Tag: University of Worcester

Posted on

Friends of the Future at Herd Farm 24-25th Feb

Along with colleagues from Friends of the Future and the Arts and Health Research Group at the University of Worcester, I’ve coordinated an Open Space event at Herd Farm in Leeds on the 24th and 25th Feb that will respond to the following prompts:

  • Where do art and therapy start and end?
  • What is the meaning of integrity for artistic and therapeutic practices?
  • How might psychotherapists (arts-based or otherwise), creative health practitioners and socially-engaged artists work together on large-scale public health projects?

The event has been developed in collaboration with the Northern School of Contemporary Dance.

The events is free but places are limited, particularly from the overnight accommodation.

More information below.

Please book your place here.

Posted on

Therapeutic Landscapes: Call for Papers

Below is the call for papers for Therapeutic Landscapes: Ritual, Folklore and Wellbeing, a two-day event taking place at the Art House in Worcester on the 9th and 10th of March 2024. It has been organised by Desdemona McCannon of the Folk Cultures Special Interest Group at the University of Worcester and myself as leader of the Arts and Health Research Group there. It will be accompanied by an exhibition at the Art House and a publication.

300 word proposals for 20 minute presentations should be sent to therapeutic_landscapes@worc.ac.uk by December 1st.

Please share the call with your networks.

Posted on

AI/Midjourney Presentation

Below is the documentation of a presentation I gave at the ‘Challenges and Opportunities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Creative Educators’ event, the Art House, University of Worcester June 7th 2023, organised by my colleague Desdemona McCannon.

My talk has the rather formal title ‘Using Midjourney to Explore Relations Between Word and Image with Level 4 Fine Art Students’. Before I get to that, I take a detour through some of my PKD-related work.

Posted on

The Disintegrating Chronotope of Philip K. Dick (Redux)

I am reposting this transcription of a lecture I gave to MA Fine Art students at Chelsea College of Art and Design in Winter 2008. It will give some context to a forthcoming series of blog posts related to the BC Time-Slip project and to a program of lectures I will be giving for Fine Art and Psychology students at the University of Worcester in the forthcoming academic year. The first of these – ‘Beware the Boa Constructor! Freud, Modern Art and the Riddle of Interpretation’ – is in the pipeline.

 

The Disintegrating Chronotope of Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982)

Part One

Introduction

‘Artists are replicants who have found the secret of their obsolescence’ – Brian Massumi ‘The Simulacrum According to Deleuze and Guattari’ (1987)

The term replicant here is a reference to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), the name he gave to the androids in his film version of Philip K Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968). The plot of Dick’s novel revolves around a number of highly ‘evolved’ robots who are seeking to have the date of their in-built obsolescence postponed indefinitely. It is the blade runner’s job to hunt down and prematurely terminate the rebellious androids. Although Blade Runner lacks much of the narrative content and philosophical themes of Dick’s original novel, the film brought Dick the mainstream attention he had sought throughout his 25 years of science fiction writing. Sadly, in characteristically tragi-cosmic fashion, he did not live long enough to enjoy his new found fame.

The broader context for this lecture are the themes of historical and temporal consciousness we have been exploring in relation to the shift from modern to postmodern thought, aesthetics and cultural theory, and in particular the ‘materialist’ conception of history addressed by Benjamin in the ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ and throughout Illuminations.

Continue reading “The Disintegrating Chronotope of Philip K. Dick (Redux)”