The School of Informatics is part of the Yorkshire & Humber Skillset Media Academy.
University of Bradford.
Home Courses Research Knowledge Transfer Facilities Staff Showcase Resources Contact IntranetThe group currently holds one EPSRC research grant, ‘Fair Tracing: Empowering producers and consumers by providing enriched information about the roots of goods and services’ for £372,762. 4 awards have been accredited to the Informatics Innovation Unit (IIU), 2 of which are funded by WYKE (West Yorkshire Knowledge Exchange) for a total of £48,437, one is from the Arts Council England for £24,950 and the other is from Screen Yorkshire Ltd for £71,799.
Communication, Cultural and Media Studies.
The combination of technologically focused and practising members and social-theorist/creative members in the CCM group means that we have a grounded approach to communication, culture and media in the sense that we can draw on a long tradition of thinkers and writers in the field and yet remain aware of important modern developments, particularly in technology, that change the way we interact with each other and with organisations.
Our interests in media at Bradford range from film and television through photography, digital and internet and mobile media. We have particular interests in film and postcolonial theory; documentary and aspects of televisual realism; cultural theory of technology; cult and avant-garde cinema. We benefit greatly from having members who are active in areas of media production such as music, web, multimedia and documentary television. Study of media at Bradford is enhanced by our close links with unique resource that is the (External) National Media Museum and we have two members of museum staff on secondment to the university.
The study of "communication" involves examining interactions between individuals, groups and connecting devices in fixed and unfixed cultural locales, through the mediums of speech, body language, the written word, moving images, audio (including music) and other analogue and digital media transmission. Traditionally a distinction has been made between the broadcast (one-to-many) model of communication and the one-to-one communication most readily associated with a telephone call. This distinction however has become more blurred with a fragmentation of cultural activity between communication channels, a convergence between IT and media (e.g. Internet TV, DVDs played on PCs) and consumer-as-producer activities such as 'blogging' or newsgroups. IT infrastructure can sometimes form part of 'latent' human communications link, for example messages stored and forwarded from servers such as e-mail. The recent ESRC-funded TRIP network project (Transdisciplinary Research in Intelligent Publishing) provided an opportunity for specialists from the UK and abroad to advance important aspects of this theme.
"Culture" according to Raymond Williams "is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language". The interdisciplinary work of the CCM Research Group at the University of Bradford contributes to a better understanding of what we mean by culture in technological, social, artistic contexts, and then tries to reinvent such meanings creatively. This work may not make culture any less "complicated" but will certainly invigorate the debate.
The CCM group includes specialists exploring the use of digital technology to open new interdisciplinary creative gateways at the arts-technology interface, in both visual and sonic arts. Research in visual creativity is enriched by the unique collaboration in Bradford between the School of Informatics and the (External) National Media Museum , and the School is fortunate in its new Digital Arts Centre , offering state of the art Digital Imaging, Photographic, Typographic and Art and Design facilities. The development of an innovative musical sound synthesis engine in the School (The Microcomputer Music Group ) has provided specialist tools to enable detailed examination of the nature of musical sound and its perception, with a focus on the control of digital sound, both in creation and in performance, by use of skills sets traditionally associated with acoustic instrument builders and performers. Many of the CCM group are active music-makers - in a wide variety of styles - and the group is closely involved in the EPSRC-funded Musical Acoustics Network meeting, hosted in Bradford in June 2006, drawing on the vibrant creative culture of the region.