Exploring how new media is changing our world: Dr Tim Barker
Issued: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 11:03:00 BST
For Sydney native Dr Tim Barker, one of the attractions of making an international move to Glasgow to become the University’s Lecturer in Digital Media was that it was a new post he could make his own. Dr Barker’s interests span media studies, art theory and the philosophy of technology, and his research involves the critical analysis of the use of digital media in the contemporary world. He is currently busy designing his own courses, setting his own research agenda and making connections across the University and throughout Glasgow’s art scene.
‘My brand of new media studies isn’t necessarily about a close study of Facebook shares or tweets – it’s about the experimental use of this new technology that we have,’ he explains. I’m interested in exploring how artists, for instance, have used new technologies in innovative ways and looking at the cultural implications of art, science and technology collaborations. For example, rather than using interactive technologies to play video games or to access the Internet, artists are using them to create a piece of music, tell a story or create a visualisation.
‘There are quite a few people working in these kinds of areas but it’s a bit fragmented. I’m trying to consolidate a research group in experimental technology to think about how we can collaborate on projects and apply for funding together. It includes people from across the University who are currently working in the subject areas of music, art history, film, television & theatre studies, and the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute.’
Dr Barker has recently published a book in which he focuses on the concept of time and technology, using contemporary process philosophy to explain how new media can change the way we think about memory, history and the philosophy of time. Currently, he’s writing a chapter for another volume on research into creativity. His contribution is around the methodology of experimental research within the arts, and he makes a case for the creativity embedded in artists’ experimental practices – going so far as to suggest that without these, there is no creativity.
Despite having arrived in the middle of a winter storm in January 2012, Professor Barker is delighted at the move he’s made to the city. ‘Glasgow offers an absolutely world-class, world-leading university and, in terms of this subject area, really well respected academics,’ he says. ‘The University campus stretches across the West End and it’s just such a beautiful place to live – and this is coming from someone who has lived in Sydney. I prefer it here.’
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