Research and Development Informed by Creative Arts Labs RADICAL

RADICAL PARTNERS The RADICAL project kicked off in December 2000 with a preliminary partners meeting at the ISEA conference in Paris, followed by a major planning meeting to confirm strategy, goals and working schedule (Surrey, England: January 2001). The RADICAL PARTNERS are: The Institute for New Media Performance Research/SMARTlab Centre (UK-lead partner), Audiorom (London, UK), ESI (Angouleme, France), The Society for Old and New Media (the WAAG, Amsterdam), and DMR/Fujitsu (Dublin). RADICAL MEMBERS include a cross-section of industry and creative organisations across EU: the BBC, NOKIA, Ars Electronica, Macromedia, LUTCHI, The Theatre Museum/Victoria and Albert, Broadcast Solutions, et al. We are also working with a number of major international organisations including the Banff New Media Centre in Canada and both the ISA and USC in North America, to ensure a wide research base and dissemination strategy for the project.

... getting RADICAL RADICAL is developing: A series of events bringing together leaders in the field and smaller companies in collaborative exchange; A number of new software prototypes for further development, to be demonstrated at a series of major events; A high end web site; A range of publications providing guides to good practice in creativity and media tools development... to be authored in response to feedback and ideas developed jointly throughout the life of the project with contributions from partners, members and IST collaborators. * * Tools * for * Enabling * Interactive * Content *

Process AS Product

RADICAL EVENTS The RADICAL Programme includes 1 informal day workshop, 3 major events and 1 final plenary. April : Workshop at the ADC Theatre, Cambridge, following the CODE Conference at Queen’s College: The first informal workshop involved an introduction to the project and a series of break-out sessions discussing off-the-shelf and custom-made tools by and for artists, demos of tools in common use and group discussion about tools creation and dissemination in the sector. This event also launched the RADICAL SURVEY, which is now in process, collecting raw data on the needs of the sectors for input into a dynamic database (under construction) July 2001: Keyevent on ‘Tools for Participatory Shared Environments’, The WAAG, Amsterdam. February 2002: ComiXlam on ‘Professional Creatives Using Tools’, ESI, Angouleme. July 2002: Mediateque event on ‘Creatives Informing Tools Design and New Content Formats’, London. October 2002: PLENARY, ‘Research Agendas Developed in Creative Arts Labs: Tools for Enabling Interactive Content’, Dublin.

RADICAL Event Theme Summary Structure: RADICAL will feature three residential labs and two plenary conferences with the collective theme of "Tools for Enabling Interactive Content", focusing on the communities that need them, where in the content chain they are needed, and how they would be used. Objective: Through demonstration and discussion, to expose the limitations and bottlenecks inherent in current interactive publishing applications due to the fact that some of the enabling technology (authoring tools, software, standards, etc.) is either inappropriate or not yet available. Participants: Creative professionals, acting as catalysts in order to surface and advance the issues; users who wish to consume or create content on a personal or on a collective basis; technology developers and researchers; content commissioners and channel operators. Approach: The first lab will deal with the needs of the end-user, as seen through the eyes of the creative community, and will focus on applications in the area of participatory, shared environments. The examples shown will illustrate synchronous and asynchronous environments, as well as small- and large-scale experiments. The second lab will leverage the extensive experience of creative professionals in using off-the-shelf and bespoke authoring tools. The aim of the second lab is to develop a channel for tool development that directly links the creative and development communities, leading to more relevant tools. The third lab will focus on dissemination, combining the results from the two previous labs to illustrate how the creative community, by using optimal tools and having its finger on the consumer’s pulse, is in a perfect position to inform new means of content development and new content formats.

Dr Lizbeth Goodman, Director Institute for New Media Performance Research/SMARTlab UK or