The relationship between media and participation raises the overarching question of the role of media in the development of democracy in different historical periods and socio-political contexts. It highlights the participatory dimension of media, especially the citizen’s participation in the creation, processing and transmission of informational structure, content and form; the artistic reshaping of spectatorial participation; and the user’s participation in the (re)configuration of public spheres, public spaces and communities. It emphasizes the possibility of developing direct forms of democracy through specific uses of media-user interactivity.
Participatory Media examines these relationships; it addresses them critically, questioning the very notion of participation. It examines the striving for community formation and connectivity underlying the contemporary practices of participatory media. It asks: what do participatory media entail with regards to the politics of inclusion and exclusion intrinsic to any community formation?; and is participation a progressive or regressive set of media operations? It particularly investigates recent developments in social media (Internet-based applications “that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content”*) and media interactivity. These developments—typified by Facebook, Twitter, blogs, viral videos, and YouTube—are unique insofar as they require participation from its users. They have generated innovative forms of media art, aesthetics, collocation and activism. In these social- and interactive-media environments, participation entails the user’s active intervention in media content, form and structure (as in video gaming; chatting, texting and tweeting; and interactive art in which an artwork will only be finalized by the participation of users); it also entails the formation of communities of participants (the gamer’s participation in a community of gamers; the exchange of information between chatters and tweeters; the constitution of virtual communities).
Any user with the right technology can now produce his or her online media; any gamer can interact with a user interface to generate feedback on a video device; any spectator can be asked to respond to an intelligent (spatial or architectural) environment set up in an art gallery, a museum or a public space. But is this really the case? Who participates, who doesn’t, who can’t? What are the similarities, overlaps and differences between traditional media and new-media participation and interactivity? Participatory Media thus seeks to address the history, problems and possibilities of participatory media. It examines how the practices of the Internet have or have not changed the practices of citizenship—the citizen’s participation in public life, citizen deliberation, knowledge and mobilization. It investigates how participatory media negotiate with surveillance, data-collecting and control devices embedded in the very media that enable participation. Overall, it asks: why this growing contemporary concern for participation across design, art, social sciences and computing sciences (leading to participatory design, participatory arts, and community informatics)?
FALL 2013
Media@McGill hosted The Participatory Condition, an International Colloquium, which was held in Montreal at the Museum of Contemporary Art on November 15 and 16, 2013. The Colloquium’s main objective was to assess the role of media in the development of a principle whose expansion has become so large as to become the condition of our contemporaneity. For more information visit: www.pcond.ca. Watch the videos. https://www.mcgill.ca/ahcs/mediamcgill/participatory-condition
To complement the activities planned for the colloquium on The Participatory Condition, Media@McGill is hosting a “Participatory Open Online Course” (POOC) – as opposed to a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) — on our colloquium website. POOC activities, which aim at rendering academic research more accessible to the general public, will run from October 15 to December 6, 2013. For more information visit: www.pcond.ca/pooc.
2013 Beaverbrook Annual Lecturer: Al Gore on Technology and the Future of Democratization.
In 2013 the Beaverbrook Annual Lecture was given by the Honourable Al Gore. The free public lecture was entitled Technology and the Future of Democratization, and was held on Tuesday, November 5, 2013 at 6:00 p.m. in Pollack Hall, McGill University, 555 Sherbrooke West, Montreal, QC. For more information click here.
WINTER 2014
“Three-minute thesis” research exchange with students and faculty, Wednesday, January 29, 9:30-12:00 in Arts W-220 : Art History and Communication Studies (AHCS).
Panel on Participatory Medicine with Media@McGill Post-Doctoral Fellow Alessandro Delfanti, Art is Open Source (Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico) and Patrick Dubé, Interactive Art Director and initiator of the Living LabThursday, February 13, 17:30-19:00 in Leacock 232. Watch the video.
Hidden from History: the Mexican Influence on Chinese Art by Zheng Shengtian (independent curator and Managing Editor of Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art) on Thursday, February 27, 17:30-19:00 in Arts W-215.
Media@McGill visiting scholar Peggy Phelan will be giving a Public Lecture, Thursday, March 20, 17:30-19:00.
--
Innovation and its Contestant: The Annual Emerging Scholars Conference
Friday, April 18, 2014 - 09:00
Natasha Schüll - Time on Device: Slot Machine Design & the Turn Away from Risk in Gambling
Thursday, April 10, 2014 - 17:30
"From the Spectacle Society to the Performance Society: Ronald Reagan"
Thursday, March 20, 2014 - 17:30
Seminar on "What aggregators do" with Prof. Chris Anderson
Friday, March 14, 2014 - 15:00
Biohackers - Book Launch
Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - 17:30
Storming Wikipedia
Friday, March 7, 2014 - 14:00
Zheng Shengtian: Hidden from History: the Mexican Influence on Chinese Art
Thursday, February 27, 2014 - 17:30
Participatory Medicine
Thursday, February 13, 2014 - 17:30
Médicine Participative
Thursday, February 13, 2014 - 17:30
International Colloquium: The Participatory Condition
Friday, November 15, 2013 - 09:00
Colloque international: La Condition participative
Friday, November 15, 2013 - 09:00
2013 Beaverbrook Annual Lecturer: Al Gore on Technology and the Future of Democratization
Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - 18:00
Liquid Intelligence and the Aesthetics of Fluidity
Friday, October 25, 2013 - 08:30
Spaces of Hacking
Sunday, October 13, 2013 - 14:00
Register Now: Special Seminar on Performance Theory by Professor Peggy Phelan (ARTH 730)
Tuesday, September 24, 2013 - 09:00
Time Forms: The Temporalities of Aesthetic Experience
Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - 09:00