A wireless, real-time, social music performance system for mobile phones

The paper reports on the Cellmusic system: a real-time, wireless distributed composition and performance system designed for domestic mobile devices. During a performance, each mobile device communicates with others, and may create sonic events in a passive (non interactive) mode or may influence the output of other devices. Cellmusic distinguishes itself from other mobile phone performance environments in that it is intended for performance in ad hoc locations, with services and performances automatically and dynamically adapting to the number of devices within a given proximity. It is designed to run on a number of mobile phone platforms to allow as wider distribution as possible, again distinguishing itself from other mobile performance systems which primarily run on a single device. Rather than performances being orchestrated or managed, it is intended that users will access it and create a performance in the same manner that they use mobile phones for interacting socially at different times throughout the day. However, this does not preclude the system being used in a more traditional performance environment. This accessibility and portability make it an ideal platform for sonic artists who choose to explore a variety of physical environments (such as parks and other public spaces)

Entertaining Africans: Creative Innovation in the (Internet) Television Space

In the growing scholarly literature on internet television, Africa is mentioned tangentially, if at all. This article attempts to rectify this by offering one of the first studies of Africa-based and Africa-focused internet television and video on demand (VOD) for domestic and diasporan African audiences. It begins by giving a brief overview of screen and television infrastructure across Africa before moving on to describe the landscape of internet television in Africa, focusing on six core competitive factors: content, internet connectivity, data costs, payment options, security, and multimedia convergence. Finally, it identifies and briefly analyzes the potentially most popular Africa-based and Africa-focused internet television and VOD platforms. The article draws on original interviews conducted with key players at some of the most important Africa-based and African-focused internet television and VOD platforms and with other African media scholars and filmmakers who have expertise in different regions of the continent (and specifically Senegal, Ethiopia, Angola, Rwanda, and Kenya)

Leadership Development in a South African Health Service

The paper reports the outcomes of one module of a collaborative learning project aimed at the development of leadership capacity in district health management teams in the East Cape province of South Africa. A work-based learning methodology was selected for the module with the intention of developing strategic and procedural knowledge bases within these teams as a way of addressing the complex problems of policy implementation in South African state organisations. The paper demonstrates the effectiveness of collaborative work-based projects in developing team members' capacity to solve difficult workplace problems and to implement strategy in a challenging operational environment. It endorses the role of leadership coaching in the development of, and ability to leverage, important strategic knowledge resources that reside within and between team members. The paper concludes with an example that demonstrates the developing ability of team members to initiate successful collaboration around the resolution of complex service delivery problems

In two genres : Blood intimates and The Smiths and the coelacanth

There has been a change of regime in a place with very different co-ordinates to the real world, and the President and his intimates - his chef, barber and portraitist - are being held accountable for their complicity by the new Commander. Each man in turn speaks of his appetites, the physical, the tactile, the hurt done by him and to him, detailing the intimacies of his particular embodied life. The significant woman in each man's life gives voice to the minutiae of pain, balancing melancholy, farce and horror, until all characters' voices elide in a whirlpool of personal and public reckoning, memory and desire

The Role of Trust in Innovation

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of trust in the collaborative learning processes that underpin innovation as a competitive strategy in organizations. Design/methodology/approach As a conceptual paper, the argument is framed by academic perspectives, drawn from the academic literature on the topic and by professional and life experience. Findings The collaborative learning practices that underpin idea generation and realization in organizations are strongly dependent for their effectiveness upon the availability, within and beyond stakeholder networks, of trust and other key social capital resources. Practical implications If innovation is dependent upon social capital resources, such as trust, then leadership endeavour needs to be much more focused upon the creation of a social environment that nurtures rich stakeholder and other relevant network, relationships. New forms of governance and power management, and more appropriate and aligned organizational structures, are required in organizations that are attempting to compete through innovation. Originality/value The paper's explication of the role of social capital resources, like trust, in organizational innovation offers new insights into this complex but increasingly vital form of competitive strategy

When television became old

Short conference paper that discusses the emergent form of Web Drama within the context of the disciplinary debates about Media Studies 2.0

‘Sowing, cultivating, harvesting and spreading the seeds of peace’: In honour of H.W. van der Merwe

No Abstrac

Informal urbanism and complex adaptive assemblage

Informal urbanism, from informal settlements to economies and street markets, is integral to cities of the global South — economically, socially, environmentally and aesthetically. This paper seeks to unfold and re-think this informal/formal conception using two interconnected theoretical frameworks. First is assemblage theory derived from the work of Deleuze and Guattari where a series of twofold concepts such as rhizomic/tree and smooth/striated resonate with the informal/formal construct. Second is theory on complex adaptive systems where dynamic and unpredictable patterns of self-organisation emerge with certain levels of resilience or vulnerability. These approaches are drawn together into the concept of a complex adaptive assemblage, illustrated with brief snapshots of urban informality drawn from Southeast Asian cities. The challenge is to develop multi-disciplinary, multi-scalar methodologies to explore the ways in which informality is linked to squatting, corruption and poverty on the one hand, and to growth, productivity and creativity on the other