Social Technologies
Social Technologies is an emerging field concerned with the social impact of network technologies and the ways in which people collaborate to make or use technology. One focus is on the proliferation of social technologies in urban spaces and the changing nature of the city.
Design, other creative practices, and methodologies from engineering and social sciences offer a set of resources to explore the implications of social technologies for the many different kinds of people who make, use and are affected by them.
Current Research Activities
Advancing understanding of online, mobile and unplugged social networks, using art and design to offer new perspectives. A focus is Social Networking Unplugged, the first major art exhibition to present a comprehensive and creative look at social networking. Here disruptive cultural probes ask what would happen if online social networks were 'unplugged.'
Project Overview
Computers have become social interfaces for sharing digital media and collaborating to build online communities and folksonomies. Social technologies are network technologies that create an extension of social space, or that support group interaction.
The research project aims to advance understanding of online relationship building and social networks, to explore specific concerns around the technology such as young people and safety, and also to investigate how the requirements for social networking tools vary when sat behind a desk at a computer and when roaming through the city.
Underlying it is an interest in how artists, designers, performers and curators can develop and elucidate new perspectives on the ways in which people collaborate to make or use technology. The ImaginationLancaster team are working with international artists to present 20 world premieres, UK firsts and commissions, and an ImaginationLancaster researcher is an artist in 2 of those projects. Tens of thousands of people will take place in the project as active participants, and some of these will be asked to take part in experimental social interactions designed to offer new perspectives on the phenomenon of online social networking and virtual worlds.
The project is the first collaboration between LICA and ImaginationLancaster at Lancaster University. Other partners include Piccadilly Partnership, Martin Stockley Associates, Manchester City Council, Arts Council England, Manchester Digital, Manchester Digital Development Agency and Manchester Arndale. It has been funded by a £78,000 Arts Council England National Activities grant and is a part of a activities for which £250,000 has been raised. The project will take place in Manchester, London and Leeds with potential to visit Asia subsequently.
The project will explore the multiple, overlapping social spaces that make up the city, and study the interface between social technologies and lived, social spaces. Its focus will be upon the proliferation of social technologies in urban spaces, the everyday creativity of urban populations, and the use of arts-based methodologies to explore urban social futures.
Project Overview
Cities are made up of multiple, overlapping social spaces, from branded places, to the digital sphere, and the public realm. The project will develop an applied understanding of social spaces and social technologies as a framework for addressing the issues confronting urban planners, architects, politicians and designers, and that shape the way urban spaces are occupied and produced. The project shall ground analysis of the city in a consideration of social urban spaces, with a focus on the implications of social spaces and social technologies for the many different kinds of people who make, use and are affected by them.
A central interest is the relationship between social technologies and the city. In the augmented city digital infrastructure and architectures overlay physical space. Social Technologies that codify social relationships offer new possibilities for the design of products, services, spaces and systems. A focus on social spaces and on the sociality of the city can provide a single framework from which to consider the many pressing issues confronting contemporary cities.
Aims:
- Undertake advanced practice based research at the interface of the city, art and social media.
- Apply design thinking and arts methodologies in order to enable communities to shape sustainable development.
- Inspire a broad-based conversation between experts, artists, policy makers, developers and publics in the future of the public sphere and social urban spaces in different regions of the world.
The project uses art methodologies to explore the way digital technologies are reshaping the city, and processes of regeneration and urban development. The activity builds on existing, innovative collaborative partnerships with urban developers and arts agencies.
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