Mediarena Centre for Research

Director: Prof Dan Fleming

The Mediarena Centre for Research in Participatory Cultures and Creative Technologies brings together a transdisciplinary community of researchers to work on a broadly-based programme of research, aligned with international-scale issues, and concerned with the emergence, impact and futures of technologically-enabled participatory cultures, i.e. the widespread shift from cultural consumption to cultural production, triggered by ‘new media’. The Mediarena Centre operates across the creative arts and creative practice-based research fields, including screen and media studies, aspects of computing, performance studies, music, dance, design, and Māori creative practices, developing a collaborative high-level research focus across that field as a whole. Particular research interests of the Centre include the creation of a more open and more democratic media and cultural space, given the increasingly low barriers to creative expression and civic engagement through ‘new media’ and related practices; the nature of new social connections between creator and consumer, between co-creators, between media and audience, and between arts and communities; and emerging social practices using creative technologies. The Mediarena Centre has a research and development facility in the basement of S-block.

For more information, visit the website: www.waikato.ac.nz/mediarena.