Salford's Prof Andy Miah on Wearable Technology. 3.30-4.30, MediaCity, Salford University Campus Room 3.17.
and Prof Tim Wall (Birmingham City University) on the history of the BBC's engagement with popular music. 4.35 - 5.35, MediaCity, Salford University Campus Room 3.17.
All welcome, and drinks in the Dock Bar afterwards!
Internal Speaker: Prof Andy Miah (Chair in Science Communication and Digital media, University of Salford)
OK Glass? The Aspirations and Anxieties of the Google Glass Generation
This discussion explores online discourses about Google Glass, over a period
where the devices were not yet available. It examines the aspirations and
anxieties of the developers and the perspectives of (potential) user groups, so
as to develop an understanding of how people imagine the impact of wearable
technologies on society. The research draws on videos made by various parties,
which show Google Glass in use, but which also parody the discourse surround its
transformative potential. It also the content within the Google Glass lens
itself - the lens within the lens - providing an additional layer of content and
narrative about Glass. Analyses also take place on content related to the Google
Glass promotional campaign #ifihadglass, teasing out the ways in which the use
of Glass was imagined. The conclusions speak to the imagined, transformative
potential of Glass specifically and wearable technologies generally, which may
set a new research agenda for the next ten years in studies of digital
culture.External Speaker: Prof Tim Wall (Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies, Birmingham City University)
Popular Music and the BBC
This presentation will focus on three moments in the history of the BBC’s relationship with popular music. I’ll examine the way that jazz entered broadcasts of the early BBC in the 1920s and 30s, and especially the way the new corporation struggled to deal with the idea that jazz was a sophisticated metropolitan form of entertainment, while others saw it as a radical new form of music that provided a strong sense of a new cultural identity to its listeners. It is interesting to note that the BBC was still struggling with these ideas in the late 1960s when the BBC completely reorganised its radio broadcasting into Radios One to Four. This is often seen as the moment in which the BBC accepted the challenge of the sea-based pilots but, as I will show, it is far more complex than this, and these endeavours resulted in a radical, if compromised, attempt to rethink popular music. I’ll complete the analysis with a discussion of the Later…. and X Factor. As twenty-first century popular music television, these programmes represent very different institutional takes on discourses of popular music and the way it can be mediated for domestic consumption. Rather ambitiously, I’ll use very different approaches to understand each of these moments, framing the 1920s by focusing on the (then) new wired and wireless technologies, grappling with the 1960s through ideas of institutionalised culture, and opening up today’s BBC using Barthesian ideas of mythology. Here I’m consciously seeking to study each period using a framework that is usually used to study other moments. In doing so I hope to open up some fundamental questions about what we think we know about music and the BBC, and about method and insight. This should be an interesting intellectual provocation for anyone studying media and/or music culture.
Tim Wall is Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies and Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media at Birmingham City University. He researches into the production and consumption cultures around popular music and radio, and work on knowledge exchange projects with music and radio organisations and the wider creative industries. Most recently he has been applying insights from music to activism and citizen journalism in the Arab region. His recent publications have included the second edition of his book Studying Popular Music Culture, and articles on music radio online, punk fanzines, the transistor radio, personal music listening, popular music on television, television music histories, jazz collectives, Duke Ellington on the radio, The X Factor and jazz on the BBC 1922 to 1955.
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