Urban Learning Space Seminars Urban Learning Space

Knowing what is the 'next big thing' is a factor in success and survival: no surprise then that the study of signs is known as 'semiotics' from the greek word for oracle. But how does one become good at reading signs and why does it matter so much?

Signs dominate everyday life: they can be natural signs, for example a rumble in the sky gives advance notice of a thunderstorm, emotional signs, such as a smile, or manufactured road signs, shop signs and product signs. Signs are the essential building blocks of our communicative environment, and in the context of brand development, the 'right' mark is analogous to success; yet many people, although ready to acknowledge the importance of sending out the right signals, feel ambivalent about signs.

Shona Maciver explores the compelling nature of the sign, its capacity to bully and confront, and the gulf between what it is and what it stands for.

Audience

Ideal for all those who work in the creative industries in Scotland; designers, creatives, artists, writers, researchers, architects, cultural academics, thinkers, teachers, students, gamers and stylists’.

Biography

Shona Maciver is MD of Locofoco Limited (www.locofoco.co.uk). The consultancy has a strong reputation for creativity in print and screen and an impressive client list, including the likes of s1homes, jobs and play.com, (UK Marketing Society Brand of the Year 2005), Museums Galleries Scotland, Visit Scotland and Road Safety Scotland.

The music business is in meltdown - and professional musicians are having to re-assess everything about how they sustain their livelihoods. If people simply won't pay £15 for a CD from the high street, what will they pay for? Recorded music is tending towards being ubiquitous and free(ish), but live music is tending towards high prices for a unique experience. In the face of these trends, how can the power of the internet - particularly broadband and social networks - be used to forge a new connection, both cultural and commercial, between musicians and their audience? With a new self-financed Hue And Cry album in his USB, Pat Kane set out on a journey with his brother Greg to find a new way to being 'Ourselves, Online'. This seminar tells the story of that journey, which might (or might not) end up happily ever after...

The music business is in meltdown - and professional musicians are having to re-assess everything about how they sustain their livelihoods. If people simply won't pay £15 for a CD from the high street, what will they pay for? Recorded music is tending towards being ubiquitous and free(ish), but live music is tending towards high prices for a unique experience. In the face of these trends, how can the power of the internet - particularly broadband and social networks - be used to forge a new connection, both cultural and commercial, between musicians and their audience? With a new self-financed Hue And Cry album in his USB, Pat Kane set out on a journey with his brother Greg to find a new way to being 'Ourselves, Online'. This seminar tells the story of that journey, which might (or might not) end up happily ever after...

There is a revolution in the design of learning spaces all round the world and inevitably this is now impacting on the design of corporate space too. As corporations aspire to become learning organisations and move away from their training rooms and training culture they're increasing looking to designs for schools to inform their transformation. At the same time the design of schools and universities has much to learn from the radical new ways that people organise their working lives : for example in the new media industries. This talk explores how, in designing spaces for learning and working, there is a need for dialogue.

There is a revolution in the design of learning spaces all round the world and inevitably this is now impacting on the design of corporate space too. As corporations aspire to become learning organisations and move away from their training rooms and training culture they're increasing looking to designs for schools to inform their transformation. At the same time the design of schools and universities has much to learn from the radical new ways that people organise their working lives : for example in the new media industries. This talk explores how, in designing spaces for learning and working, there is a need for dialogue.

Because of the increased distributed nature of production technology, not just for immaterial production but for physical production as well, it is increasingly possible to imagine modes of social life which combine re-localised production with global open design communities.
How can we move away from a world that is based on a false notion that the natural world is abundant, and on a equally false notion that we need to impede the free sharing of social innovations through the creation of artificial scarcities in the digital world? The answer may be a reliance on the emerging peer to peer dynamic, and the emergence of peer production, peer governance, and peer property formats as an alternative ways of organizing social life. The increasingly global availability of social cooperation technologies is empowering and enabling the creation of global-local communities that are able to directly create social value, through new types of for-benefit institutions. In this lecture, Michel Bauwens, founder of the Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives, will examine the key characteristics of this new mode of production, how it creates new business models, and how it could be enabled and empowered by new Partner State-based approaches by public authorities at all levels.