This is an invitation to participate in focus group research that is also a game

How are attitudes to data transparency and consumer ethics shifting?

We would like to invite you to participate in our research study that takes the form of a game with many characters called Fictional Focus Group. 

If you decide to take part we you will join a role-play game with 10-15 other people. You will get to escape your lock-down reality and play the role of a unique character who faces all the complex challenges of contemporary life.

The event itself will involve group discussion about the tricky choices your characters make as consumers or providers of food, clothing and money services. The game reveals the possible consequences of their actions as their data is reused in unforeseen ways.

The event will last for about 3 hours including 2 hours in the game and two 15 minutes breaks. Due to Covid-19, we are hosting this event online, using Zoom.

There are two sessions available:
29 and 30th June 2020
13.30 – 16.30
(now to be run online due to Covid-19)

For any enquiries, please email info@furtherfield.org

About the project

Findings contribute to a report, Glass Houses: Understanding transparency in information economies 2020.

Glass Houses is a research project that aims to investigate an end-user’s perception, understanding, and expectation of transparency in their engagement with modern information society, and in particular the role technologies, such as distributed ledgers, play in such engagement. It is funded by EPSRC through their Digital Economy Theme. glass-houses.cs.ucl.ac.uk

UCL Glass Houses Research Team: Sarah Meiklejohn is an Associate Professor in Cryptography and Security at University College London (UCL). Kruakae Pothong is a Research Fellow in Distributed Ledgers at University College London (UCL).

Fictional Focus Group is a Furtherfield/DECAL project created by Ruth Catlow with the UCL Glass Houses research team, developed in collaboration with Max Dovey.

Join us in London at the DAOWO ‘Blockchain & Art Knowledge Sharing Summit’

DAOWO (Distributed Autonomous Organisations With Others) Summit UK facilitates cross-sector engagement with leading researchers and key artworld actors to discuss the current state of play and opportunities available for working with blockchain technologies in the arts. Whilst bitcoin continues to be the overarching manifestation of blockchain technology in the public eye, artists and designers have been using the technology to explore new representations of social and cultural economies, and to redesign the art world as we see it today.

Discussion will focus on potential impacts, technical affordances and opportunities for developing new blockchain technologies for fairer, more dynamic and connected cultural ecologies and economies.

Programme

9.00 Registration

9.30 Welcome and Scene Setting

State of the Arts: Blockchain’s Impact in 2019 and Beyond | A comprehensive overview of developments from critical artistic practices and emergent blockchain business models in the arts. DAOWO Arts and Blockchain pdf download (Catlow & Vickers 2019).

Presentation and hosted discussion with Ruth Catlow and Ben Vickers

10.30 Coffee

10.45  Protecting the Rights of Indigenous Australian Artists. What part can Blockchain technologies play?

The Copyright Agency, Australia in conversation with Mark Waugh, DACS UK

11.30   Towards a Decentralised Arts Economy

The launch of Zien, the new dApp for artists will be followed by a presentation and panel discussion with Peter Holsgrove, and artists of A*NA around the implications of tokenising artistic practices.

12.15 Digital Catapult panel

12.45 Wrap up, takeaways and final discussion  

Ruth Catlow, Ben Vickers  & Mark Waugh

Contributors include:

Ruth Catlow Co-founder of Furtherfield & DECAL Decentralised Arts Lab
Peter Holsgrove, Founder of  A*NA
Ben Vickers, CTO Serpentine Galleries, Co-founder unMonastery
Mark Waugh, Business Development Director DACS

Through two UK summits, the DAOWO programme is forging a transnational network of arts and blockchain cooperation between cross-sector stakeholders, ensuring new ecologies for the arts can emerge and thrive.

DAOWO Summit UK is a DECAL Decentralised Arts Lab initiative – co-produced by Furtherfield and Serpentine Galleries in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut London. This event is realised in partnership DACS, UK.