Pervasive media was high on the agenda of Wiltshire College’s industry day at the Interactive Media Centre, Chippenham. As an event for completing Digital Media Arts undergraduates, prospective students, staff, industry advisors and supporters, DOT.biz demonstrated that whilst ‘the recession bites, media technology evolves’. A series of talks, workshops, panel discussion and screenings explored issues around emerging practice: new media forms and a re-evaluation of business models in the creative industries. 

Studio Resident Jackie Calderwood ran sessions throughout the day exploring design and content for mscape, examples of work and opportunities at the Pervasive Media Studio, challenges and benefits of self-employment as a media artist. Pervasive Experience workshops, with ipaqs supplied by the PMStudio, brought  the college playing fields to life with DOT.biz walkers and the obligatory mole stampers! The Experience featured a re-mapped version of Jackie’s recent filmmaking mediascape e-merge, originally made for walks from London’s ICA. Jackie was joined by Jane Harwood to talk about creating music for pervasive media. Jane’s 15 minute commission for e-merge was structured around the imagined changing pace, pauses, retraced steps and meanderings of walking amidst the different features of St James’s Park. Walking the mediascape on the open college playing field invited her imaginings to continue as if experiencing  the iconic landscape of central London ‘creating space in the city, clouds reflected in the screen whilst watching the film, subliminal “real” sounds entering my headphones – seagull synchronicity!’ In contrast, some of the Chippenham walkers noticed the similarities of birds, trees and cloudscapes, feeling rooted in the present time and place.