Feature by Northings
Virtual Dinner Party
25 May 2008 in Visual Arts & Crafts
Artists Are Doing It For Themselves
THE GREEKS had a word for it—symposium. Today, that sounds like a rather stuffy, formal affair, but for Plato, Socrates and their mates it was just a dinner party. Except that some of the most influential ideas in Western thought were hammered out by them over the figs and the watered wine.
THE GEOGRAPHY of the Highlands and Islands can make it difficult to get people round an actual dinner table, and so HI~Arts, in association with the UHI Millennium Institute, has introduced the Virtual Dinner Party (see download below). Here’s how it works: a select group of guests are invited to take part in an e-mail-based debate for a set period of time, on a pre-set topic. The resulting e-conversation is then edited down and placed on the Northings and UHI websites to make, we hope, an interesting read!
Dr Sheila Lodge, Dean of Faculty Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, UHI Millennium Institute, sends the following message:
UHI is keen to fulfil that aspect of its mission statement which refers to playing ‘a pivotal role in [the]…cultural development’ of the Highlands and Islands. One of the ways in which we hope to do this is through increasing the range and diversity of the cultural events in which we are engaged: and as a result, we see the ‘Virtual Dinner Party’ as a particularly appropriate way of encouraging debate and reflection across the region on matters of cultural interest. Given UHI’s use of technology, such as video conferencing and virtual learning environments using the World Wide Web, the use of such technology to enable this discussion to take place seems very apt.
On behalf of UHI, I am delighted that we are taking part in this activity, and hope that it will be useful and enjoyable.’
With the Highlands and Islands Visual Arts Gathering which took place on the 15th & 16th May 2008 we took the theme of the Visual Arts Gathering as our first debate topic—Artists are doing it for themselves.
Downloads
© HI-Arts, 2008
