This week the London 2012 Olympic Torch was revealed to the public. The Olympic Torch Relay has become a major part of the Olympic cultural programme leading up to the Games and is perhaps the primary mechanism through which to engage the host population, many of whom will not make it to the city. Its journey will create a series of mini-cultural events in each location, around which many cultural and arts partners will be mobilized to showcase their region and create a distinct cultural celebration.

real canadian superstore pharmacy will be hosting an ‘inspired by London 2012′ event at the CCA in Glasgow, host city for ICSEMIS 2012.

The event is FREE to attend and open to all. It will bring together a scientist, an artist and a philosopher (me) in conversation about the way in which athletes bodies and minds are being transformed by technology.

Today, elite sports find themselves in increasingly unchartered waters. More than ever before, athletes are using technology to optimize their biology for performance and many of their methods are not even tested for by the authorities. From genetic tests for sport performance to the use of superhuman prosthetic enhancements, this subject reaches parts that present-day anti-doping rules cannot reach.  These technologies have changed elite sports, as we know them, but the next decade promises even more of an overhaul to what we think being good at sport means.  As we approach the London 2012 Games, this debate will consider the ethical implications of new technology in sport, asking what distinguishes the cheat from the innovator. We will ask whether the debate about the ethics of athletic performance is all but over, as the winners’ podium makes space for the transhuman athlete.

Going beyond the familiar debate about doping and anti-doping, this debate will consider how far biology has been pushed by technical systems and what Jacques Ellul called the technological society. It will include Dr Yannis Pitsiladis, who works with the World Anti-Doping Agency on genetic technologies and live artist Francesca Steele (pictured here in an image by Simon Keitch www.simonkeitch.com), who became a body builder as part of her most recent performance work.  Along with me, we will consider how we ought to regard the future of sport and how it will function in an era of transhuman enhancements.

The event is presented by the University of the West of Scotland as part of ‘Knowing Sport: The science behind the medals’, a public engagement initiative of ICSEMIS 2012 (Glasgow) supported by PODIUM and Research Councils UK, Inspired by London 2012′.

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real canadian superstore pharmacy is a Reader in Exercise Physiology at the Institute of Cardiovascular & Medical Sciences in the College of Medicine, Veterinary & Life Sciences at the University of Glasgow and founding member of the “International Centre for East African Running Science” (ICEARS) set up to investigate the determinants of the phenomenal success of east African distance runners in international athletics. Recent projects also include the study of elite sprinters from Jamaica and the USA and the study of world class swimmers (e.g., why are there very few black swimmers?). He is a Visiting Professor in Medical Physiology at Moi University (Eldoret, Kenya) and Addis Ababa University (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia). He is a member of the Scientific Commission of the International Sports Medicine Federation (FIMS, and a member of the List Committee of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). He is also a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM).

real canadian superstore pharmacyhas performed and exhibited work nationally and internationally since graduating with a BA in Fine Art from Northumbria University. She was awarded the Belsay Hall Fellowship in 2006, and has spent time as an artist in residence in various sensitive research, medical and rehabilitation settings including The Centre for Life and PEALS, in Newcastle and Horticultural Healing (a rehabilitation project for clients with acquired brain injury) in Plymouth. Francesca has performed at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead and Arnolfini, Bristol amongst other UK and international venues. Her work has been featured in a range of publications, most recently real canadian superstore pharmacyCurrently Francesca bodybuilds specifically as part of her arts practice. The preparation for her current work began in October of 2008, since that time Francesca has trained as a bodybuilder. She won the title of Miss Plymouth in September 2009 and Miss West Britain (Trained Figure) at the National Amateur Body Building Association (NABBA) competition in April 2010, in May of that year she placed in the top six at the British Finals. From these experiences she has continued to develop her arts practice, through video and live performance work. Notably real canadian superstore pharmacy,real canadian superstore pharmacywhich was performed at The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow (January 2010) and then the National Review of Live Art in Glasgow (March 2010).

and here’s my sport biography

real canadian superstore pharmacy is Chair of Ethics and Emerging Technologies in the Faculty of Business & Creative Industries at the University of the West of Scotland, Global Director for the Centre for Policy and Emerging Technologies, Fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, USA and Fellow at FACT, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, UK. He is co-editor of Sport Technology: History, Philosophy and Policy (2002), currently on sale in the IOC Museum. He is author of over 50 papers on technology and sport and is author of ‘Genetically Modified Athletes’ (2004 Routledge), the first book to address this new science of human enhancement. He often gives pro-enhancement arguments, the most enjoyable of which was giving one such address to the IOC President Jacques Rogge and the Queen of Sweden at the Nobel institute in Sweden.

and here’s a pdf of the proposal

Media Blueprint for London 2012
A proposal by
Professor Andy Miah, PhD
University of the West of Scotland

[v1.0, 2010.07.16]

[please comment on the outline, so you can inform the next version]
1. Context

1.1 In 2009, the IOC indicated its intention to develop a new strategy for its role in a time of radical media change. London 2012 will be the first Summer Games to be informed by this new approach to promoting the value of social media

1.2 The London 2012 Games coincide with the scheduled targets set by the Digital Britain report & Race Online 2012, indicating a new era of potential media engagement. This provides an opportunity to re-think the new media infrastructure within the United Kingdom.

1.3 The Games represent the largest media event in the world, with broadcasters from over 200 countries covering what happens.

1.4 I envisage the Games as a media festival rather than a media event, where the media are enabled to report much more than just the sports competition. The Cultural Olympiad should be at the heart of this festival of ideas.

1.5 Olympic & Paralympic media centres have the opportunity to shift from being spaces of information and mediation, to becoming factories for creativity, collaboration, and engagement, which can amplify the Olympic mission.

1.6 The London 2012 Media Landscape will include 13,000 broadcast journalists, 7,000 print journalists, who will cover sport. There will be an additional 12,000+ non-accredited professional journalists who will want cover all non-sport content. However, the largest population of reporters will be citizens, over 60,000,000 with camera phones wanting to report their Games.

1.7 If the Olympic movement can expand media participation without jeopardizing its financial base, then it can more adequately fulfil its role as a progressive social movement.

1.8 Olympic cybercitizens are already taking ownership of reporting their Games and they will need a structure for their participation in 2012.

1.9 In this context, the London 2012 Games can be a moment for realizing a new media legacy for the United Kingdom, built on the idea of citizen media reporting and the recognition that the Games are more than just sports competitions. They are social movements with high humanitarian and cultural aspirations.

1.10 To achieve a broader media participatory culture, it is necessary to develop an extended media network for Games time reporting, which builds on the strategic development of non-accredited media centres at previous Games, linking them to citizen media projects.

1.11 Such a network would be founded on principles of ‘open media’ and will facilitate community legacies and build stories about London, the Nations and the Regions that reach an international audience. It will focus on reporting all non-sporting legacy stories, locating culture and art at the heart of its practice. Its work will transcend national boundaries in ways that no other Games has achieved before, by promoting peer-to-peer conversations.
2. A Nationwide Independent Media Backbone

Reaching out to all regions, with hubs in Glasgow, Manchester, London

2.1 This apolitical dream space will bring into force the full commitment of Olympic ideology to promote social change for the good of humanity. These values accord with the philosophy of Olympism.

2.2 Funding is in place to develop the initial scoping for these infrastructures, by identifying partners and commitments from institutions who would host and stage reporters. Principally, this will involve staging an event for potential partners and contributors at the Abandon Normal Devices digital media Festival on October 4, 2010.

2.3 We will focus discussions on operational challenges, collaboration logistics and infrastructure aiming to bring representation from the IOC and LOCOG and the potential UK partners.

2.4 The media who work in such centres should have a local interest but an aspiration that is based on global values or the desire to build opportunities to share globally. Transcending national boundaries is the biggest task. We’re not yet global, despite digital culture
3. Goals

3.1 Augment the Olympic media narrative towards portraying broader dimensions of the philosophy of Olympism

3.2 Create public engagement around Games time

3.3 Promote community legacy for the nations and regions
4. Research Led

4.1 The centres will function as real-time experiments, providing focal points for understanding the social media community and its interface with mass media.

4.2 Coming to terms with the politics of the citizen journalist will greatly assist future event hosts, like Glasgow 2014, Sochi 2014, Rio 2016 and World Cup 2018

4.3 The International Olympic Committee can focus its conversation with citizen media around these hubs
5. Values

5.1 Through the Olympic & Paralympic Games, we want to create space for intercultural dialogue and collaboration.

5.2 We value the Olympiad as a time to address issues of critical social importance for Britain.

5.3 We will support communities to tell their Olympic & Paralympic stories and work with professional journalists to meet their needs.

5.4 We want to expand media privileges to concerned citizens.

5.5 We promote responsible and fair journalism in an open media culture, where content is shared and power distributed.

5.6 We will respect the right of groups to express their political views and support different voices in being heard
6. Need

6.1 The Olympic & Paralympic media are focused on sports almost exclusively during Games time, but this can and should encompass broader legacy stories.

6.2 Digital media has given rise to a proliferation of citizen journalists who want to report the Games.

6.3 Legacies for the Nations and Regions, along with London’s story need other media centres to have space to explain what the Games have meant to them.

6.4 These centres raise a number of questions. Who should fund them? How should they relate to the Olympic & Paralympic infrastructure more broadly? Can they even exist given their desire to build into the intellectual property of the Olympic & Paralympic Games?”
7. How this fits with the nations’ aspirations for London 2012

7.1 The bid promise from London 2012 was to create a national Games, but we would be the only media centres to tell those stories.

7.2 We celebrate Olympic & Paralympic values by promoting the broad ideology of the Olympic & Paralympic Games as a social movement.

7.3 We are a not-for-profit infrastructure, fostering educational practice and public engagement with the Games.

7.4 Through our network, we will constitute the largest network of social media producers throughout the UK and reinvigorate the core media partners of the Games.

7.5 Our content will reach international networks that other media will not reach.

7.6 Our journalists will produce the largest volume of Olympic content and influence trending topics on social media platform, crating the largest Olympic and Paralympic archive of any Games.
8. Why accredited Olympic media will need us

8.1 Media organizations in the UK will traverse the country around Games time, requiring facilities and stories we can provide, particularly around the torch relay.

8.2 To fully report on the London 2012 Games, it will be necessary to see what is happening in the Nations and Regions.

8.3 The Olympic Games is a social movement, not a sporting event. What happens in the country will become its central legacy

8.3.1 CASE STUDY: For example, NBC is setting up a media space around Birmingham City University, as the USA team will be based here. The local community media can interface with this. For example, NBC is setting up a media space around Birmingham City University, as the USA team will be based here. The local community media can interface with this. As well, the CitizensEye in Leicester will create a community media centre that will operate around Games time. Team GB will be in Loughborough. Creating an infrastructure to bring about media change could markedly change how the Olympics works

8.4 While the proposal should aspire to build a network that includes all nations and regions, it will be useful to begin with a hub of centres based on known interests. Glasgow, Manchester & London presents a backbone for the network.

8.5 These centres will draw stories from each other to communicate what has been happening and what is happening during Games time. However, events should also build on global networks, particularly previous Games experience to develop the idea of a cultural legacy that extends beyond London. Satellite centres will provide programmatic content during the Games.
9. What was achieved at previous Games: Vancouver 2010

9.1 True North Media house accredits a 5 yr old as a journalist and an Olympic mascot.

9.2 W2 is the first independent media centre to work with an Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games.

9.3 VANOC appoints a number of young people to be its official citizen journalism team during the Games
10. What will these media hubs look like?

10.1 The influence of any specific media centre will be restricted by its funding, its technology and its community, but primarily the latter. Hub centres can be high-tech facilities with large venue space, but all should aspire to similar networked facilities to maximize participation. We all should be able to plug into each others’ space at any time to deliver audio, visual and interaction.

10.2 Imagine
• High technology facilities
• Networked Infrastructure
• Community Generated Content
• International Media Attention
• Lasting Media Legacy
11. Opportunity

11.1 As part of the initial scoping, we will identify primary partner vehicles, which may be digital media centres around the UK that could have the capacity to deliver a media centre during Games time. However, communities should also be evaluated on their networked potential ie. How prolific are they online. Amplifying their content will be our biggest asset to achieve our goals.

11.2 With 2 years before the Games, this is the time to establish permissions and funding. However, this is still a relatively short amount of time to build partnerships with larger organizations, those who may decide to allocate their programme budget to such a project. This may be the primary route towards ensuring the proposal is realized.

In closing, this proposal brings together the primary instigators of independent Olympic & Paralympic media centres and creative, artistic practice from the last 10 years of the Olympic & Paralympic Games. With the right support, it has the potential to tell the full story of the London 2012 Games
Stay in touch, join:

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/media2012

About the Author
Professor Miah is Chair of Ethics and Emerging Technologies at the University of the West of Scotland, a Fellow at the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology and part of the Programming Committee for the Abandon Normal Devices Festival, an ‘inspired by 2012’ event, funded by the Legacy Trust.

Professor Miah is an Olympic scholar and writer, having undertaken research into Olympic media at every summer and winter Olympic Games since Sydney 2000, at which he has also worked as a journalist. He has been a visiting Professor at the International Olympic Academy, a Visiting Scholar at the International Olympic Committee museum in Lausanne and teaches Olympic Studies at the University of the West of Scotland, supervising PhD students whose work focuses on Olympic media. While at the Vancouver 2010 Games, he wrote for The Huffington Post, facilitated cultural collaborations between London 2012 and Vancouver 2010 and was on the steering committee for the creation of two independent media centres. He also writes for the Guardian. He is currently completing a book called ‘A Digital Olympics’ for The MIT Press.

@andymiah
email@andymiah.net
+44 (0) 757 898 4147

On 19 May, 2010, the London Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG)  launched the Olympic and Paralympic Mascots. Their design is in keeping with London’s pursuit of postmodern iconography, which has created an absence of locative symbols through which outsiders can interpret the 2012 Games. This approach to imaging the Games was most clearly articulated three years ago, with the launch of the logo, which also attracted attention for its avant-garde structure and unique functional property of maintaining its visual integrity even without the Olympic rings (see Miah 2007).

Similarly, the London 2012 mascots are a deliberate retreat from jingoism, cliché and national symbols and, given how LOCOG appears to be imagining London’s Games, one might conclude that the final designs could only have been this way. For while it is common for Olympic mascots to symbolize identity in some way, Britain is a nation absent of a clear identity and so a new alien species seems appropriate, especially in an age of renewed commercial space travel and synthetic biology. However, are they too much of a retreat, do host populations ultimately want their mascots to represent themselves? We’ll be posting an article soon to follow up some of these themes. Stay tuned.

Admission is by donation.

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(Updated to add full live stream from 18th of February, via )

An Olympic Games raises a number of exciting and challenging questions for a city. It proposes new spheres of investment, the redistribution of funds, inclusion and areas of exclusion, new laws that affect civil life and a vast, global media profile. How do these structures affect the obligations of citizens and institutions who become bound by collaborative contracts? And how does the scrutinization of this work by traditional and new media affect local identity and global perceptions? What can be learned from Vancouver 2010? How can this inform London 2012? How is work by artists contributing to urban city and citizenship development?
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(Updated to add full live stream from 20th of February, via )

The Olympic Games are measures of human excellence but what happens when those measures are disrupted by self-augmentation and body modification? Our biological apparatus is in flux, vulnerable, yet re-imagined by technology. What will ability and disability mean in an era of genetically modified athletes and surgically sculpted children? How are artists contributing to this research and debate? For example, genetically screening for ‘perfect pitch’ may produce ideal singers, but whose ideal? Alternatively, what will the integration of future technology within biology mean for how humans communicate with each other via performances (dance, music or sport)?

Citizen journalism is nothing new to our world of available technology. It has become second nature for people to capture their experience, events or news in their environments on their phones, cameras or computers. We live in a world were journalism is an action and all of citizens have stepped forth into that call to action.

However, this is the first Olympic Games of its kind were the real stories that are happening are not necessarily the ones that are showcased by the sponsor holding media companies. The internet with its free social platforms of , , ,  and  have cascaded into the landscape from which fans are acquiring their in-real-time coverage of culture, events and community of the Olympic Games.

has been out in Vancouver covering the very broad spectrum of events that are occurring in the city upon the official arrival of the . From the opening ceremony, to press conferences, to torch relays and event demonstrations,  has been covering these events and capturing fans and media covering these same events for themselves.

Photographic Recap of Citizen Journalism that is present at the Olympic Games:

Citizen journalists  and  hold up the media accreditation badge for the . TNMH is an independent media house for the Vancouver Winter Olympics and provides media accreditation to citizen journalists of all types.

Another independent media house that has arisen during the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games if the . This independent media house, located in the DTES, is providing space for many Vancouver media outlets like the  and . It is also providing space to organizations, like the , that are providing community services during the month of February.

, aka , is a podcaster, blogger and all around social media maven. She has been actively covering the Vancouver Winter Olympics for her ver popular Vancouver community site.

There is only one official media accreditation for the Vancouver Winter Olympics, but since there are many more media organizations that are covering the games that just the official one, other forms of accreditation have formed.  who runs the site  is holding up his  media accreditation badge.

Often times as citizen journalists, our main vantage point is through the lens or view finder of our camera. We see the world as it is captured in documentation. Here is an HDR shot of the a  media installation called . This installation is live at the w2 Woodwards Media + Culture House for the entire duration of the games.

There are many people who actively involved in citizen journalism and can recognize their actions as such. The real revolution is happening within the everyday community members, fans, and general public who are recording their lives in digital documentation and then sharing it on the internet for their friends, family or the world to see.

For the past year and half,  has been documenting the story of social media as it plays into the preparation of the Vancouver Winter Olympics and the city of Vancouver as whole. Produced by  and titled , this documentary tells the digital evolution of many stories including ,  and .

The gentlemen was a participant of an anti-olympic rally that convened at the  on the same day as the Opening Ceremony of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. There were many cameras at the rally, with everyone wanting to document their direct experience with the massive gathering.

In the same light that a protestor might want to capture their experience in a retrospective format, the opposite side, the police department, utilizes the same tactic to work against the protestors. Whether it is for visual documentation for a later catalogue or a later examination, the police department are acting in part of citizen journalists and creating media for their own community.

Often times like a silent third party, the citizen journalist can be caught in the line of cross-fire in such events as demonstrations and protests. The symbiotic relationship of the police, protestors, and photographers can be a dance of fierce neutrality. Here  of  and our , , are seen in the middle of a large demonstration.

Our first response, during any kind of tragedy, is to immediately share this knowledge with the ones we know. Our instant accessibility to sharing via our cell phones is a valuable resource. Here the public is shown immediately sharing the news of the anti-Olympic demonstrations that caused property damage in downtown Vancouver.

The  held a  a mere days before the beginning of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Geared towards making a massive statement to the press about their actions during the games, both traditional and citizen journalists were there to cover this monumental event.

The 3rd Annual  took place in Vancouver, to bring light to the many social and economic travesties that are present in Vancouver, even as a present-day host city. Here is a community member filming the satirical event as a testament to the needed voice that this events provide.

The Legal Observers are a group of citizen witnesses to act as public eyes to the ongoings of the street-level events during the Olympic Games, mostly when police presence is involved. There are two groups of Legal Observers present at the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games: Legal Observers from the Lawyers Guild and Legal Observers from the Vancouver community. The main priorities of these observers are to record data during events, badge numbers, arrests, violence and anything else that could need a witness testimony.

is a great example of a citizen journalist making the most fun out if an experience. Geared up as the ‘‘, Wheeler followed the Olympic Torch around its journey throughout Canada, documenting his whole  experience on video. Not only did he follow the Torch along its vast Canadian route, Wheeler also coupled the documentation with a travel-style viewpoint of the many facets of Canada and the adventures to be had.

Everyone has the ability to capture their own experience through film or photos, even when there is a strife tension between the two subjects. Here is a protestor making a visual testament to the police visibility that was seen during the Olympic demonstrations. Citizen journalism has a presence everywhere in Vancouver.

Citizen journalism is an action. By the simple means of documenting our world around, whether with our fancy cameras or our always handy cell phones, we are actively participating in sharing our experience with the world. It is not really how is happening but that it is happening all the time. We are journalists and the world is full of our news.

Andy Miah, Beatriz Garcia, Ana Adi, Jennifer Jones, Kris Krug, Danielle Sipple, Debbi Lander, Rachael McAllister, Erin Linton, Mark Hodge, and Geoff O’Donnell.