Natural Media Workshop

This workshop will examine what our current imaging and sensing technologies do to our perception.

We will examine, using practical examples, the potential to develop more ‘natural’ media and technologies by broadening the focus of attention to the whole visual, auditory, tactile and sensual field. The aim is to re-incorporate peripheral awareness into our experience using these multiple sense inputs.

We are living in an increasingly mediated world. As a result, we are becoming dependent on digital systems that create narrow perceptual channels and bottlenecks. For instance, current mobile technology predominantly narrows our focus and makes us oblivious to what is going on around us. We have a vast perceptual bandwidth, which is gradually being shut down and eliminated by the predominance of screen-based interaction.

Natural media aims to uncover the mechanisms of what actually happens when we move from direct experience to living through photographs, paintings, films and VR. However, it is important to focus on more than one predominant sense (vision) in order to start realigning and potentially redesigning our perception using Natural Media.  As a result this workshop will also explore what is the peripheral space of the other senses such as hearing, touch, taste and smell and in addition explore artificial senses such as the recently released ‘North Sense’.

We will examine whether perceptually Natural Media and associated technologies have a positive impact on Cognition, Memory, Attention Deficit Disorder, Empathy, Wellbeing, and Body Dysmorphia.

Workshop led by:
Carl Smith, Director Learning Technology Research Centre (LTRC), Ravensbourne

with
Nick Lambert,  Ravensbourne
Jazz Rasool, LTRC, Ravensbourne
Robert Pepperell,  FOVOLAB, Cardiff Metropolitan University
Tony Langford, FOVOLAB, Cardiff Metropolitan University

 Image: “No one ever painted exactly what they saw”, Interactive computer animation by Robert Pepperell and Alistair Burleigh, © Fovolab 2017