Activities will be organised and enabled by the display of a multi-screen interactive installation at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow, which addresses the language of media ("Plastic Video").

Performance demos: Actors and a director exemplifying and explaining collective creative practices.

Practical sessions: Participants’ experiment with the installation translating the concepts from the performance demos and applying them as metaphors for designing, editing, exploring participative media.

Discussions: Invited discussants lead the discussion and reflection.

SCHEDULE of the Manipulate Media Workshop, 7-8 July, Glasgow, CCA, Club Room

7th of July, First day

10:00-10:10 Introduction round and overview of the workshop. We introduce ourselves, participants introduce themselves

10:10-10:20 Opening Statement, by organisers. design problems and trends in ubiquitous media and opportunities provided by performative development, The Manifesto

10:20-10:50 Critical Statement by Giorgio De Michelis “On Mixed Objects”

10:50-11:00 Talk by Professor Irene McAra-McWilliam, Head of Design at the Glasgow School of Art

11:00-12:00 Performance Demos (in a nearby venue next to CCA)

12:00-12:30 Overview of the installation

12:30-13:30 Lunch

13:30-15:00 Practical Session 1

15:00-15:30 Results and Reflection

15:30-17:00 Practical Session 2

17:00-17:30 Results and Reflection

8th of July, Second day

9:30-10:15 Critical Statement by Matthew Chalmers “Mixing  Media and Showing Seams”

10:15-12:00 Working Groups on Objects, interactions and happenings

Topic A – The blurring of interface and content, authoring also interfaces. The merging of the content with the situation of its fruition, how will genres, formats evolve?

Topic B – Physical activity and spatiality, props and artefacts, sound and soundtracks

Topic C – Unusual interfaces and seamful design, provocation and ambiguity

12:00 -12:30 Plenary discussion of results

12:30-13:30 Lunch

13:30-14:00 Critical Statement by Barry Brown

14:00-15:30 Working Groups on Embedding media texts in the world of participants

Topic A – Manipulate media for what? Media literacy and learning, games and playful activities, art and participative media

Topic B – Emergence of new forms of authorship and participation? visitors, viewers, readers, spectators, critics, spect-actors, editors, authors, co-authors

Topic C – The role of “Performance” in exploring future interactions and environments

15:30 -16:00 Plenary discussion of results

16:00-17:00 Conclusions and future work including: What can performative development mean?

DESCRIPTION OF SESSIONS

Performance Demo

The performance demo will introduce ways of devising creative work with groups of people by exemplifying styles of directing improvisation in some specific theatre traditions. Practical attempts in orchestrating collective action around or through the objects of design, or in the applied arts in general, can benefit enormously from the practical skills developed in theatre work, for: exploiting the imposition of 'good' constraints, limiting senses, using technology or props, relying on the design of space, lights or projections as a stage set, and achieving the development of narratives by contributions from multiple originators.

Practical Sessions

The contents of the demo will be applied both as conceptual devices and as a guide to some collective creative tasks (or assignments). These will aim to provide structured collective activities in order to research on the role of performance and the mediating function of the objects of design in the workshop. The list below exemplifies exercises that will be prepared based on specific features of the installation or on objects for design brought in by participants, and according to specific principles from the demo in devising collective action:

• do multiple tasks at the same time,
• research on the conflicts arising when “doing and talking”,
• Johnston’s fairy exercise with some participant being embodied by a medium,
• using a rituals leading to a happening in which mediating features work as a
• lead, or “evoking” events, or “healing” practices,
• the confession and the interrogatory exercises,
• the speaking and animated wallpapers.

This is an example list. The exercises need to be designed also according to how the installation will work. Possible features of the exercises/tasks/assignments in the practical sessions:

1) They are inspired by the practice of Johnston, Boal’s and Wright’s theatre in how goals are set, action constrained, participants directed, and situations created,

2) Each task will have an introductory part, and will be run in more than one version, in order to provide more opportunities for discovery and the possibility to learn through comparisons. Alternative versions of the same task are meant to exemplify different alternatives in constraining a task, different ways of using technology or media in the same task, with different speeds or rhythms, with different events scheduled in between, or with different roles assigned to or taken by participants,

3) During the afternoon of practical sessions there will be between 3 and 6

tasks, not considering the number of alternative versions (but more tasks than those that will actually be done can be prepared),

4) They will engage three of four groups of participants either working at the same tasks or different tasks in parallel,

5) Tasks will put into use selected part of the installation or objects brought in by participants.

Working Groups

The 30 participants (including organisers and discussants) are divided into 3 groups each on a topic (Topic A, B, C). The working groups elaborate the topic and present the results in a plenary session.