This happened
Yesterday, Anna Frew and I spent the afternoon testing out minidrones for some workshops we have on soon with the BBC, a disability group, a school, and some arts organization employees. Each of the workshops aims to provide a flight experience and an insight into some of the things that drones can be used for within an creative setting. Here's what we got upto...
and here's the full edit of our 2hour session.
This week, I took part in a dinner debate about media, ethics, and dementia. The conversation was run by the Dementia Festival of ideas, a year-long programme of events designed to interrogate key issues in dementia studies and research, along with an exploration of how to create novel forms of public engagement and public responsibility around the subjects. The debate took place with a range of experts fom different areas of interest, from journalism to medical ethics and was a really far reaching discussion. What struck me is how much has yet to be done, to ensure that care is adequate, and that social stigma around dementia is challenged.
Some possible interventions will follow from this event, including finding a way to empower families of suffers to take more decisive action to influence best practice and care within hospitals, along with developing a university alliance that can take strategic action in influencing policy, agenda setting, and generating research funds.
Wearable Technology, Augmented Reality, & Drone Cameras
Today's talk at #SportAccord went really well. It was the first time I'd used flight within a lecture and fortunately nobody got hurt. In actual fact, it was all very safe and I think it made much more real the way in which drone technology is becoming a part of the fabric of our lives.
Here are the slides from the talk
and finally, the lecture itself
Yesterday, I took part in a panel debate about what cities will look like in the future, what they need to do to deliver effective and compelling sports events, and how new forms of technological culture are changing audience expectations of urban life. My contribution focused on the Internet of Things, the role of Big Data, and the opportunities to nurture cultural change through technology.
Having been to 9 Olympic Games, I have seen a lot of change around how cities operate and yet there is still so much that can be done to use mega events as a catalyst for developing more digitally engaged legacies. I have yet to see a city that does this effectively and I think it has partly to do with the limited capacity of a city's people to own their digital legacy.
Consequently, my advocacy on this topic focuses on the need to create opportunities for data to empower people, rather than subject them to commercial exploitation. Sports have a key role to play given the growing economic impact around mobile health experiences.
Photo by Ksusha Kompan Photography
I was out flying again yesterday and managed to capture my son playing in the nearby islands. I find it really wonderful that he will have such films about his life captured in this way and it's another reminder of how drone technology is providing new memories of our lives. In the end, the best drone cinema experiences may be those simple, personal movies that are made, which tell us more about what life we have had. Oblivious to my filming him, or the wider perspective on where he is located, the film situated him within the place far more effectively than he could ever hope to perceive from ground level. I have no idea what he will make of a film like this when he is grown up, but, as his parent, I am sure I will find it very moving to look back and know more fully that he had all of this around him growing up and I think drone film making has the potential to make us feel this way, one way or another, wherever we live. That wider perspective we have on the world around us is simply breath taking.
freeflight-3-8d9ea9-h900
We are half way through the 12 month Project Daedalus, a Nesta Digital R&D for the Arts creative technology research prohect in which we have been exploring the creative potential of drones. Over this period, I've been learning to fly drones and am at a point where I feel pretty comfortable with control sticks, the conventional way of flying. However, the new Parrot Bebop drone uses a mobile device for flight. It's a very differnt experiece. The interface looks like this on the screen of the iPhone I use. The camera of the drone is visible as the background, with the controls overlaid onto it, from which you can control flight and camera.
So, after spending a few flights practicing, including some quite hair raising moments, here you have my first effort at shooting a dronie. One of the tricky things about the dronie is that controls are back to front, but this the first time I tried to think about film making while flying, which feels like a big step. Next is to choreograph an actual story.
ps. A Dronie is the new Selfie :)
My latest piece published in The Conversation takes a look at the Manifesto pledges from a digital point of view.
Yesterday, I spent the day at Chester Zoo, filming with our Brazilian PhD researcher Luiza Passos, who is working with the Golden Mantella frog, a species under threat in Madagascar, under the supervision of Professor Robert Young. In the afternoon, I gave a talk for Heads of Depts at the Zoo, talking about science communication opportunities. It was such a refreshing and engaging discussion and we've got so much to do, not least of which is working to build a really exciting and creative documentary programme around the amazing science that is happening at the zoo!
The morning started off without much expectation. I was Googling how to shoot the eclipse 15 mins before capturing this (nothing helped). Luckily, the cloud coverage was just right for this kind of shot.
Article published in Zocalo, picked up by TIME:
Students will be in the driver’s seat — Andy Miah
Technology will force universities to re-define their role within 21stcentury life, and this has a lot to do with the DIY generation, who figure out what they need to know via Google and Wikipedia. These platforms are the equivalent of the single-celled organisms that gave birth to humanity’s evolution.
In a world where learning experiences are ubiquitous and we rely less and less on institutions to deliver them, technology forces universities to re-think what they offer in the 21st century. Universities are no longer the gatekeepers of new knowledge, even less so with the rise of citizen science experiments, where non-experts can gather important data, and alternative qualification options, such as Mozilla Open Badges.
Students of tomorrow will want flexible, mobile-enabled learning experiences that are as compelling as film or theatre. The success of TED talks is indicative of the changing demands on teachers today and the changing attention economy of the new generation. Universities need to think carefully about how to curate learning experiences, making each lecture truly memorable and life-changing. The classroom now has to empower students to set the agenda and drive their own learning.
As we move into an era of sentient computing, universities need also to see technology not just as a vehicle for communicating ideas or enriching learning, but as a co-collaborator. Computers will become entities onto which students will project learning expectations. The machines will teach us, they will also learn, and they will spend more time with students than a lecturer ever can. If we want humans to remain at the heart of that interaction, we then need to really reconsider what we offer that they can’t.
Andy Miah is a professor and chair in science communication and future media at the University of Salford in Manchester, England. Follow him on Twitter @Andymiah.
My first talk for the School of Arts and Media at the University of Salford, Manchester ;)
As each month passes @SalfordUni, there is another amazing thing happening. The other week it was #SonicFusion, directed by Prof Stephen Davismoon who just happens to be best mates with Prof Eduardo Miranda, a remarkable composer and AI researcher at Plymouth, whom I have worked with and known for a few years now. There is a staggering amount of experimental innovation at Salford University and this weekend of really provocative and beautiful audio visual experiences was no exception. Here's what I grabbed during the weekend:
This week, I was in Seoul presenting at the Global Education Dialogue run by the British Council and co-hosted by hte Korean Council for University Education. The conference focused on the role of technology in the race for global talent and my talk developed the idea of 'intelligent learning systems' that can enable universities to get to a point where their staff student ratio is 1 to 1. Here's the @prezi
On Valentines Day, I was quoted in The Times for an article about the replacement of mirrors by screens. Here's a link to the article, but here's the full quotes I gave to Kaya Burgess, the article's author:
"As screens rapidly replace mirrors to occupy the reflective space in our lives, we find ourselves in a novel moment in history where we could, if we choose, actually see ourselves as others see us, rather than see the flipped version that mirrors generate. Yet, so far, we are sticking with the familarity of the reflected image. If selfie culture is realy about vanity and narcissism, then we might be smarter to use the screens to present us with what others see when they gaze in our direction and, if we do, the whole idea of reflection may become redundant. In 50 years, we might look upon our reflected selves with a degree of trepidation and anxiety.
"With the growing attention of the internet of things, the idea of smart mirrors is becoming ever more appealing. You could wake up in the morning and look into your smart mirror, which would quickly analyse your health and tell you if you are coming down with an illness, or whether you need to do a bit more exercise or get more sleep. Of course, these mirrors will not be mirrors at all, they will be ultra high definition screens, capable of providing all kinds of augmented reality content that will, hopefully, enrich our lives rather htan scare us all to death."
Today @SalfordUni, the Business School hosts a symposium on Digital Innovation, focusing on health applications. Here's my @prezi
Today, I published a piece on #drones for @conversationUK, which explores some of the new applications that are emerging and which were showcased at the Drones for Good international prize in the UAE last weekend. Here's the piece in full.
On 10th Feb, I will be the MC for an event run by the @UKTI in Paris looking tagged #FutureCity2015. In relation to this, I was asked also to make a film that would open the event, focusing discussion around new opportunities and foregrounding a number of technological changes to cities that are imminent.
Here it is:
The event is principally for business and will look like this.
09:30 Welcome by His Excellency Sir Peter Ricketts
British Ambassador to France
09:40 Current opportunities in France
Caroline Maurand, French Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy
10:05 Focus on the Grand Paris Project
Serge Dupont, Société du Grand Paris
10:20 Current opportunities in the UK
Dan Byles MP
10:45 Focus on London Regeneration Projects
Sue Vincent, Urban Design London
11:00 Coffee Break and Networking
11:30 Inspiring Case Studies in the UK:
Introduction to the Greenwich Automated Transport Environment (GATEway) project
Pierre Lefèvre, Greenwich GATEway project
Value from the Work of Many Hands
David Roberts, Igloo Regeneration
Paris-London – communicating vessels?
Michel Mossessian, Mossessian & Partners
12:15 Inspiring Case Studies in France:
French Placemaking British style – a collaborative hands-on approach
Kathryn Anderson, Barton Willmore
Grand Lyon
Gilles Vesco , Grand Lyon
The FFR Grand Stade – An urban catalyst
François Clément, Populous UK
13:00 Networking Lunch
14:00 Pre-arranged 20 minutes one to one B2B meetings between
French and British companies until 17:00
This month, I will have been using the photo sharing platform @Flickr for 10 years, posting nearly 1,000 photos per year. For a while, Flickr seemed to lose pace, as other new photo mobile applications like Instagram and even Twitter image came about. However, for a big screen, high-res photo experience, it is still the most beautiful place to visit and I am still 100% behind it. Here is a journey through that decade, with a few highlight images.
Last night, I went along to shoot Rae Morris' first gig in her UK tour, which launches her debut album. It was an extraordinary night and she's clearly going places. A huge treat was also to hear Fryars, who are phenomenal, quirky, and all kinds of interesting. Here are some shots from the night.
Today, I am giving a talk at the #BETT2015 Show in London and also participating in a panel on social media in education. It's a huge event and I've never been before, so it will be fun to discover what it's all about. It's still early days for the Internet of Things in education, so there's a lot to talk about and I'll post slides here at the end of the day, summarising my talk and some of the discussions.
