By Nokia Trends Lab - July 18th, 2008
Over the past year, Nokia Trends Lab and the postgraduate students at the Cardiff University School of Journalism and Media Studies have been working closely together to better explore the boundaries of mobile journalism. Using Nokia N95 devices provided by Nokia, the students were challenged to “capture” a unique side of Cardiff city and provide a story utilizing the multifunctional possibilities of the device. Students produced stories with videos, photo slideshows and audio recordings. Check out some of our favorites below.
Capturing Cardiff: Psychedelic Monsterism
by Richard Wheeler
The world of music and art clashed in a small art gallery in Canton, where Pete Fowler’s mix of purple horses, orange owls and freakish-blue beared “men� was the ideal backdrop to Chapter Art Centre’s Swn experience.
Fowler is a Cardiff-born artist and illustrator who created the slightly demented Monsterism cartoon world and designs album artwork for Welsh psychedelic pop masters, Super Furry Animals. The success of Fowler’s previous work pushed forward his name to be included in the programme for the first city-wide cultural showcase in the Welsh capital.
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Capturing Cardiff: Welsh Capital Attempts World Record Zombie Walk
By Colin Scott
Anybody visiting Cardiff city centre on November 21st would have been in for a shock, as there were empty graves and a smell of death in the air, as the Welsh capital hosted the country’s first zombie walk.
In the realm of horror monsters, the zombie doesn’t generate fear on par with Dracula or Frankenstein’s monster, but it’s a sub-genre that has garnered a cult following. And from this, the zombie walk appeared, an undead marathon with fans in living dead make-up and attire.
Capturing Cardiff: Cardiff’s Graffiti Scene
by Cara Berkley
Rhys Thomas is not what you might expect from a graffiti artist. For a start, he’s not a chav. Or a political activist. In fact, he’s a smartly dressed civil servant in his mid-twenties. As he invites me in to his leafy Whitchurch home, it’s obvious he’s on edge. And he has good reason to be.
For the past decade, unbeknown to many of his closest friends, Rhys has been at the heart of Cardiff’s illegal graffiti scene. With a group of three other “writers� (by day, a teacher, an engineer and a PhD student) he has painted hundreds of trains, tunnels and walls around the city. He has also been arrested twice, chased countless times and had his family home raided by the police.
So why does he do it?
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Capturing Cardiff: Cardiff Kids are Getting Active- Circus Style!
The Cardiff Teen Circus is Run by the Kids and Supervised by Adults
by Charlie Duff
No Fit State is a professional circus based in Cardiff, but as well as their work, they run classes for children, teenagers and adults. At their studio in the Cardiff central Ebenezer Church hall, the teens learn skills such as juggling, clowning, trampet work, trapeze and Chinese pole. They can try all of them before choosing one to specialise in and perform. They are taught by adults, and learn how to perform safely, using crash mats and the right techniques to ensure they come to no harm.
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Capturing Cardiff: Catapult Records
The Vinyl Countdown for Cardiff Dance Music?
by Mike Monypenny
2007 was a catastrophic year for the UK’s independent record stores. As the digital age dawns, it seems the once holy high-street vinyl emporiums are heading for extinction.
Yet amid the crisis, Catapult 100% Vinyl is a curious anomaly. Now Cardiff’s only dance music specialist, the store is surviving, adapting, and amazingly, expanding. As 2008 beckons, Catapult’s survival is more crucial then ever for the future of Cardiff’s thriving dance music scene.
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Capturing Cardiff: Sŵn Festival and Cardiff’s Place in the UK Music Scene
by Sarah Kershaw
Walking into Cardiff’s Buffalo Bar on the second afternoon of Sŵn festival 2007, Saturday 10th November, you would have been forgiven for thinking that this event had been established years ago. The crowd was packed, sweating, into the upstairs bar whilst acts like Gideon Conn, Radio Luxembourg and Sam Isaac filled the venue with sound. Elsewhere around the city festival goers were recovering from The Cribs, Beirut and many others who performed the night before at one of the eleven city venues. They looked forward to a further night of dancing to I Was A Cub Scout at The Point, or Annie Mac at Cardiff University. This was Sŵn, the inaugural Cardiff-wide 3-day event organised by Radio 1 and Radio Wales DJ Huw Stephens, and it was going swimmingly.
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Capturing Cardiff: Cardiff and the Arts: a Dysfunctional Relationship?
by Tom Knight
As a modern European capital city, Cardiff aspires to be a place which both attracts and nurtures modern Welsh culture. Physical evidence of the local and national authority’s commitment to this aim can be found in every area of city. Public art works enliven the streets. Modern art spaces, bankrolled by public money, have become symbolic of communities. Broad civic developments, designed to appeal to the huge influx of media companies and creative industry that Cardiff has seen over the last two decades, are now intractable features of the urban landscape.
But is all as well as it seems here? Warnings of a serious financial crisis at the Millennium Centre, the flagship development for the arts in Wales, is just one factor giving rise to a quiet crisis of confidence. And in speaking to the handful of working artists in the city, a bleak picture emerges - one of a city, privileged with abundant pedigree, potential and resources, struggling to marry aspirations and reality.
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