[spectre] Media Lab Culture in the UK

[marc]

Sorry for any cross posting...

Media Lab Culture in the UK

By Charlotte Frost

http://www.furtherfield.org/features/articles/media-lab-culture-uk

Though the term ‘lab’ conjures the image of a fairly sanitised 
environment optimised for scientific experiments and populated by people 
in white coats, media labs – centres for creative experimentation – are 
quite different. At their most basic, they are spaces – mostly physical 
but sometimes also virtual – for sharing technological resources like 
computers, software and even perhaps highly expensive 3D printers; 
offering training; and supporting the types of collaborative research 
that do not easily reside elsewhere.

They saw the internet’s myriad ways of changing the way we make, think 
about and share art – not to mention its capacity for social empowerment 
– and wanted to harness these qualities quickly and effectively. With 
many practitioners coming from the spaces, practices and communities 
forged by the independent film and video movement, the phenomenon of the 
UK media lab was born. However, despite the importance of these spaces 
as the hybrid homes of the then emergent and now embedded creative 
activities that characterise today’s rich field of digital and media 
practices, their history and contribution to current lab environments 
has been little discussed outside a niche arena.

This article is part of a much larger survey commissioned by 
Furtherfield called 'Collaboration and Freedom – The World of Free and 
Open Source Art'.
All other articles/files can be found on the P2p Foundation wiki site.
http://p2pfoundation.net/World_of_Free_and_Open_Source_Art

Commissioned by Arts Council England for Thinking Digital 2011.

-- 
Other Info:

Furtherfield - A living, breathing, thriving network
http://www.furtherfield.org - for art, technology and social change since 1997

Also - Furtherfield Gallery & Social Space:
http://www.furtherfield.org/gallery

About Furtherfield:
http://www.furtherfield.org/content/about

Netbehaviour - Networked Artists List Community.
http://www.netbehaviour.org

http://identi.ca/furtherfield
http://twitter.com/furtherfield