This two day Unconference provides an opportunity for staff, students, sector and industry to discuss and explore the impacts and challenges of new technologies on art, design and performance in curriculum and practice. Staff, students, sector and industry are invited to join an informal participant-driven discussion which will reflect and build on the experiences of recent Digital Making Art School events at Tate Exchange in February and March 2017 and will question: 

How we integrate digital making in arts curriculum & practice?

17 May - 19 May 2017 10am to 5.30pm

Location: Tate Modern, Tate Exchange Switch House Southwark Room Level 5 Bankside London SE1 9TG

Wednesday 17 and Friday 19 May 2017

Limited places & RSVP c.follows@arts.ac.uk essential (can attend one or both days).

• See Programme for 17 May 2017 (Day 1)
• See Programme for 19 May 2017 (Day 2)

We hope to make this event as participant driven, engaging and productive as possible, and unlike a traditional conference we want to avoid long presentations (presentation/provocations 15min MAX) and provide more time for discussion. We have programmed a number of provocation's to help support debate.

Demand from staff and students in Further Education (FE) and Higher Education (HE) to experience, learn and share knowledge about digital making and new technologies continues to grow rapidly. Much of the new digital work and experimentation is student led, and students currently provide the momentum for change and in defining its relevance, mostly from outside the curriculum. It’s very difficult for course teams to respond to rapid and complex digital change in the sector and learning and teaching (L&T). For example: understanding what’s out there, pointing students in right direction/opportunities, having critical perspectives, sourcing specific teaching expertise and finding/creating resources & support.

Areas we aim to explore:

• Reflect on the Tate Exchange events (what worked, what didn’t & what next?)
• Plan for future live events (ideas for future activities and collaborations)
• Digital Making in the Curriculum: Looking at how events such as Tate Exchange fit with the formal curriculum
• Experimental approach to integrating digital practice in L&T and the curriculum
• New learning & teaching models, pedagogical frameworks
• Practice as Research (your stories of this)
• True Collaboration and Non-Hierarchy Learning Communities
• Art education and the relationship to public galleries and museums
• Relationship between art education and traditional and emergent tech industries
• How can universities better benefit from home-grown talent?
• Industry collaborations: Making Explicit what happens in Tech Industries
• Explore enterprise models
• Digital literacies and confidence
• Critical Media & Critical Arts/Design Digital Practice
• Open Design and Manufacturing Knowledge Alliance between HEIs, Makers, Makerspaces and Manufacturers to boost Open Design and Open Manufacturing

Booking your place: Event is now over.

This event is part of the Digital Making in the Curriculum project, led by CCW Learning, Teaching & Enhancement (CCW-LTE) at Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon Colleges of Arts, UAL. CCW LTE support the Digital Maker Collective a group of artists, designers, staff and students from UAL who explore emerging digital technologies in arts, education, society and the creative industries.

Image of Gesamt performance at Tate Exchange. Photograph by Abigail Fletcher.

Wednesday 17 May 10:15 to 17:30 (Day 1)

Agenda subject to change & see longer descriptions at the bottom of the page

Florentine Ruault: (Chelsea BA Fine Art student) How new technologies impact the relationship between the viewer and its surrounding? Presentation / Round Table Discussion - I would like to talk about what I've learned so far while developing our projects. I also had the opportunity to reflect on the impact new technologies had on our surrounding environments and relation to art / experience, I would love to develop this topic! #techresearch

Zoe Forster, Ryan Tennant, Rose Vinnicombe & Kez Dearmer (Chelsea BA Fine Art students) Presentation / Round Table Discussion Virtual Reality perspectives of exploring VR at art school #VRarts

Jennet Thomas & Alejandro Escobar: (WCA Staff & Camberwell Student) -  Staff & Student Collaboration, photogrammetry, processes & ideas Presentation / Round Table Discussion - Perspectives on PTBM students 'digital opera' at Tate Exchange using live keying. MA Fine art digital student Alejandro Escobar is doing an Residency at Wimbledon College of Arts. He is developing a project that explores the use of drawing as the main resource for a collaborative Virtual Reality production involving students from different courses. For this, he is also working closely with staff to find new uses for VR within the Curriculum.

Patrick Morgan: (Room One - Creative director for all new projects from film/new media/VR/AR/tv/theatre) HUG OR ROLE Presentation / Round Table Discussion - Man and Machine working more in partnership rather than divided and industry helping students to move to industry more fluidly. The talk discusses the shape shifting creative environment from Analogue to digital and how can we think about using technology as an overarching supporter for experiential learning in HE/industry. VR Technology can help speed up the learning process and using AI to feedback and collaborate with.

Anna Frants: (Internationally renowned New Media artist and curator who co-founded both CYLAND Media Art Lab and the St. Petersburg Art Project) Augmented reality and artistic practice(s) Augmented reality in artistic and curatorial practice(s) Presentation / Round Table Discussion - Presentation based on Cyland MediaArtLab recent art: tech show “HYBRIS”. HYBRIS, Monsters and Hybrids in Contemporary Art runs parallel to 57th Venice Biannual starting May 12th, 2017. #AR

Heejung Choi & Kayile Ryu: (Chelsea BA Fine Art students) Open Discussion on Fourth Industrial Revolution - Big Data, Virtual Reality and IoT(Interaction) Presentation / Round Table Discussion - In our society, there are various definitions and involvements of fourth industrial revolution(Big Data, VR, IoT ect...). In this discussion, we are going to re-interpreate(re-define) the topic in our own perspective(for instance- artistic view), and going to debate how we can manage pros and cons of the topic. #FourthIndustrialRevolution #BigData #VirtualReality #IoT

Jonathan Armistead: (Artist & technical specialist Camberwell) Presentation / Round Table Discussion artist’s perspectives of relationships between analogue making in art school 3d workshop spaces and its relevance of digital practice?

Chris Follows/UAL OD&M: (CCW Digital Learning Manager) Presentation / Round Table Discussion Maker Culture, Open Design & Open Manufacturing: Open discussion about integration and impacts on the curricrlum of Open manufacturing a new model of socioeconomic production in which physical objects are produced in an open, collaborative and distributed manner and based on open design and open source principles. Open design is the application of Free and Open Source Software principles to the creation of physical products, machines and systems. Industry 4.0 represents the next phase in the digitization of the manufacturing sector.

Friday 19 May 10:15 to 17:30 (Day 2)

Ben Nuttall: Raspberry Pi Foundation - digital making for everyone. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is working to put the power of digital making in the hands of people all over the world, and is well known for its series of small, cheap single board computers. With the Raspberry Pi, anyone can be introduced to the world of physical computing and IoT, starting with graphical tools like Scratch, building up to more powerful programming languages like Python. The Raspberry Pi community is full of enthusiastic individuals who build inspiring projects, and run Code Clubs and Raspberry Jam events to provide opportunities for others to learn.

Andrew Gregson: (Founder, Green Lab) Healthy Cities – how can a network Fab Labs and the arts influence public policy and urban planning to make our cities healthier and more self-sufficient Presentation - Open call for makers, urbanists, designers, urban farmers, architects and service designers to create a manifesto for London #fabcity #greenlab

Daniel Bandfield: (Chelsea BA Fine Art student) The Value of Interaction: Round Table Discussion - I would like to have a discussion about interaction within the art experience, and how this enabled or disabled by advanced technology. I think it's important to discuss whether there is a benefit to interactive art work, or if it just a distraction. I would also like to discuss how our everyday interactions with technology might inform an artistic experience. #digitalinteraction

Nicola Rae: (Artist & CCW Academic Support) Collectively Learning and Teaching Technologies in Collaborative Teams to make Interactive Installations Presentation / Round Table Discussion - We would like to discuss our experiences of collaborating on developing workshops with children at Chelsea's Digital Maker Collective Space, Tate Exchange and Tate Kids at Tate Britain during 2017. Working in teams of four, twelve and then seven to support the physical computing development and digital interaction of fifteen children has meant far more one to one support. These sessions allowed for learning experiences that became increasingly creative, interactive and performative. We will be discussing the pros and cons of this approach and reflecting on photos and films of these workshops. Will these workshops have developed a deeper interest in art, artists, galleries and art schools, or just the digital?

Shinji Toya: (CSM MA Fine Art Alumnus, & PT UAL MA Academic Practice student) Relevance of Critical Skills and Discourses in Digital Art Education Presentation / Round Table Discussion - In a short presentation, I would like to address the relevance of critical skills and discourses in digital art education (in HE or above) and digital art industry of the early post-millennium period. In turn, for a round table discussion I would like to pose the following question: since the beginning of the millennium, how has art education been responding to the relevance of the critical education concerning digital media and culture? The discussion will explore the question and the topic with participants of the session. #criticalmedia

Dave Webster: (CCW Associate Dean Learning Teaching & Enhancement) The Camberwell, Chelsea, Wimbledon Pedagogic Review and the Digital Makers Collective. Presentation / Round Table Discussion / Workshop - How do we ensure Art and Design pedagogy keeps abreast of social and technological developments? This discussion considers how the Digital Makers Collective engagement with the Tate offers a model of student engagement and interaction with technology which might help inform the development of courses in these three Art and Design colleges.

Sinéad McDonald: (Dublin based artist, photographer, digital media producer, and arts educator) Multi/Anti/Cross/disciplinary education and practice models Round Table Discussion / Workshop - The use of the Maker model in arts and humanities education, and the increasing entanglement of tech in practice. Antidisciplinary approaches to course design and delivery, with a particular emphasis on arts/media practice and electronics. Emerging models of good practice in building collaborations across traditionally siloed schools/departments. #artsandtech

Julian Stadon: (Julian Stadon Subject Leader, Innovative Media Practice UAL London College of Fashion) Random Cards/Oblique Strategies for Innovative Media Design Presentation / Round Table Discussion - I would like to discuss issues I have encountered teaching new technologies and innovative media approaches to  students of all levels in a number of disciplines. In my opinion there is generally a lack of real practice based research and critical design thinking/methods being taugh  and I have seen this first hand as a lecturer in several countries, across a range of educational fields, including art, media design, game design, audio, creative coding, Web development, audio engineering, interface design and fashion. For the last two years been I have been developing a hands-on approach to introducing design thinking for new media, that uses a cards based system, inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies, under a new paradigm of Anthropocenic Design. After briefly introducing this system, a range student projects will be shown that were all established using this method. #randomcardsobliquestrategies #marart

This event is part of the Digital Making in the Curriculum project, led by CCW Learning, Teaching & Enhancement (CCW-LTE) at Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon Colleges of Arts, UAL. CCW LTE support the Digital Maker Collective a group of artists, designers, staff and students from the University of the Arts London (UAL) who explore emerging digital technologies in arts, education, society and the creative industries.