Bob Cotton has extensive experience as a creative director, artist, designer, film-maker and writer on and about new media. His were some of the earliest overview books on new media to appear in the 1990s (Understanding Hypermedia, Phaidon 1993, The Cyberspace Lexicon Phaidon 1994, Understanding Hypermedia 2.000 1998). Recently he has focussed on Innovation, design, and the role that futurecasting (technology forecasting) plays in the design and innovation process (Futurecasting Digital Media, Pearson/FT.com 2002). He was recently Research Fellow in Digital Media at London College of Communication (University of the Arts, London), where he organised several conferences and exhibitions on new media. He has judged interactive media for both BAFTA and D&AD. Currently he is Visiting Practitioner Professor in Digital Media at University of the West of England, and recently a visiting Senior lecturer in Interactive Media and Film at the Arts University Bournemouth, and Supervisor on the Press Association/University of the Arts, London Knowledge Transfer Partnership. In 2010-2020 he built an online archive of art+media innovations from 1800-2020ish. He is currently building a personal retrospective site: bobcotton.name . He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2016. His film ZeitEYE has inspired a new orchestral work by the Spanish composer Pedro Guajardo Torres that was performed December 2018. His IOS app expanding mediainspiratorium for the iPad was completed in beta in 2020, but is no longer asupported. He was recently an associate working with Augmented Solutions Ltd on applications of machine-learning and augmented-reality. He is currently writing and illustrating a number of articles on aspects of media developments and the role that William James idea of our thinking as a 'stream of consciousness' played in the development of early Modernism - these are available as works-in-progress on bobcotton.name.
career summary:
Bob Cotton
This is based on my experience of over fifty years teaching on Art and Design courses from Secondary School and BTEC FE through Foundation, Degree, post-grad and Doctoral/post-Doc, and on client-education and project-management for IOW Festivals (1969-1970), John Gillard’s School of Communications Arts, Central London Polytechnic, University of Westminster, Newham Community College (East Ham Graphics), UK Training Agency, Central St Martins, London College of Communications (University of the Arts, London), University of the West of England, University of the Arts, Bournemouth and finally the UK Technology Transfer project at UAL and the Press Association. Recently- since 2000, we have organised and run the Ventnor Jazz Divas Festival, The Visioneca Festival of Experimental Film, been a Trustee at Julia Margaret Cameron Museum and Gallery at Dimbola. I created my online archive of creativity and innovation - the mediainspiratorium - between 2010-2015. I have written several books, including Design for Desktop Publishing (with David Collier, published by Quarto 1989), editing The New Guide to Graphic Design (Phaidon 1990), Understanding Hypermedia (with Richard Oliver, Phaidon 1993), The Cyberspace Lexicon (with Richard Oliver, Phaidon 1994), Understanding Hypermedia 2.000 (with Richard Oliver, Phaidon 1998), Futurecasting Digital Media (2002 Pearson/FT.com), You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet (with Malcolm Garrett for the ICA 1999), Julia Margaret Cameron and the Allure of Photography (Dimbola 2005), plus a dozen or so e-books on new media, on pdf and kindle (2006-2024). In 2002, he co-designed and directed Crisis Command a demo prototype later developed and broadcast by BBC2 and BBC4 in 8 episodes. In 1994-95 he was judge at Di&AD and at BAFTA in interactive arts awards. He was appointed Visiting Practitioner Professor at University of the West of England (UWE) in 2004. Recently and currently I’m writing a series of short ‘psycho-geographical’ stories/memories of my life on the Island, and developing a seminar for the discussion of new opportunities in the 21st century Creative Industries and how our education system is accommodating learning in the new technologies (AI, Streaming Media, 3d Printing, block-chain, social-media, Large Language Models, ChatGPT, fake-news, influencers, etc.