7 September 2007 | 1900hrs | Watershed, Bristol
Tickets £5.00 / £3.50 Tel: 0117 927 5100
Watershed opened its doors in 1982 to capture that shift in media at the point when satellite was beginning and Channel 4 was just starting up. Arguably, it is only really recently with the explosion of the web that we are beginning to realise what a Media Centre might actually be or mean. So what does the growth of the web mean for consumption of culture and for organisations like Watershed?
As part of Watershed’s birthday celebrations, self-proclaimed ‘antichrist of Silicon Valley’ Andrew Keen, author of recent web 2.0 polemic The Cult of the Amateur – How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy. Keen, who maintains a blog himself, argues the web is inhabited by second-rate amateurs deluging us with ‘everything from uninformed political commentary, to unseemly home videos’ – and that the rise of blogs, wikis, social networking sites and podcasts – are swiftly destroying our culture. To cyberspace enthusiasts, Keen isn’t just a heretic, he is an apostate, himself a pioneering dotcom entrepreneur who some see as embittered by the failure of his start-up company.
Keen will discuss the implications of his thinking, the impact of the web on culture and consumption and views on the future with special guests including award winning filmmaker Ana Kronschnabl, CEO of digital media consultancy FluffyLogic, founder of plugincinema.com and also co-author of ‘PlugInTurnOn: A Guide to Filmmaking for the Internet’ and writer/director Hazel Grian (Licorice), who has been working on a number of gaming and interactive narrative projects including the successful Alternate Reality Game ‘Meigeist’ and the hit online show ‘KateModern’.
Part of Watershed’s 25th Anniversary Celebrations see watershed.co.uk/25
