The Creative Exchange was an AHRC-funded Knowledge Exchange hub, which aimed to explore the broad theme of digital public space: the idea that “anyone, anywhere, anytime can access, explore and create with digital content”.
The hub was designed to facilitate knowledge exchange between arts and humanities academics and creative industries, who came together in events organised by the hub to generate projects exploring this space. This was supported by an innovative approach to PhD training, where the team of students funded by the hub worked on a series of collaboration-driven projects with partner oraganisations.
Within the hub, Newcastle’s approach was to create new technologies that expose and explore the possibilities of this design space, focusing on two sub-themes:
Performance, Liveness and Participation
Technologies like smartphones and social networks are changing the ways in which we participate with live events and other media. When consuming media or attending an event, it is now common to communicate with fellow audience members, with the wider world, and even with performers themselves. We will explore how digital prototypes can be used to offer new forms of participation in live events, broadcasts and in public spaces and attempt to understand how this affects the experiences of audience members and performers.
Stories, Archives and Living Heritage
We record our personal stories and cultural heritages through different types of media, including photos, writing, audio and video. Technology is making it easier to generate, archive and search these narratives across these different media, both through the web and through the increasing use of interactive exhibits in museums and public spaces. As large digital archives become available, we will explore new ways of accessing, creating, exploring and remixing this content to create new experiences.