All posts by pfry

Digital Journalism, News, Students, Women in Computing

Marta Portocarrero, wins The Guardian’s Student Digital Journalist of the Year

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Marta Portocarrero a recent graduate from the Goldsmiths MA in Digital Journalism has just won the Student Digital Journalist of the Year.  We talk to her about her promising plans for the future in multimedia journalism and her upcoming internship at The Guardian.

Firstly many congratulations on winning the award. Can you tell me a bit about the piece you submitted for the award?

For this award I submitted three different pieces, which were all my assignments on Sandbox (a module of my MA). One was a long piece of writing about how it is to live in a hostel for a long time. It’s called “Settling Down in a Hostel“ and, apart from writing, includes photography, video and parallax scrolling. The second one is a data-driven piece on Bike Theft in South East London. I have created a WordPress blog for that and analysed bike theft in different boroughs of South East London. It was useful to understand a bit more of data and play around with visualizations. The last one, is, again, a long piece of writing on a guy who has built his own houseboat and community in Deptford (“Living in a Floating Community“). This one is more “stylish” in what concerns to digital elements. It has a video banner and different pictures displays. I tried to explore my video skills and, as a result, there are two videos which are fundamental in the piece too.

What research did you undertake for the project during your time studying at Goldsmiths?

Since all the projects were part of my work for Sandbox, I worked hard and tried to apply all the skills I’ve learned in class but also to push a bit my boundaries each time, although I was far from thinking I could submit them for any award. For the first project (about the hostel), I interviewed a friend of mine who was living in a hostel for over three years and who had a great life story and allowed me to publish it. The research was basically finding a good topic and a great character to illustrate it. The second one was slightly more technical. I have decided to write about bike theft because there are a lot of people who cycle in London and because my bicycle was also stolen once, so I could somehow relate to the topic. I looked for data and found out that Metropolitan Police have a good database on that, so all I had to do was scraping their website, querying the data, building visualizations and writing a story according to my findings. The third one was similar to the first one and based on a good community story and a strong character. I also researched a bit on data related to houseboats moored on the Thames, but ended up not including it in the project.

Can you talk a little bit about why you chose the MA in Digital Journalism at Goldsmiths?

I did my BA in Journalism in Portugal and, then, I struggled to find a job there. So I went travelling for a while to clear up my mind a bit and decided that I would like to study some more. I quickly understood I wasn’t particularly interested in politics, economics, culture, etc… so the way wouldn’t be necessarily related to the content, but more to the shape. At the same time I was feeling more and more curious about how some digital pieces I could find online were built. When The New York Times published the Snow Fall, I understood that there were people actually doing what I had in mind. So, I emailed some of its journalist and asked for advice. They told me which skills I should aim to achieve and I started researching. I knew that the UK was a country where digital journalism was appreciated and I have found some interesting universities here. In the end, Goldsmiths was the most attractive one and, so far, seemed to have been the best choice.

Where are you currently working now?

I keep looking for a job. I’ve submitted some applications, here and abroad, and I am waiting on their answer, mostly multimedia/digital positions. Meanwhile, I keep doing some freelance projects similar to the ones I have done during the MA or some journalistic videos and short documentaries. I’ve recently done an internship at the interactive desk of The Financial Times. Since I’ve finished the MA the times haven’t been the easiest ones, but they have been essential for me to understand what I really want to do and which areas are not so much of my interest.

Whats on the horizon for the future?

First, I will do the internship at the multimedia desk of The Guardian, which I am really excited about. Then, depending on the results of my job applications, and if everything goes well, I may end up working on a multimedia desk of a media company here or abroad. If nothing goes as planned, I may try to look for some funding to do a web-documentary, which is an area that really fascinates me, given it’s combination of filming and technology (web designing, coding). In any project, I tend to prioritize storytelling, so in either way I think I would be happy.

Inspiration, Students

PC Music #3 in FactMag’s 50 best albums list

Recently graduated Pop & Music Computing students from Goldsmiths chart at number 3 in FactMag’s 2014 50 best albums list, under the name PC Music produced in association with DIS and Red Bull.

It is a set of mixes from A. G. Cook, GFOTY, Danny L Harle, Lil Data, Nu New Edition and Kane West and works as a kind of showcase for the artists who are associated with the label.

PC Music have been making huge waves in the scene with often divided opinions. They emerged just last year (2013) with some dismissing them as ‘a kind of joke’, with others describing them as ‘the most compelling pop music in recent memory’.

Whatever side you take, they raise important questions in this ‘post ironic’ landscape, forcing you to re-evaluate your views around pop music and sampling.

FACTMAG 

Uncategorized

4-year funded PhD places in Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence

partners

10 fully-funded studentships are available for 2015/16 entry in the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence (IGGI), to conduct cutting-edge research and train the next generation of researchers, designers, developers and entrepreneurs in digital games.

IGGI is a collaboration between three UK Universities: the University of York, the University of Essex and Goldsmiths College, University of London. IGGI PhDs will be based at their principal supervisor’s University site with travel to the other sites for team and training activities.

IGGI brings together 60 industrial partners from the UK games industry and related organisations (including Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, The Creative Assembly, Codemasters, Rebellion, TIGA, and more:  see www.iggi.org.uk/our-industrial-partners/. IGGI PhDs will have the opportunity to engage in placements at these partner organisations, as well as international research labs, during their PhD research.

In addition to conducting research with world-leading academics and industry partners, IGGI PhDs will participate in global game jams, co-organise and participate in an annual games symposium, and engage with industry-led seminars. They will also receive training from experts in Games Development, Games Design, Research Skills and a range of optional modules including AI, computer vision, human-computer interaction, storytelling, graphics, sound and robotics.

To contact potential supervisors directly see: http://www.iggi.org.uk/supervisors/ for a list), or we can help you to choose a principal supervisor from York, Essex or Goldsmiths based on your interests and background.

The deadline for applications is 5pm on Friday 30th January 2015. Shortlisting will take place on Tuesday 10th February and successful candidates will be contacted within 24 hours. Interviews will be held at the University of York on Friday 20th February, 2015.

For further information and details of how to apply go to www.iggi.org.uk.

Events, Inspiration, Students, Uncategorized

THE N0THING, SEEKING ANSWERS_   

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On 4th and 5th December C&R space in Deptford held performances of the work of  Elías Merino, Rian Treanor and Daniel del Rio with ‘three approaches to abstract computer-generated music’. They presented their project ‘The Nothing, Seeking Answers’ a multifocal installation, based on a set of unanswered questions, conceptual reflections and hermeneutics about abstract computer music and algorithmic composition.

The installation allowed for complete immersion within the varied soundscapes, set in darkness apart from the spill of light from the entrance, with the composers completely hidden from view.

Elías Merino, a composer and sonic artist presented an abstract composition of pure sine waves against,  distortion, fizzle and creeks, contrasting meditative sound against abrasive noise. He develops his work in computer-generated composition, electroacoustic music, soundscape and concrète sounds as an abstract and imaginary object away from the acoustic environment, processing sound through digital technology.

Uncategorized

Undergrads featured in the 1st International Web Audio conference

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Three of Goldsmiths undergraduate Music Computing students, Nevo Segal, Jakub Fiala and Hugh Rawlinson have had a paper entitled “Meyda: an audio feature extraction library for the Web Audio API” accepted in the international Web Audio conference at IRCAM sponsored by Mozilla.

WAC is the first international conference dedicated to web audio technologies and applications. The conference addresses research, development, design and standards concerned with emerging audio-related web technologies such as Web Audio API, Web RTC, WebSockets and Javascript.

This is a fantastic achievement for an Undergraduate project and the department are hugely proud.

WAC: http://wac.ircam.fr/

EAVI, Events, Inspiration, Staff profiles and activity

Atau Tanaka, Fiducial Voice Beacons: Action @ Science Museum Lates

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Wednesday 26th November 

20.00 – 20.20 and 21.00 – 21.20

@ Information Age gallery
Science Museum, Exhibition Road, SW7 2DD London, United Kingdom

Information Age is a newly opened gallery within the Science Museum which celebrates more than 200 years of innovation in communication and information technologies. Artist Atau Tanaka has been invited to respond to the newly commissioned artwork for the gallery, Fiducial Voice Beacons by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Fiducial Voice Beacons is an interactive sound and light installation consisting of beacons situated within the ceiling of the Information Age gallery. Each beacon stores sound recordings that can be heard by visitors using an app on their mobile device. The sound recordings are voice messages that relate to information and have been collected from scientists, poets, artists and thinkers from the past and the present. Visitors are invited to interact with the artwork and to record their own messages thereby replacing the existing ones and producing a quasi-living archive.

In Lozano-Hemmer’s artwork the audience enjoy the relatively personal experience of listening to the audio content through headphones or the speaker on their hand-held device. Atau Tanaka, together with Rebecca Fiebrink, Steph Horak and Adam Parkinson (members of the Embodied Audiovisual Interaction (EAVI) research group) will present two unique performances that transform the usually localised listening experience of the work into a shared, collective event. Tanaka’s performance the installation will be “played” by the performers with the use of smartphones that are plugged into a sound system, creating a moment where the sound of the beacons is rendered palpable to a larger audience.

This event has been organised by MFA curating students from Goldsmiths, University of London.

computation and culture, Data Science, MSc Data Science

BIG DATA and algorithmic abstractions

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‘The era of ubiquitous computing and big data is now firmly established, with more and more aspects of our everyday lives being mediated, augmented, produced and regulated by digital devices and networked systems powered by software. Software is fundamentally composed of algorithms — sets of defined steps structured to process data to produce an output. And yet, to date, there has been little critical reflection on algorithms, nor empirical research into their nature and work’ – Rob Kitchin

On December 11th 2014 Rob Kitchin will present his paper ‘Thinking critically about and researching algorithms’ in the RHB Cinema at Goldsmiths from 11:00am – 1:00pm.

His paper will begin with an introduction to what constitutes an ‘algorithm’, how they function, and outline the numerous tasks that they now perform in our society. He will address the short fallings of our understandings of algorithms, both in their formulaic structure and their operations in the world and how they are affected by interactions with other algorithms and users.

Critiquing the way in which scientists and technologists would usually present algorithms as ‘purely formal beings of reason’ Rob will discuss how they can transform into ‘abstract entities’ in which their work is often ‘out of control’.

‘…they are: often ‘black boxed’; heterogeneous, often contingent on hundreds of other algorithms, and are embedded in complex socio-technical assemblages; ontogenetic and performative…’

Often the work of many different hands and processes and dispersed across vast networks algorithms become difficult to decode and find their point of origin. They could be considered ‘emergent and constantly unfolding’.

How to govern their nature and work, although difficult, should be considered urgent, with a greater certainty about how ‘algorithms exercise their power over us’.

The lecture will address these concerns and suggest how we may approach researching algorithms through several different access points including: examining source code, reverse engineering and unpacking the wider socio-technical assemblages and examining how algorithms do work in the world.