Digital Democracies Masterclass #5: History Hack with Judith Ricketts Online

This session proposes a series of provocations for artists, writers, music makers, thinkers, tinkers, activists, hackers and daydreamers, with an interest in storytelling and histories, or whose practice uses historic material to make new work.

The provocations proposed are designed to help you to map out your thinking around the ways in which you can consider the addition of technologies as a new adaptive or extended layer in your existing practice.

Innovation in the creative process or in the delivery of existing work with the addition of technologies requires time, consideration, patience and outcome driven experimentation.

How then, can technologies connect us to new audiences and help reveal new inclusive ways to explore heritage beyond the way we deliver our current practice? How can this new approach help to broaden the reach and diversity of your intended audience? In doing so, does this approach extend the life of the narrative, into new narratives, into new artefacts or into new formats?

Join Judith Ricketts, a Serious Games Developer and a Lecturer in digital media arts. Her practice uses the spatial memory of the city’s built environment with archives and technology to tell interactive stories, in which she often asks the same series of questions when making new work.

Our archives, be they formal documents housed in institutions or oral histories, folk lore, myth, legend, music score, document or other; can often miss their connection points with the people and communities whose voices they represent.

In this context the format for this session is to approach the series of questions posed with an open mind so we can begin to build on what we know, on the journey towards greater representation.

A limited number of 12 places are available for this free 2 hour History hack a practical session, where Judith will show you examples of how to bring together histories and technologies in order to add new methods to your existing practice. In return we invite you to show examples of the work you are considering converting into new digital assets, together we will map out direction/s to help you achieve this.

What format will the event be?

The session will take place on Zoom. Please be prepared to have your cameras on as this session will be conversational and participatory format, you will be asked to be actively involved by showing, playing or reading your work, everyone will be able to ask questions and engage with the artists present.

In this session, we will cover:

How to look at your existing art form and to incorporate digital assets.

How to approach a new project incorporating digital delivery from the outset.

What interactive digital tools are available to incorporate in your project.

How to approach cross-platform assets building.

When to write, and what to write about your practice.

You can also ask questions on the day using the Zoom live stream chat facility.

Who is it for?

Free places are available for anyone who defines themselves as an artist, musician, or a writer. From beginners, to established artists, writers or musicians, of any age no specific prior digital knowledge is needed beyond your existing expertise.

Sign up

So that we understand your practice and in order to get the most from the session you will be asked to carry out two tasks;

To upload an original a piece of music up to 3-5 minutes (.mp4), a piece of writing (300 words, .pdf) or an image (600 x 900 200dpi.jpg) of your current art form.

Tell us how you imagine working with digital e.g. which technology are you interested in? - this does not need to be practical an example of work you have seen is a useful starting point your blue sky thinking is what we would like to hear.