BBC and Aberfan

Ceri Sherlock, Anna-Maria Williams, Dai Williams and Chris Morris collectively present the successes of the collaboration between academy and industry in the case of the Aberfan documentary screened earlier. 

Ceri opens with a narrative on aesthetic dispelling the history of its critical conception and regaling the origins of the Academy in philosophy. His decidedly academic background informs his discussions of a desire not only for the two to meet, but for their cooperations to be creative and determine content. He claims that collaborations should meet at postgraduate level and that their future unions should be based on process not on product. This discussion serves as introduction to the creative process of the Aberfan documentary. 

The story of this film begins with Anna, who discovered the work of Shimon Attie in her MA studies, at the same time as her partner Dai was approached by the valley's community to produce an honest documentary of the village. Here the two collide as they ponder the approach that will best represent and service the community. Shimon's processes and philosophies historically reflect the desires of the Aberfan people as he works with Cathartic resolve in sites of trauma. With Shimon's involvement the ideas augment and the production begins. 

This session portrays a positive and productive collaboration between the academy and industry, with flecks of honesty that do not deny the conflicts and tensions of such unity. This is an inspiring tale for content based future collaboration, with the material evidence that supports its cause. 

Matthew Lovett's improv

Matthew presents a wholly diplomatic debate around the impact of recording technology on improvised  musical performance. Discussing the tensions between the act and the document he invokes much post-structuralist discourse to illustrate the problematic 'presence' of the act with the  simulacra of record. He continues to counter the unrepeatability of the performance moment with the novelties and positive impacts of recording technologies on performance, looking at its capacities as tool to inform the performance by capturing the moment and holding its memory for the pleasures of repeated listening. 

Tom Abba's narrative

In an AHRC funded project Tom Abba created an Alternative Reality game to explore the practices of writing for this emergent form. The position of author is inevitably problematized by interactive forms as meaning is produced at various levels as the game must be written but there is a sense of determinism in play that creates a type of authorship for its player.  

Film and television have established writing forms and practices for their media and Tom expresses a desire to create one for games that may become the model. 

Emma Westecott play as performance

Emma addresses not only ho we might perceive play as performance but what this performativity reveals about games. Emma makes linkages between the act of play and the distinctions laid out by traditional performance studies, that make a good case for played performance. the act of play shares that liveness, that temporal presentness of performance, it lives within generic distinctions that require and command different things from the performer for viable execution, all based around a possession of skill. The notion of character (avatar) is integral to the game scenario and the assuming of a character suggests performance. This also hails notions of identity as the player is both in and out of the game and posses interesting questions about the location of performance that is topical with the inception of intuitive controls. And it is in that respect that the player can be aligned with the puppeteer.   

the act of play has to work between the player and the designated game rules and its navigation i that respect could be perceived as improvisation. Yet it makes interesting stretches on performance theory as it erodes the boundaries between audience and performer as the player plays to produce the performance and enjoys its affect as viewer.   

Abervan Film

Chris Morris, working with photographer Shimon Atti document the artistic processes of addressing the trauma that has plagued the Welsh village for decades. Shimon's works in the post-traumatic site looking to re-present the tragedy with images of the contemporary populous. The photography creates the perplexity between time standing still and time moving forward. The time in the place has stood still, dwelling on its trauma. Shimon is trying to move the attitude forward from its black and white archive of pictoral memory by extracting the villagers from the village, allowing for the imagining of possible villages and their infinite histories and futures. 

The film captures the landscape beautifully, allowing it to speak for the changing experience intended in the artistic process. The treatment of the subjects is involved, exhibiting the grief of the population with sincere investigation and delicate manner. This truly presents the survivor status of the community, expertly distributing emotion without patronization. 

Creative Partnerships - BBC and Universities

Rowena Goldsmith and Claire Wardle present a session in which they respectively voice their  motives and findings of an existing collaboration supported by the AHRC. Ultimately, the broadcasters perspective of the collaboration are self serving and optimistic, yet the initiative in notion alone is sexy enough that with perseverance harbours mutually beneficial potential. The academic side of this union maintains its scepticism and proceeds with its research on ethical and focused grounds. 

outside of the contentious collaborative element, the intentions of the focus present with relevance, trying to address the changing times and nature of not only televisual dissemination but viewing habits. realistically they do not try and draw any rash conclusions or discuss implementations based on preliminary findings. the interest in this partnership lies in the future, when the affect and effectiveness of this union present themselves.

this session, and its following dialogue, deliver exactly what you would expect from this environment with queries over the inevitable and perceptibly insurmountable tensions between academia and corporation, the tensions inevitably determine the reaction. nonetheless it is refreshing to see this type of partnership in action, however gestural it be, it posits a potential for future informed broadcast and an access to the industry rarely afforded to the academy. 

Terry Flaxton in Hi Def

Terry delivers a highly physiological and technological on the state and reception both analogue images and hi definition. Foraying into the technologies of sight that govern our relationship to images with illustration in his installation works that play with the illusion of hi-def imagery. this leads to discussions of the novelties and mysticism of the image that results from these new technologies, equating the test reactions to hi-rez demonstrations to that of the infamous Lumierre brothers myth. that is that the audience have a physical reaction to the experience that only comes from exposure to an instance of experience that surpasses, in its distinction, any other. 

The detailed technicalities and techno-determinism of this discussion are absolved with the acknowledgement of experience and the intriguing psychologies of seeing related to high definition of contemporary image technologies.    

Clive Myer's Diegesis

Intended as an address to film schools as appose to film studies, Clive presents the case and altering state of the diegesis. Presenting how, in a La'tourean sense, the meaning and application of diegesis has changed from its philosophical origins in  Plato to a convention of cinema, noting how its absorption into cinematic technicality radically diminishes its properties as an intangible thing. 

Lobbying for modification of terms, of revisions in pedigogical practice, this is a thought provoking talk of historicy and cultural determination of meaning. 

The Colours of Phil Cowan

Phil discusses the use of colour from a cinematography perspective in communicating concept and theme through style. Influenced by Kandinski, Phil screens his work on Separation, a morose short animation about conjoined twins, their separation, their desire for reconnection and their unfortunate death. Interested in the 'expressive' and 'symbolic' communicative potentials of style he breaks down the creative and collaborative design processes that determined the visual. This talk was provoking in its felt construction of a colour scheme that, through its theory, effectively creates emotive imagery. 

Colour Key 

White - for the birth scene. Kandinski's colour of birth. 

Orange - a warm colour typifying the height of happiness for the still joined twins. 

Yellow - the self conscious colour, representing their realization of separation.  

Red - passionate; alluding to their initial desires for reconnection. 

Green - spiritual colour, representing sympathy and adaptability. incorperated into their shared and private workspace. 

Blue - cold, representing age and decay. foreshadowing the tragic and imminent end. 

Black - emptiness and hollow. represents death for Kandinski and within the film. 

The Post-Dramatic Andy Smith

Andy Smith presents his adaptation of Chekhov's Seagull in respect to his practice based research regarding the post-dramatic actor, questioning what post-dramaticism means in relation to performance. 

He discusses the importance of 'version' in the construction of this theatrical piece, noting that the translation of Chekhov's original text and subsequent doctoring by Martin Crimp is integral to the post-dramatic nature of the piece. The reductive treatment of the dramatic devices lays the perect ground for implementing post-dramatic technique and paracinematic stagings. In this depiction the landscape is rotated 180 degrees to situate the audience not only on the opposing end of the performance but actually within its habitat, as they sit in the great lake that is a motif of the play. This then services the conceptual mise-en-scene as it overlaps with the performance space, the audience invades and the stage fragments. The drive is to disrupt the frame of the stage by offering the audience multiple perspectives. This is executed through a series of screen projections that mess not only with the space of the performance but with its temporality, by exploring the space between the acts. The grainy low-tech production value of the images produces an apocalyptic tone totally fitting to the thematic core. The ghostly captured images of the actors haunt the space and allude to the fatal conclusion. 

this beautifully epitomizes working practices collision with theory. it is a subtle, seductive, sensible, and somehow sorrowful, illustration of the post-dramatic put into play. 

Maureen Thomas opening

Maureen opens proceedings with a provocative discussion of the trails of practice based, and practice led research. this preliminary talk resonates with the challenges posed Institutionally in the current practice/research climate. this discussion of problems is general yet asserts an inspirational vibe with offers of solace in terms of progression beyond the research and assistance that is offered by the same guidelines that impose the practical difficulties in such research. 

by a simple dissection of the practice/theory requirements set out by Universities and the VIVA process as well as alternative distinctions set by funding bodies such as the AHRC, Maureen highlights the ways in which we may navigate a way through practice based problems. always italicizing the importance of skill and ability combined with creativity Maureen brings to light the importance of collaboration in practical production. using her own work by way of example she brightens the case for practice based research with examples of what can be achieved in cooperative projects, evidencing not only the successful mingling of practice and theory but the accessibility of  funding for such projects.