MA Musings

Science board game "Compendium" 2018 Looking at a financial model for innovation and entrepreneurship. The creation of the Kickstarter Website in 2009 has to be one of the most innovative solutions to enabling entrepreneurship to flourish. It allows a variety of creative and technical projects to set a target, offer rewards and then for backers to pledge money in order for the project to be realised. Often there are smaller rewards plus a big final product too... this allows people to support creators and artists whose project they believe in, and want to exist in the world rather than just pre-purchasing an item. If sufficient funding is not raised then all pledges are cancelled and the project cancelled. It can of course learn from that, maybe look at why it did not reach it's goal and work harder to solve those issues. Marketing and social media play a huge part in the success of Kickstarter funding pledges, As does a professional and engaging pitch. ...

Christmas Window display 2017 How are the team working? What is the nature of Entrepreneurship? Initial meeting of just the three of us today, to talk in more depth about our joint project. We have a good combination of skills to go forward with, although none of us are particularly website/graphic poster art based, everyone is keen to learn new skills as well as use their current ones... both R and B have a background in film/animation so it would be good to incorporate that somehow into our final piece. We are still all interested in the robot/AI/human ethics idea, not quite sure how that might develop into an "innovation" yet - obviously my own area of AI based digital pattern cutting is also a possibility but it seems a bit of a cop-out as it's already my major project area... then again maybe it's an opportunity for my personal expertise to be of use to the team... We might want to interview industry people as part of our website research - maybe even v...

Lego women of NASA series Hewitt, J. (2017) I have been very much enjoying the guest lecturers this term. First Dr Parik Goswami introduced us to the world of Innovation, Invention and Exploitation. Invention being a new idea and innovation being the development and implementation of an idea, while exploitation is the final stage that of marketing/selling/using the innovation. He encouraged us to think big, not worry about trying to do everything ourselves, join forces, employ others and not limit ourselves. Respecting other disciplines, breaking down boundaries and collaborating to grow beyond our niche interests. He pointed out the importance of observation - looking for a gap in the market or a common problem and gave many useful pointers for dealing with IP, patents, copyright trademarks, etc and suggesting ways of monetising ideas through licensing, franchising and assignment etc. I was reminded of Dorothy Vaughan of NASA in the film Hidden Figures who, discovering her m...

Retrieved from wallpaper.com     Futuristic Cities Today I participated in an inaugral workshop organised by the Alan Turing Institute (also the national center for AI research) as part of researcher Helen Olivers PHD at Cambridge University. Based around wearable technologies, creative narratives and the relationship between people, their emotional well being and technology, the workshop was fun and thought provoking. It was also really interesting to see another researchers approach to gathering Data in an area that is, like my own, also crossing the artistic and technological boundaries. Storytelling formed a major part of this workshop alongside some physical prototyping with paper, glue and glitter! I have signed up to participate in the longer research process which may take up to 2 years, with a few workshops a year and some interviews. I hope that it may lead to a deeper understanding of this area as well as forming important academic contacts in my are...

Searle, P. (2017) Radium88 in Concert This document, The Ecology of Culture (A Report commissioned by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Cultural Value Project) by John Holden Visiting Professor, City University, London Honorary Professor, University of Hong Kong January 2015, was very interesting on a personal level. I paused to consider how the industries I've worked in have been a part of creative ecology model... where they fit into different sections and networks - and realised I've experienced all forms of the 3 spheres that make up his model. Publicly funded, Commercially funded and Amateur/Homemade. I received benefits in the 1990's to be in a band (publicly funded) - which made an enormous difference to my creative potential - I had time to make music (which I still do today - 11 albums and counting) and also created costume and art which led to starting my own business... obviously I hoped at that point that the band would be invested in by...

Deepart Algorithm and Hewitt, J. (2018) Intergalactic To develop my own final design to backtrack the algorithmic process through, I created an assortment of work through the deepart algorithm, combining silhouettes of fashion croquis with various neural networking images, chess piece motifs, constellations and other related ideas. These designs will give me an AI generated starting point for the garment I shall be aiming to reach via my manual AI  neural network algorithm.... I shall start with a tube and get a different student each time to alter the shape a little - aiming to get steadily closer to the final design.... and pattern cutting each stage of the designs evolution....

Robot at The Manchester Museum of Science and Industry (2017) Putting together teams, who and why? what's the brief? Teams are assembling nicely for the Material Revolution Conference... although we were a large group interested in the digital aspects, we have split fairly naturally into 3 smaller teams. Our task will be to create a promotional poster and website for a new material/way of working/concept or product that relates to one of the themes of the conference, targeting one of more of the companies that will be present at the gala drinks reception. There was a little shyness in the groups at first, perhaps because we are all a little unsure of what exactly we are letting ourselves in for, and also knowing we will be relying on people we have only just met for our grades. That is quite a difficult trust exercise, and reflects fairly accurately concerns of new developmental teams in industry  too. My team has a good spread of complimentary disciplines (a pattern cut...