yeah but it's a really good question yellowness your hands up.
Jelena Viskovic:I thank you for presentation, it was really um I was wondering, and this is something that. i'm also kind of thinking about a lot is this type of work kind of presupposes that there is a specific audience, or that it is a public facing work and i'm wondering what do you think is the best way to. engage it, what is the audience Do you imagine for it and how, what do you think is the best way to publish it.
Eleanor Dare:yeah so great really good question Yelena and you know for me it's very political question as well, thus far. i've been disseminating my work myself through through. Free droids and given people links to it, I haven't I haven't I don't engage with steamer or any of those other platforms, but I, I think that might be a limit. i've recently be making my own sort of metaverse my own zoom platform, I think, because i'm very nodes to. become subsumed into much of what's going on, however, hops is an exception, so a lot of my work is on hubs because they've made very strong statements about extract this data processes against those processes as a counter to method metro metaverse. So I think it's a really good question and i'd like to talk i'd like to talk with you yelling or future about that is i'm not. i'm in very much two minds, I would like, as many people as possible as a great diversity of people possible to encounter my work. But i'm also know, to open my work up to right when the Socialists are fascists I don't I just don't wanna. I don't want to engage with them so it's a difficult one, especially with gamer gate as well i've been little bit stung by some of the misogyny that's come out of game and some gaming communities and I just do not want to be around it, what do you think.
Jelena Viskovic:yeah absolutely um I think the yeah well thing about platforms that yeah i'm really interested in the hubs as well and um, but if you think about it also game engines in themselves, are these types of platforms and.
Eleanor Dare:This is.
Jelena Viskovic:really hard to avoid technology.
Eleanor Dare:Yes, yeah.
Jelena Viskovic:aren't politically I guess problematic and.
Eleanor Dare:Yes, yes yeah yeah it is, I mean hops hops on me i'm sorry I begin so i'm like I bought shares in hops it's open source. Has this great and what I think is a convincing statement about minimal extraction of data, so if there was one platform i'm ready and able to. support at this point, through my work without feeling very Tony would be helped, but that could change the slide other you know all that's it suddenly got. taken over and turned into the worst kind of extract structure this machine so things can change quite quickly.
Nicole Brown:Thank you so, can I just sort of bring up you know, like building on that conversation that the two of you have had now about making that work being recognizable and and recognized for for its value as well. and disseminating it in the in the right platforms, I mean that seems to be something that filters through or practice as research talks that i've heard this this academic year. Where a lot of people are saying well there isn't a journal that. accepts this kind of work because. it's too out of there and it's too bizarre and nobody really understands it and even even sort of more sociologically or educational inclined. Practitioners find it difficult because images, for example, aren't accepted in journals so even. A photo really difficult to get.
Eleanor Dare:Yes, yes.
Nicole Brown:Is that sorry, can I just ask what are the challenges in your view, with doing that kind of work that you're doing now. Is it that, even within your own field of experts it doesn't get recognized much or is it that only a very sort of particular group of people recognize it and what could we do, and in the in the sort of in the development of practice as research to to rectify that.
Eleanor Dare:yeah that's really such a complicated question I don't when I don't I don't particularly crave mass I don't particularly crave a mass audience I you know one for diversity of people to encounter where works, you know it's interesting. To see what they think about it, and I hope so something's have used to it, I was at conferences festivals various exhibitions their small audiences. The thing about hub stuff i've done is is at least it's been international so there's been times, where the people from Oracle not quite every continent, but many continents engaged at same time having that kind of encounter side value that i'm. I think partnership is probably the way to don't I don't know museums art galleries places that are not not too horrible anyone else have any ideas. ricky.
Nicole Brown:esprit de.
Brigitta Zics:hi guys. nice to see you thank. You. lovely presentation Thank you so much. yeah I you know I have lots of kind of questions, but I guess just to draw back to kind of asking question about practices research because there's so many conversations about this at the moment in UCLA actually where is. Is Nicole initiatives and there is another initiative in. and Applied humanities BA course. Is it where is it based I don't even know wife is based, so they those guys want to come up with the overarching kind of structure for practices, research and then obviously we're doing our thing and I always fear that each of these people do recognize these. You know, do described practices research differently. And they make it into a thing. And I fear that many of us actually we just doing it because we want to exist in the academic environment, but really we are artists who who producing work and actually that that's one of the question just for me I swear to Allah know that do you see your work. Presented we didn't. We didn't gallery and away or meant and resume and away or Madison artists you like to have any impact with your work so would you like to feed this back to industry.
Eleanor Dare:yeah. and i'm not wouldn't want to be shut up. You know there's only one.
Brigitta Zics:So, so much so yeah So the question is, do we, you know Is this something we put out there some aesthetic statement, or is it something which really should some point arrive to. places who can make changes.
Eleanor Dare:plot, for his.
Brigitta Zics:game, which is the industry, and so this is more like impact, you know where. yeah i'm sure many of us been producing work and then exhibit thing in art galleries and thinking Okay, you know. How many people yeah or academics, you know how many people good read.
Eleanor Dare:My arm, well, I mean that's just been types of impact on me know what this one project i've been involved in pre processing features which the British Council for a project. Where the impact potentially is enormous we've we've we've been we've developed a relationship with crafts graph jr and encourages stone and developed. an array of approaches to supporting crafts people to. develop skills to get their work out internationally known to get into a market and that and there's been a sort of chain of events where. The government has tight, as it seems to be making a shift in policy around crowdfund profit education and funding of class which for me is definitely a very significant impact. You know, an impact beyond our wildest dreams that that shift would take place, partly because the ongoing conversation or ongoing evidencing through practice or the value of the work that those are. Also, both artisans creating and using a particular hubs for. When covert shut down our ability to travel I created a year camp in hubs and that was part of the practice part of the ongoing. How can How can someone in the mountains village encourages file have their work seen internationally or by collectors in America, Europe so. I do yeah I do believe in the impact of work with industries industries that were found people who I found sympathetic and interesting and intelligent and ready and not wholly subsuming near liberal hype. That worst that can happen as well, so I would never set up a binary worst one or the other. Or do you would be great if we were environment where we're all that stuff gonna.
Nicole Brown:i'm Thank you I think that's really interesting because you know from the kind of conversations i've had with a number of people and through the network and outside also. There does seem to be for for some people, a difference between those that are artists and those that are artists practitioner researchers and you know and kind of innovate, innovate inhabiting that space like Rita said, you know, in the academic world. And, unlike Reagan said also I do also see that there are many, many shifts and many initiatives and different people trying to set up networks like this one, that recognizes the practice as a way of. generating knowledge and understanding of developing understanding and doing research, and I think that's also recognized, even at UK era level. Where now they're you know, for example, they are shifting away from a traditional CV to a resume as you go into grant applications, the idea behind that being. But somebody who is a practitioner may not have 15 different you know academic journals published, but may have exhibitions and galleries that are counting towards kind of him, you know. Knowledge is.
Eleanor Dare:Presentation yeah. The other thing about relationship with industry it's really easy to scale it industry's find it very hard to innovate they're very slow they're very they're very. Huge and are not necessarily doing the most exciting work and their relationship with academia with with the kind of practice that is experimental that is. That is able to have the freedom to to not be bound by holy bound by neoliberal imperatives is actually really useful to them. Because they're either their industries and very, very constrained, and I think even the question that begs the question where is true innovation taking place when people are. are rewarded for replicating existing power structures existing processes so everything I know from talking to people clicking games industry is that the sort of work that comes out of an interesting university really valuable input and they look they look to student researchers.
Brigitta Zics:postdoctoral research or.
Eleanor Dare:someone like Microsoft. engages Hollywood with the poster for searching for that reason.
Nicole Brown:Now this is me being a little bit selfish here again and but I may I ask you Eleanor am in terms of because you said you define your work as asked based research. And, and obviously i've we've had to be an colleagues here who we've been talking about our space based research, who have. done a sort of slightly different kind of artists creations to yours and and then there is, you know sort of because they are, for example. visual artists or they are people who are curating for for exhibitions in galleries and museums, but then there's also the kind of US based research that sitting in the social sciences, where. You know somebody may be creating something together with participants as part of the the the data collection. process part of the dissemination process can it can I ask you what what kind of body of literature, or what kind of you know sort of background, do you use to define your work.
Eleanor Dare:yeah that's good question again, I would just wouldn't set up mine real i've been involved in both of those scenarios Nicole definitely encourage you to participate at work, one of a better word well as our stuffs gonna continue to be, you know just being 17 galleries so. I. I don't see myself actually put your hand up just speak. I don't again I don't i'm not too i'm not too attached to hard and fast binding categories around this, I think the whole point about space research and post qualitative inquiry which we haven't mentioned is not to be bound by dogma. will be.
Will Sykes: AVM:yeah yeah sorry I just. thought that was probably a button for.
Eleanor Dare:There was a hands on way. um.
Will Sykes: AVM:I was just curious um you talking about the games industry. One thing, innovation and looking to academia for that I was kind of curious if that's a two way relationship and what you think the best way for academia, to take the innovation from industry back into back into academia, if you like.
Eleanor Dare:yeah it's a really good question where I think it's worked well, I mean for me personally it's worked well, where there's been where i've where i've constructed electives with an industry partner. And there's been there's been a sort of two way dialogue. Close attention from the industry partner in being involved in that I think where it doesn't work as actually surprisingly well it's sort of a bit more hands off. We just go away and do something and presented to them, I think, is actually actually really interesting when there is will will close relationship.
Will Sykes: AVM:I suppose what what I meant is really the the The industry is vast and.
Eleanor Dare:Their own.
Will Sykes: AVM:There are so many commercial products come out all the time. yeah that there is no, it would be nice if you like, there was an academic way to correlate these new experiences that are being produced by people and selling. And sort of have. Because there is sort of a lot of innovation happening, but it, but it gets lost. So yeah every year there's a lot of new things and people. yeah that's a flash in the pan, people. Looking at. Next year they're forgotten about, and of course the big giants like. ubisoft whatever just make the same or, at least for the last seven years just make the same game over. yeah and that didn't used to be the case, but it's destroyed. The AAA aspect. Yes, why not fun anymore.
Eleanor Dare:yeah yeah. Yes, yeah.
Will Sykes: AVM:But this other stuff is there it's just that some one wants to kind of document it or. in some way. elevate our attention to it for the we know span, you know.
Eleanor Dare:yeah so great question, well, I mean what I mean that's something maybe we should be doing is having an annual event within. I don't know and then a Barbecue or somewhere where interesting in you know significant interest there's a review it's interesting breaking away from the same old same old same old.
Will Sykes: AVM:stuff I mean they the industry, then see the problem is that that also got started up a little while ago, as a let's do that right so. there's these industry things. And then it doesn't what happens is they open that to the Indies in quotes.
Eleanor Dare:yeah whoo.
Will Sykes: AVM:hoo arm by this time independent at all they're all multi million pound teams with money going and how do we keep making loads. of money. And, and so that the thing that was designed in order to catch the innovation actually ends up catching us all yeah. Yes, the new innovators yeah me yeah like always always at the bottom.
Eleanor Dare:yeah I absolutely agree, I don't. I mean that's The danger is you get subsumed into a culture or subsumed into some mediocrity are very, very monumental organizations. And hence my ambivalence but not my readiness to have a binary upset sense of opposition, but why ambivalence about what happens when that occurs an interest in in maintaining distance from it, on the whole. don't know, is it is it like you know, I suppose, this is where the metaverse idealization comes in that everyone will be don't have a high degree of autonomy, yet ownership I don't I don't.
Will Sykes: AVM:know these newer things seem to be a form of a system of control and things like unity and and and unreal now. Since they've become. How to say easy to use right for the layout. What what the layman ends up doing is going well it's easy to use, as long as I make these particular thing within you. which then means that yes, of course, within unreal and unity of your professional you can make anything but if you're if you're you know just an ordinary person that doesn't matter do that you just end up. being forced to my exactly.
Eleanor Dare:Yes, yes, so in the garden the unreal. The euro, the default Siemens around when the goddess yeah.
Will Sykes: AVM:I mean yeah.
Eleanor Dare:yeah I I get to me that is an argument to the value of the kind of education i've been involved in it, you know it's easy to get feel cynical about what we do as educators, but actually when I look at legacy 15 years of teaching and Goldsmith on onwards. The work that people are producing is really is not is not like that you know it's it's about being transparent clearance about in many different really interesting. and important urgencies emerged through that, so I think that is where the value is by taking a bigger point will have How does that, how does, how does anyone and not knowing about that, outside of our niche environment. Is a bigger question I don't mean since amounts ugly. awesome.
Will Sykes: AVM:Well it's Also, how do we make sure that we don't become insulated from all the other people because because, as I say, I sort of found it it felt about cutting when you were like the industry isn't doing innovation, because obviously I I work in the industry. yeah but um so we and we definitely do innovation. yeah it's it's just that you don't hear about the things what you what you hear about the latest same game. yeah and I think it's important that we that we make sure that the academia sees what the industry is doing that is innovative, as well as the industry sees because I because i'm hearing from the other side.
Eleanor Dare:yeah yeah yeah so it's not yeah so it's a two way problem isn't it that we're not. I think the generality is that the world is conducive to dreary sameness and repetition of same old same old stuff on the whole. Yes, if you have a market and money is invested you don't want to risk on the whole, so there is a sort of a you know it's kind of a logic to it, so how do we, how do we all escape that logic is the bigger question. In terms of what actually gets promoted or disseminating now, it can mean to take away from.
Will Sykes: AVM:Any, no, no, no, no, I understand I was just saying how I perceived it and, yes, I think you're absolutely right it's about how do we promote the how does one change the rules, so the thing that's actually new might even be better people might even like it more but it's a.
Eleanor Dare:Yes, but yes.
Will Sykes: AVM:yeah when we want the rules to change such that these innovative things get pushed more than the safe thing. yeah Is it the.
Eleanor Dare:same with the film industry. to replicate a formula so.
Nicole Brown:Peter has got your hand up, can I bring your bring bring it during please.
Brigitta Zics:yeah I just yeah just lots of good kind of thinking here, I think it's quite interesting what we're saying that it would be interesting to explore how. Because we always talk about industry and and I do feel that is many times, is a very one way street and it's quite interesting the point but we're is that the raw innovation happening, but is disappearing and and and this idea of experimentation come to my.
Eleanor Dare:mind that.
Brigitta Zics:You know, academia is used to be the place where you can safely experiment and. But I have to say that many. New development in academia, I think, or that's maybe just my own journey is that I kind of fear that you know the experimentation part, especially in practice is being removed because of the pressure.
Eleanor Dare:of some here, which is.
Brigitta Zics:You know, highly sophos.
Eleanor Dare:yeah yeah. Internationally here.
Brigitta Zics:Excellent and. So on so. Chris like it's, not just in the industry, you know. There are you know struggling to bring. In a gas station, so I feel that you know these media is now used by probably some on the you know it's some grassroots guys who probably in a way thing, much more than you know, academics, or industry, and this would be interesting actually to join these forces.
Eleanor Dare:Together yeah.
Brigitta Zics:and see you know what is practices recent because I do believe you know and and and I think that's what the media is trying, trying to be is bringing you know that idea of of of practice into academia, but, but not just as an illustration of some. concept, but much more to be you know experiment and and I hope that, with this week actually more timeless.
Eleanor Dare:yeah yes, I mean. there's a lot of production, what you're saying yeah and then of course you'll get someone like this book here which critiques you know the problem is. Though is beside itself through. The critiques extracted ISM of answers as answers generative knowledge, you know this, this sort of metric where we all have to prove how much water score we've got. is hugely problematic, and you know when you're talking i'm thinking well the education industry we're in an industry we're not separate from industry and with subject to the same. The same tendency to replicate power structures immutable these apparently immutable power structures, I think it this construct of the fugitive from from. My my. mind's gone blank but the fugitive academics, who are doing doing the work in spite of the overarching dreariness of Cooper landscape of education.
Nicole Brown:Thank you very much, it was absolutely a great great pleasure to listen. To all of you discuss this, because a lot of this, I mean obviously you know you're talking about areas of expertise that are outside of my realm i'm not i'm not somebody who's. You know, in the in in media and production at all so i'm coming to practice us research from a slightly different angle and and a lot of what you've said totally resonated you know. And I think that's. that's probably you know, the thing that we find actually practice as research resonates with so many different disciplines and takes and interpretations. And, which I think will and is in a way the way forward is like you said you know let's not try it, you know let's be careful about not insulating ourselves and isolating ourselves. I think that's also by by focusing on our disciplinary conventions we probably do that because we don't necessarily see the practices research that's going on outside our own disciplines. So I think you know, by looking at other disciplines like i'm doing today looking at your discipline it actually helps me understand my own practice at a slightly different level and and that's what i'm hoping to to kind of develop as we go through. yeah i'm quite aware of the time, I would like to say first you know I want to wrap it up properly to make sure that nobody has to run off. You know, nobody gets lost, so I want to say first of all, Elena, thank you very, very much for for doing this at such short notice, as well. And I really, really appreciated you doing the talk today and being with us and discussing and it's been really, really insightful. And everybody else who's contributed to the discussion, thank you very, very much for having been here. And I do hope that we are able to connect over some more practice as research over the next few weeks and months i'm going to share. A couple of slides very quickly, Dr Monica certainly is going to be our next presenter and on the fourth of May. And Monica is coming from a sociologist sociologist background so she's going to be talking specifically about. Research with drawings, where the artifact and the practice of throwing out a constitutive part of the production of knowledge within sociological and social sciences research. And that's obviously sort of more more at home with me but i'm sure everybody who's here will also be able to to gain from that i've seen. A sneak preview of monica's and talk and it looks like it's something that's going to be really exciting again. And also do please subscribe to the recordings on the power YouTube channel or to the audio podcast hosted on the park respirator channel. which can also be listened to, on spotify and do check out the practices research website, if you want to be updated with any kinds of details depart mailing list and for for. Regular news and the newsletter is on there as well, and you can obviously contact me at Nicole brown at ucl ac.uk as well, so again i'd like to say thank you very much, Elena it's been a great pleasure to have you and I look forward to connecting again in the future.
Eleanor Dare:yeah thanks everybody thanks the links below really useful as well. Thanks everyone.