Social & participatory media has been my primary practice and research area for more than ten years. Participatory media is designed from the onset as an open system of communication between the original design team and the subsequent participatory media creators. New school people have coined the term UGC or user generated content to describe some aspects of this field. True to my ethos, content is only one foundational structure of social and participatory media ~ context and community are often forgotten in the rush to produce content which should never be void of the other two C's.

Instead of keeping these secondary creators on the marginal fringe, a social & participatory media project encompasses a system that is open to collaboration, a design that is fluid accepting the media creations of the system's participation, and a complete work that remains relevant through the direct inclusion of the actors and participants.

I wrote my first article on participatory media by focusing on the role of Andaluz gypsies (the Rom people) and their lack of cultural manifestations as documented and archived by the dominant segment of society (i.e., universities and independent research centers). From this curiosity expressed through a co-authored research paper with el Centro Sociocultural de Andaluz Gitanos, I began to design, create and experiment with different forms of media participation.

You can read about them all here or of course get in contact to further our combined reach.