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Considering the potential for increasing sustainability at UK music festivals by monetising ICT enhanced content to fund reductions in overall on-site capacity.
No full textThis chapter analyses existing literature and builds on previous research to inform a viewpoint article, which can involve “one practitioner offering an engaging and perhaps provocative opinion on a topical issue” (McCloskey 2017: 2). It considers concepts relating to sustainability, ICT enhanced performance futures for music festivals and ‘liveness’. Using Glastonbury Festival (“Glastonbury”) as an exemplar, it responds to the suggestion that UK music festivals could improve their sustainability by growing online attendances to fund reductions in on-site capacities (Bossey 2022) and addresses the following questions:
• Could music festivals feasibly increase sustainability by reducing physical operating capacity?
• Could music festivals develop new business models to monetise ICT enhanced content derived from on-site performances to increase overall income?
• What effect might perceptions of liveness in music festival experiences have on the successful uptake of ICT enhanced content?
The chapter concludes that voluntarily reducing the capacity of larger commercial music festivals is a sensible, proportionate and achievable approach to further reducing negative environmental impacts. After a 10% reduction in physical on-site capacity, Glastonbury would remain by far the largest UK music festival and would potentially save up to 21,000 car journeys and other on-site impacts. It is considered reasonable that Glastonbury could potentially earn back, or even exceed, a fall in income following a reduced on-site capacity by increasing the monetarisation of authentic ICT enhanced content
The Surprises of Suburbia
Full text linkBook review of I Love Suburbia, Simon Pollock (Hutchinson Heinemann
Enlightenment
Full text link'Enlightenment (The Devoran Old Quay Scrolls)' is a long poem from a book manuscript, Reframing the Something of God, which is about what co-author H.L. Hix and I called 'Recuperative Theology', a fictional theology based in philosophical and poetic doubt, philosophy and scepticism. 'Enlightenment' is an erasure poem which draws on The Dead Sea Scrolls for its form – including bracketed conjectures of missing words, with the title referencing the village where I live and our local pub. As Archbishop Makeshift says in his 'Introduction', 'There are different answers to most questions and here are some of them'. The closing stanza from another of my poems in the book, 'Testimony', might also shed some light: 'I keep returning to the idea that God / is in our village pub with a pint of beer.
'The Blow In'
No full textShort story for '13 Cornish Ghost Stories' anthology edited by myself and Marie Macneil
A Social Practices Approach to Encourage Sustainable Clothing Choices
Full text linkThe literature on sustainable clothing covers five key thematic areas: problems associated with fast fashion; sustainable fibre production; sustainable design protocols; corporate responsibility; sociological and social–psychological understandings; and pro-environmental behaviour changes. This article interweaves these approaches in a study that assesses the potential of experiential learning in clothes making, mending, and modifying workshops to help generate new social practices. The workshop design drew on the five key thematic areas and purposively provided participants with infrastructures and equipment, facilitators, and peer-to-peer support and dialogue as means to help them collaboratively generate new skills, new senses of meaning, and more sustainable ways of thinking, feeling, and acting in relation to clothes. This article reveals that our social practices approach encouraged research participants to positively uptake pro-environmental clothing choices. Thematic qualitative analysis of a small sample of participants’ wardrobe audit interviews, informal discussions, reflective videos, and reflective diaries illustrates nuanced and dynamic individual responses to the workshops and other project interventions. Nuances are contingent on factors including styles, creativity, habits, and budgets. We argue that, in order to mainstream the benefits of our approach, it is necessary to normalise approaches to clothing and style that sit outside of, or adjacent to, mainstream fashion, including clothes making, mending, and modifying practices
WHY MUMS DON'T JUMP: ANIMATION AS A FEMINIST TOOL
Full text linkIn 2020, journalist Helen Ledwick launched her podcast Why Mums Don't Jump with a manifesto to help bust taboos surrounding incontinence, prolapse and pelvic pain after childbirth. As a backdrop to this the UK government published its 'Women's Health Strategy for England' that acknowledged there were gaps in research, training and education. Other affected women were also going public with fitness channels, books and podcasts. In this article I draw attention to the cultural and medical bias women face, the activists who are making a difference and the power of animation to help break taboos. In 2022, I invited Ledwick to be a live-brief client for the 2nd year animation students at Falmouth University. The students produced a short 2D animated film that premiered at La Femme International Film Festival in Los Angeles in October 2023. The film captures the suffering women endure but also their optimism for the future they'd like to create. Reflecting on the process of making and distributing the film, I make a case for animation as a powerful feminist tool
Hip-hop Dar es Salaam
No full textMusic of The New Generation
A 30 minute documentary, in which three generations of Tanzanian hip-hop producers hustle to carve out their own unique identity in the face of negative public perception and economic difficulties
Bookended Berlin
Full text linkA book review of Star 111, Lutz Seiler (And Other Stories) and Siblings, Brigitte Reimann (Penguin Classics
Perceived Foolishness: How Does the Saltybet Community Construct AI vs AI Spectatorship?
Full text linkThe spectatorship of games has become a topic of growing interest with the parallel rise of esports and livestreaming platforms. Taking Saltybet.com as its primary case study, this paper examines cases where zero-player games played by artificial intelligence-controlled characters are the focus of spectatorship. A discourse analysis identifies trends and themes in the recorded chat transcripts of 15 livestreamed tournaments from Saltybet.com where players bet fake money on the outcome of fighting game matches between AI opponents. Several themes are identified that guide discussion on how spectators discuss AI players as well as their own and the community's behaviour. These insights may be applicable to understanding the broad appeal of the entertainment people derive from AI generally whether they were meant to entertain or not. The discussion explores how the absence of human players and the scale of Saltybet's niche audience contribute to a unique, but foolish space