More on web extension of any city

Today I had an email from Leuphana Digital School with a link to a YouTube video by Timon Bayes

He claims there is a "right to the city" but this comes from Lefebre in 1968 according to the Wikipedia. I think there should be an update to include web access and a recognition that the web can be anywhere. True, bandwidth is better in the city. The UK is getting more unequal, not less.

I think that is Berlin in the background but this may not mean the video was made in Berlin. The tower has a cafe that I think is also in Twinity and we use as a double location for the upper floor of the Work Foundation. So #mtw3 continues in Twinity with more city context.​

I am no longer taking part in full on the Leuphana Mooc. I was trying but members of my group failed to score me so the robot decided I was not active. Generally I think the design is not as good as the OLDS MOOC, not for me anyway. More on the OLDS MOOC when I transfer more from Posterous.​

Exeter is not much of a city, not for scale anyway. But it may have most of the minimum resource for communication. There are several bus routes to the country.​

Link back to Posterous, Any High Street

Here is a link back to Posterous from last year when Any High Street was at the RAMM in Exeter.​ I think there is a continuity with Volkhardt Muller's approach to this City's Centre. I like the idea of generic aspects to the city. This project is some sort of link for myself going further into online aspects such as Twinity.

More in next post. This one is just to knit things together, still most of April till Posterous falls apart.​

(I think it has stopped posting already.)​

#ThisCitysCentre on Wild show, Phonic FM

There are now several clips from the Wild Show on YouTube. #4 has the actual dates. Roughly the installation and map will be in July and August, the theatre in September. so there is a shape to the summer. After the minutes of dreaming there are several images already, looking out of the windows in Exeter. ​

Content Marketing, PR for Creative Commons #1

I am thinking about how to explain PR so there was more of it that would help bloggers, radio shows and anyone who welcomed content over the web. Recently the Wild Show has got somewhere in talking about art as exhibited at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum.​ Volkhardt Muller visited again and we discussed This City's Centre, a project that continues through September. I have done my own photos connected to the ideas so we can use those on Facebook etc. I think once the installation is in the museum it will stay pretty fixed but we can continue something as radio, social media.

Previously this sort of access has only been possible with outside events. Animation on the cathedral was explicit as Creative Commons and there was even a good copy of the soundtrack posted by a PR organisation so a mix on YouTube could continue with all the phone video etc. I had thought there could be a PR theory around this. But it turns out that PR people seem reluctant to talk about what they do. So I now try to follow content marketing. I did submit a proposal last year for Online Information but PR was not a featured topic as it turned out. This year they have reminded me to apply so I will try content marketing and print publishing. There are sample chapters and soforth that turn up. ​I will explore this with Design Science as a recent meeting made some connections. More on this later.

​Music is getting easier to work with all the time. It may be that I am slightly misled working on a radio show with PRS clearance. We can be legit playing anything I think. Within OFCOM guidelines for taste etc. But also I recently used a Jackson 5 track ( Looking Through The Window fits with This City's Centre ) and it cleared through YouTube without the ads being claimed. I would not have minded if the Jackson 5 got some of the income. But I notice some remix on early Motown that survives also. I may do some more to test this out. Surprisingly Motown is not as well known as some would think.

Speculation, probably not a science

I have been reading old copies of the Guardian. Some I never found time for , now the paper really has to go. I am chopping up the good bits and need to have another look at these as well.​

Margaret Atwood wrote about "Ustopia" in 2011. Just found it through Google. (Guardian search will work eventually but you usually have to scroll down past the ads to find a result) http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/14/margaret-atwood-road-to-ustopia​

Ustopia is a word she made up by combining utopia and dystopia because "each contains a latent version of the other". "Ustopia is also a state of mind, as in every place in literature of whatever kind."​

I think this will help me over the next few weeks when blogging about the Phonicon and TEDx Exeter. The Phonicon is an event for science fiction, maybe fantasy, at the Phoenix in Exeter next Sunday. I think it will take up most of the ground floor except for the gallery space where News From The Sun continues. This is based on a short story by J.G. Ballard.  ​The images refer to "the physical structures of communication technology such as satellite dishes, pylons and antennae."

From the Phoenix description-​

In a variety of ways, each of the artists display an interest in subverted or obsolete modernity, referencing technology, architecture and design that offers optimistic promises of a utopian future. These points of reference contrast with an intensive level of handcrafted process utilised by each in the creation of their work.

Perhaps these means that some artists don't like technology and prefer analog. There definitely are some academics who are always looking for the dark side. ​But the Ustopia scope may offer a way to discuss this sort of thing. I will have a look in more detail and maybe ask for some comments during the Phonicon.

The week after there is a localised version of TED for Exeter. This will have a more positive take on technology I guess. And it is about entertainment, not art , so the limitations of digital media may not matter too much. News From The Sun continues so may offer some balance. ( I am getting more into radio and JD tells me a radio show should offer no strong opinions except through guests)

I am still a bit confused about what Margaret Atwood includes as "science fiction". She seems to prefer to work with "speculative fiction" such as Jules Verne on balloon travel - "things that really could happen but just hadn't completely happened when the authors wrote the books". So I am going to borrow this for blog speculation. For example I think the Guardian will cease print publication Monday to Friday. Will this happen soon? I don't know. IPEX 2014 will be very different to IPEX 2010. There has been recent news about companies that will not be at ExCeL so there is an online version now, including Apple and Adobe. They were hardly there in 2010. Print culture depends on trade shows and daily newspapers. To be continued.​