DCRC - Digital Cultures Research Centre

The week ending the 18th of May saw researchers conducting interesting conversations both near and afar, some reflection and also looking forward, the week was also the 141st week of the operation of the DCRC. 141 years ago, in 1871, Henry Stanley tracked down David Livingstone on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, five bank holidays were introduced by law for the first time, the Rugby Football Union was founded and and trade unions were legalised.

The beginning of May, weeks 139 and 140 of the DCRC, marks a transition into assessment and recognising the efforts of our students and pushing forward with nurturing the seeds of new research. We have PhD students moving into the final stages of writing up and moving towards examination, as well as undergraduate end of year shows. 139 is a prime number and the number of one of the ports used as part of the Microsoft Windows NETBIOS file sharing system. 140 is, of course, the character limit of a post on Twitter - based on the original calculation of an SMS message limit at 140 8-bit characters.

We are conducting ongoing investigations into the co-production of space and place between the human and the technical (following Stiegler, neither pre-exists the other) that Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin have usefully labeled "Code/Space".  This is not, of course, the only form of spatiality that is associated with the performance of 'technicity' in everyday life, but it is a useful category for description.  I have prepared a thematic bibliography, including references from Kitchin & Dodge's "Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life", that may be of interest and/or useful to others. Please find it in plain text below.

DCRC researcher Dan Dixon is leading a design ethnography project working with both Punchdrunk, a London based immersive theatre company, and MIT Media Lab's Future of the Opera Group. Punchdrunk and MIT were funded by NESTA's Digital R&D fund to create a mixed-reality, online version of their New York production of Sleep No More.