University News Last updated 10 September 2009
New media experts from Birmingham City University are going to be bringing jazz to a new audience.
The media academics from the university's Interactive Cultures research team are working with Scarborough Jazz Festival to take the event online and make it accessible to people who cannot get there, or those who wouldn't normally listen to the musical genre. The team led by Prof Tim Wall are going to be using a range of techniques such as photography, blogging, text messages and handheld personal digital video to put the festival online. However, instead of it being a film of the concerts, selected audience members, musicians and organisers will be briefed to film whatever they think is interesting: the buzz of the audience, the surrounding environment, snippets of the music performed, and discussions around jazz and the event.
The team from the University, which includes music business academic Andrew Dubber, and technical developers Dr Simon Barber and Jez Collins, will then gather together the footage, photos and writing to build a website. It's hoped the site will serve as an introduction to jazz for people who normally wouldn't go to a jazz festival or even listen to the music.
Tim Wall said: "The way we will put together the website will experiment with the ways in which the stories we captured can be navigated to give visitors a real sense of what goes on at the Scarborough Jazz Festival.
"We'll be working with a bit of composed structure and quite a lot of improvisation; just like jazz itself."
Simon Barber added "Although team members have worked on projects like this before, with Aftershock in Italy and with the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, and we've used the technology with numerous music businesses, we don't have a fixed idea of what we're going to end up with - but this is what's going to be so interesting about it."
"I'm very excited about this initiative," says Mike Gordon, Scarborough Jazz Festival Director. "It has a nice bit of improvisation built into it, which is appropriate for a jazz weekend! This is a way to reach out to new and wider audiences and really promote the festival online."
If you'd like to find out more about us, you can visit us at
http://interactivecultures.org/