Zeyu Zhao, Doctoral Student; Jin Gao, Lecturer in Digital Archives

UCL Department of Information Studies

7 July 2025

How can we reimagine cultural heritage collections to engage younger audiences? This question has been central to Zeyu’s doctoral research and led to the curation ARt-Z: Unlock the Unseen, a mini Augmented Reality (AR) exhibition featuring digital reinterpretations of the Chinese Export Watercolours (CEW) collection from the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). We are grateful for funding from the UCL Centre for Humanities Education (CHE) Technology Stream Fund and the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) Octagon Small Grants. The AR exhibition was held at First Floor Gallery – Breakout B of UCL East Marshgate from 1–23 May 2025. It explored how digital tools shape museum engagement while simultaneously serving as a practice-based pilot research method for Zeyu Zhao’s doctoral study, supervised by Jin Gao, Kaitlyn Regehr, and Photini Vrikki.

The exhibition title, “ARt-Z”, reflects its mission: to create an AR-enhanced art experience for Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012. These young people, born in a media-saturated era, often expect museum displays to be visual, interactive, and socially shareable.¹ As a result, to better reach younger audiences, museums are increasingly blending traditional roles with digital innovation. They are evolving from static knowledge centres to dynamic, participatory spaces.² This exhibition aimed to contribute to that shift. Rather than passively viewing artworks behind glass, visitors were invited to explore each painting beyond the frame and continue their engagement beyond the gallery.

 

The exhibition presented 10 digitised CEW paintings, each enhanced with layered AR interactions. Visitors could scan QR codes next to the printed artworks, then use their mobile devices to access immersive experiences, including zoom-in details, animated loops, and ambient audio that unlock hidden narratives.

The layout was kept simple and accessible, with enough open space for visitors to move around comfortably and focus on each artwork at their own pace. An introductory video was also played on a nearby screen to guide first-time users through the AR experience. This helped ensure that anyone, regardless of technical background, could engage with the exhibition confidently and independently.

Reinterpretation of V&A’s CEW Collection

To situate the experience within a meaningful cultural context, the exhibition content was based on the V&A’s Chinese Export Watercolours (CEW) collection. The CEW collection includes over 2,350 artworks created by professional Chinese artists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for European and North American markets. These works, which blend Chinese and Western artistic techniques, present local customs, occupations, trades, flora, fauna, and cultural beliefs. Despite their historical significance, they remain relatively understudied. Their transcultural nature and unfamiliarity to most audiences made them ideal objects for AR reinterpretation.

This exhibition was part of the third phase of the UCL–V&A CEW project, led by Dr Hongxing Zhang at the Asia Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Dr Jin Gao at the Department of Information Studies at UCL. The previous two phases focused on digitisation and provenance research. Here in Phase III, ARt-Z leveraged the CEW collection for public engagement, using AR technology to surface hidden layers of cultural meaning while offering a visual and interactive experience aligned with Gen Z preferences.

Design and Technical Implementation

The AR experiences were created using Adobe Aero, a user-friendly, no-code platform compatible with other Adobe tools. Each artwork went through a six-stage development process involving image matting, keyframe drawing, animation production, AR creation, detail design, and testing.

The first task was to prepare the visual assets, isolating figures or details from the original artworks using Photoshop. Then, in Adobe Illustrator, Zeyu redrew key frames to suggest motion or transformation. These were animated in Adobe After Effects to form short loops or sequences. Zeyu then imported all assets into Aero, where she set up the interaction logic, assigning triggers, movements, and sounds to create layered experiences. Finally, all the AR content was tested on an iPad to ensure a smooth and intuitive experience.

In this exhibition, visitors could freely interact with these artworks on their devices. By scanning the QR codes next to the digitised painting printouts and following the software instructions to point their devices directly at the painting, the AR experience would animate automatically. Visitors could then tap the interactive points to unlock animated videos and explore hidden layers of the painting. The trigger-based interactions allowed for the integration of short animation sequences (e.g. MP4s or embedded GIFs) and environmental effects, which enhanced immersion without overwhelming the user.

Online Engagement

To reach Gen Z more effectively and stimulate online discourse, we ran social media campaigns on Instagram (@artz_unlocktheunseen) and Xiaohongshu (@ARt-Z). These two platforms are widely used by Gen Z for creative and lifestyle content in the UK and China.

Two hashtag challenges, #ChiefExperienceOfficer and #BestPhotographerAward, encouraged visitors to record and share their favourite AR moments. These user-generated posts had a ripple effect: several visitors reported attending after seeing the exhibition in their friend’s feed, which highlights the influence of peer-led digital word-of-mouth promotion. By studying these online interactions, we aimed to capture the “afterlife” of museum visits and examine how digital content shaped ongoing engagement.

(Translation: UCL East Watercolour AR Art Exhibition. Just finished my lab and stumbled upon a fun little exhibition on the first floor of Marshgate. Scan the QR code and you’ll see lively animations based on Qing Dynasty Chinese Export Watercolours — the once-static scenes suddenly come to life! If you’re around UCL East, do stop by and check it out. It’s actually quite fun!)

What Visitors Thought

We conducted on-site observations and distributed an online questionnaire during the exhibition period. Over 96% of respondents reported feeling engaged with the AR content. Many spent extended time at each artwork, returned with friends, or explored multiple AR layers.

Some also expressed curiosity about how the AR effects were made, which led to spontaneous informal tutorial workshops. These mini-workshops added another layer to the exhibition, not just as an experience to visit, but as something to learn from and create with.

Visitors also suggested future additions, including playful 3D animated scenes or wearable glasses, physical souvenirs, printed brochures, and themed workshops. These ideas offer valuable inspiration for shaping future exhibition practices.

The feedback below reflects a range of visitor experiences, most of which came from UCL students, and highlights both enthusiasm and thoughtful critique:

• “Outrageous but magical exhibition! Perhaps it could be held several more times.”
• “The exhibition is generally satisfactory. I hope to see them online after the visit.”
• “Very nice. It would be even better if there could be some additional installations to enrich the scenes.
• “The way of advertising should be chosen according to the target audience, for example, if the audience is college students, you can flyer the cafeteria off campus.”
• “The exhibition and the idea of the app are great. In the app, I’d suggest trying to make the transition from one painting to another more smoothly so that users wouldn’t have to go to a camera app and scan every QR code.”

Presentation at UCL Celebration of Humanities Education

On 11 June 2025, we presented this mini AR exhibition project at the UCL Celebration of Humanities Education. This event highlighted the wide variety of CHE projects and fostered discussions on innovative practices in humanities education. It offered an opportunity to exchange ideas with other educators and researchers exploring innovative approaches to humanities teaching and creative learning. During the session, we shared the aims, design process, visitor feedback, and research reflections from the exhibition.

Overall, ARt-Z demonstrated how AR can be used to bring underexplored cultural heritage collections to life for younger audiences. It also highlighted the potential of hands-on, research-led curation as a method for studying digital cultural behaviours in context. As Zeyu’s doctoral study progresses, this pilot study will form a key part of her broader investigation into social media engagement and museum curation.

***

¹ Hughes, K., and Moscardo, G., 2019. For Me or Not for Me? Exploring Young Adults’ Museum Representations. Leis. Sci. 41, 516–534. https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2018.1550455

² Bautista, S.S., 2013. Museums in the Digital Age: Changing Meanings of Place, Community, and Culture. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.

Zeyu Zhao is a doctoral student at the Department of Information Studies, UCL. Her research, supervised by Dr Jin Gao, Dr Kaitlyn Regehr and Dr Photini Vrikki, explores how digital tools shape audience engagement with museum exhibitions.

Dr Jin Gao is a Lecturer in Digital Archives at the UCL Department of Information Studies and an Associate Director of UCL’s Centre for Digital Humanities. Dr Gao is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum, working on various collaborative research projects. Dr Gao teaches on the MA/MSc in Digital Humanities programmes and the MA in Archives and Records Management programme. Dr Gao also serves as the Admissions Tutor for the MA/MSc in Digital Humanities programmes and the Placement Coordinator for the MA in Archives and Records Management programme.

 

By Koundinya Dhulipalla, Winnie Soon, Lily Chasioti 

Contemporary centralised communication systems perpetuate technical paternalism—systems designed with unexamined assumptions about control and hierarchy. These systems can reinforce existing power imbalances and render certain voices unheard. In response, local technologies that emphasise community participation and collective ownership emerge as alternatives to corporate-run centralised systems. The Reimagining Futures: Creative Networks for Social Justice workshop, facilitated by community educator Catalina Polanco and organised by Slade Art+Tech Research Lab (March 2025), demonstrated how engaging with community infrastructure serves both resistance and pedagogical innovation.

Through hands-on engagement with LoRa (Long Range) mesh networks—wireless communication systems that allow devices to directly connect and relay messages to each other without requiring centralised infrastructure—the workshop positions decentralised technology as both technical intervention and deconstructive educational practice. Building on Phil Agre’s framework of critical technical practice (Agre, 1997), the workshop explored how community-run networks can be used to teach students to question the material and ideological architectures of centralised infrastructure. By engaging with alternative infrastructures through hands-on practice, participants developed both technical literacy and critical consciousness about the political dimensions of network design and peer communication. This workshop not only explored technological alternatives but also demonstrated how such approaches inform innovative pedagogical practices that integrate technical skills with critical thinking, providing a model for interdisciplinary teaching and learning.

Technical Characteristics and Political Affordances 

The problem of centralised networks lies in their hierarchical structure, where communication typically flows through corporate-controlled servers. In contrast, decentralised mesh networks offer an alternative approach with valuable teaching applications in examining the role of agency—how users can exercise control and decision-making power within technological systems. LoRa peer-to-peer mesh networks function by allowing devices (nodes) to communicate directly with each other without requiring a centralised server.

These networks possess several distinctive technical characteristics that translate into political and pedagogical possibilities. Their network redundancy—the ability to have multiple backup paths for information to travel if one connection fails—allows data to route around failures, teaching students about robust system design against both accidental outages and deliberate communication disruption, embodying individual agency through system resilience.

Their adaptability enables nodes to dynamically discover communication routes and adapt to changing conditions, offering lessons in systems that “self-heal” as components join, leave, or change position—giving users agency to reshape network topologies as needed. Through incremental scalability, these networks demonstrate how systems can grow organically without requiring centralised planning or significant infrastructure investment, further emphasising community agency in network development. Additionally, LoRa devices can be powered with a battery, making them ideal tools for teaching about portable devices for long-range data communication, even during outages, enhancing user agency during crisis situations. 

Pluriverse of Local Worlds 

The workshop’s technical experiments with LoRa devices operationalised de Valk’s “pluriverse of local worlds”—systems rejecting universal solutions in favour of community-specific epistemologies (de Valk, 2021). Participants configured Meshtastic nodes not merely as communication tools but as infrastructural critiques, bypassing dependencies on internet service providers while interrogating terms like “protocol” and “bandwidth” as ideological constructs.  

When participants established their first successful node-to-node connections, discussions immediately turned to how these connections differed from corporate networks. Unlike centralised systems where communication passes through corporate ‘cloud’ servers, these peer-to-peer transmissions created direct links between community members. This technical arrangement materialised a different social relationship—one where communication infrastructure could be collectively set up, owned and governed rather than rented from distant corporations. This direct connection between technical configuration and social relationships formed the foundation for understanding how infrastructure design embodies political values.  

The workshop also situated this technical practice in Latin American community technology movements, where facilitator Catalina Polanco, a community educator working on promoting free and open technologies, shared experiences from organisations like Laboratorio de Medios and Red TIC-AC, which demonstrated how community-driven technology development and political action become naturally intertwined in grassroots contexts. These collectives focus on developing independent communication networks, providing digital security training, and supporting Indigenous and rural communities in reclaiming their narratives through open-source technology. Open-source technology—software and hardware whose design is public and can be accessed by anyone—is central to these movements as it enables communities to adapt technologies to their specific needs while reducing dependency on proprietary systems controlled by corporations.  

These examples provided more than inspiration—they offered practical methodologies. When configuring LoRa devices, participants adopted approaches that prioritise repairability over optimisation. By embedding these principles in technical work, participants experienced how infrastructure design can either reinforce or challenge existing power relations. Contextualising the workshop with the works of these organisations working in Latin America also established a framework for approaching this workshop as an exploration of digital sovereignty—a resistance against surveillance and centralised corporate and state control—while also encouraging knowledge-sharing and the decolonisation of knowledge systems. 

Critical Technical Practice Methodologies 

The workshop operationalised Agre’s framework of critical technical practice through several specific methodologies: 

Speculative Scenarios 

A fictional scenario set in 2033 revealed tensions between decentralised resilience and scalability limits. Participants proposed interfaces between LoRa and community radio infrastructure. The scenario exercise highlighted how decentralised networks could support mutual aid during climate disasters, positioning them as essential infrastructure for community survival in increasingly precarious times (Bodó, Brekke, & Hoepman, 2021). This scenario-based approach connects to broader traditions of speculative design (Dunne & Raby, 2013) that use fiction as a method for exploring the social and political implications of technology. 

Repair and Maintenance as Critical Practice 

The workshop included discussions on maintenance and repair practices, shifting attention from innovation to sustainability—from creation to care. Repair practices reveal the values and power relations embedded in technical systems. By prioritising the ongoing life of devices over their replacement, participants enacted a different relationship to technology—one based on stewardship rather than consumption. This approach emphasises the agency to maintain and modify devices rather than being forced into cycles of obsolescence and replacement.  

The repair sessions also democratised technical knowledge. Participants with varying levels of expertise worked collaboratively, challenging the conventional separation between “experts” and “users” that often characterises technical education. This horizontal knowledge-sharing fostered what can be termed “cognitive justice” (Visvanathan, n.d.) —recognising diverse forms of expertise and making technical knowledge accessible to communities typically excluded from technological production. 

Significant discussions emerged during the workshop around the labour implications of decentralised networks. Participants questioned who maintains these systems once they are built; how technical knowledge is preserved and shared; and what sustainable repair practices might look like (Internet Policy Review, 2021). Unlike corporate infrastructure with dedicated maintenance teams, community networks depend on distributed responsibility and skill-sharing arrangements that can be challenging to sustain over time. 

Participants also explored sustainability in environmental and social dimensions—considering how to create technologies that can be sustained without enormous energy demands, utilising renewable energy sources like solar and wind power, while also addressing how community knowledge can be preserved and transmitted through generations. 

Critical Technical Practice as a Pedagogical Framework 

By integrating theory and practice, this workshop embedded critical reflection directly into technical learning and teaching, demonstrating how deconstruction and critical technical practice (Soon & Valasco 2024) can serve as a pedagogical framework. Participants engaged simultaneously in learning technical skills (configuring Meshtastic devices, testing signal ranges, as well as a walk-through of the open-sourced program that runs on the LoRa devices) and analysing their political implications (who controls communication, how infrastructure embodies power relations). This integrated approach disrupts the conventional division between “technical” and “critical” courses, demonstrating how the technical and political dimensions of technology are inherently interconnected, fostering both technical competence and social awareness. 

As participants explored LoRa communication, significant debates emerged about network architecture choices. Some teams devoted considerable time to weighing the trade-offs between fully decentralised mesh networks, centralised systems with designated control points, or hybrid approaches combining elements of both. These discussions highlighted an important aspect of critical technical practice—that infrastructure design involves not just implementation but constant negotiation of values, priorities, and governance models. By experiencing firsthand how different network topologies embodied different political possibilities, participants gained insight into the open-ended nature of technical decisions and their social implications. 

The educational impact extended beyond individual skill development to collective knowledge production. As participants from different disciplines collaborated—some bringing technical expertise, others contributing critical frameworks from feminist or decolonial theory—engaging in the material creation of networks, they developed a shared understanding across disciplinary boundaries, demonstrating how infrastructure functions not just as physical structure but as a process that clarifies relationships between different knowledge systems. This approach recognises that infrastructure is not merely technical but encompasses social, epistemological, and cognitive components that together support collaborative learning practices. Such a pedagogical approach becomes essential in interdisciplinary contexts where diverse backgrounds and perspectives transform into meaningful collaborative exchange. 

Conclusion: Protocols as Praxis 

The workshop explored how building LoRa networks constitutes critical technical practice by materialising alternative social relations through channel configurations that prioritise community needs over corporate metrics. It embedded maintenance as ongoing ethical labour rather than a technical afterthought and situates technology within specific cultural and ecological contexts. 

As corporate platforms increasingly co-opt “decentralisation” rhetoric, community networks might remain sites of ongoing deconstruction—infrastructures that continuously question their own power dynamics while providing essential services (Soon & Velasco, 2024). This approach rejects both techno-utopianism and techno-pessimism in favour of what critical technical practice proposes—an engagement with technology that recognises its political nature while working toward more equitable and sustainable configurations. 

This workshop offers a model for integrated technical-critical pedagogy, aligning with the BA Art & Technology programme’s commitment to treating infrastructure not just as a technical system but as a cultural and political architecture open to reimagination. By embedding critical technical practice into the curriculum, the program fosters a generation of practitioners who approach technology as both a medium and a site of intervention—developing an artistic practice to build, critique, and reshape the systems that shape our digital and physical environments. The workshop’s approach directly informs undergraduate teaching in the BA Art & Technology by demonstrating how technical learning becomes transformative when situated within critical and creative frameworks – engaging in collaborative learning environments where diverse backgrounds and perspective inform an interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning. By treating the classroom as a site of critical technical practice, the programme prepares students not merely as consumers of technology but as practitioners capable of reimagining the systems and infrastructures that increasingly define our social, cultural, and political realities. 

+++ 

The workshop was organised by the Slade Art+Tech Research Lab, based at UCL East, and is supported by UCL’s Centre for Humanities Education.  

Photo credits: Jessica Arnold 

Workshop facilitator: Catalina Polanco / IG: @descuartizadorahack Organisers:  Winnie Soon, Koundinya Dhulipalla, Lily Chasioti 

References 

• Agre, P. E. (1997). Toward a Critical Technical Practice: Lessons Learned in Trying to Reform AI. In G. C. Bowker, S. L. Star, L. Gasser, & W. Turner (Eds.), Social Science, Technical Systems, and Cooperative Work: Beyond the Great Divide (pp. 131-158). Lawrence Erlbaum. 

• Bodó, B., Brekke, J. K., & Hoepman, J.-H. (2021). Decentralisation: A Multidisciplinary Perspective. Internet Policy Review, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.14763/2021.2.1563 

• de Valk, M. (2021). A Pluriverse of Local Worlds: A Review of Computing within Limits Related Terminology and Practices. In LIMITS ’21: Workshop on Computing within Limits, June 14-15, 2021. 

• Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. MIT Press. 

• Soon, W., & Velasco González, P. R. (2024). (De)constructing Machines as Critical Technical Practice. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 30(1), 116-141. 

• Visvanathan, S. (n.d). The Search for Cognitive Justice. The ACU Review. Retrieved March 21, 2025, from https://www.acu.ac.uk/the-acu-review/the-search-for-cognitive-justice/ 

In May 2024, an email popped into my inbox that would unexpectedly lead to a great academic experience: presenting at a national conference on student engagement. In the email from Abbi Shaw and Jesper Hansen, they were looking for students to take part in their research about how Arts and Humanities students engage with and think about AI. As an undergraduate Arts and Sciences student with an interest in artificial intelligence, faculty research being conducted about our perceptions of AI as students intrigued me, so I expressed my interest in being a part of this research. Fast forward to September, I was a student co-presenter at the 2024 RAISE (Researching, Advancing & Inspiring Student Engagement) Conference at the University of Leicester.

After expressing my interest in participating in the research, we were tasked with writing a series of reflections on five key questions and then joining a focus group to discuss them with other students. The questions were not just technical—they asked us to reflect on our personal relationships with AI, from the role it plays in our academic work to how we see it shaping our future careers. The questions were designed to enable us to dig deep into our feelings about generative AI, with questions about what reflections the term ‘generative AI’ triggers, or about how AI shows up in our daily life, or even in our studies at UCL. The introspective nature of the questions made me want to answer them and hear about what the other participants said.

A few months later, I received an exciting email from Abbi and Jesper about another opportunity: to be a student co-presenter at the RAISE Conference at the University of Leicester. If you have never heard of RAISE, it is a conference that focuses on research around student engagement, with themes like accessibility, equity, and celebrating diversity. This year’s theme was “Equity in Attainment & Student Success,” which was very fitting with the nature of our participation in this research. The purpose was to amplify student voices and make them part of the broader academic conversation. At the time, I did not know what the conference was about or what to expect from presenting, but I wanted to give it a go. So, Elisa Valentin (who has also written a blog on her experiences) and I joined the team as student co-presenters and had the chance to extend our participation.

Our presentation at RAISE focused on UCL’s ongoing efforts to incorporate a wide range of perspectives—from both staff and students—into the research process. Elisa and I shared our experiences of participating in faculty-led research, talking about how meaningful it was to be seen not just as participants, but as active contributors to the project.

Standing up there as a co-presenter, I realised that this kind of student engagement—where our insights are valued on an equal footing with those of staff—is exactly what conferences like RAISE are all about, and it fits into this broader discussion of co-creation. Co-creation was indeed a recurring theme throughout the conference, and it became clear that involving students in shaping their own learning is not just beneficial—it is necessary. Whether it is redesigning assessments, building inclusive learning environments, or making decisions about course content, there was a strong push for universities to break down traditional hierarchies and engage students as equal partners.

At the conference, there were people from various universities, all with different experiences and backgrounds, who gathered to discuss how we can reshape higher education. One of the parallel sessions that stood out to me was the one about “Why are students not attending in-person classes post-COVID-19?” by Conor Naughton (Education and Student Experience Manager at the University of Nottingham), Tom Lowe (Assistant Head of School (Student Experience), School of Finance and Accounting at the University of Westminster), and Tania Struetzel (Director of Student Success at Southampton Solent University). This session, delivered as an interactive workshop, explored the students’ perceptions of the necessity of in-person attendance after the pandemic. The majority of the room was academic staff members, and as a student, it was interesting to hear the academic staff discuss what they think the reasons for students’ low attendance to in-person classes might be.

As I listened to the discussions on post-COVID attendance, I realized just how complex student engagement is. While many staff members pointed to flexibility and convenience as factors, I found myself thinking about the importance of mental health, diverse learning preferences, and the need for universities to adapt. It was reassuring to see that the conversation was not about ‘blaming’ students for lower attendance, but about rethinking how we deliver education in a way that truly meets the needs of today’s learners.

This whole experience left me with a deeper understanding of equity in education, and how essential it is for students to be included in the shaping of our academic environments. It was pleasant to see so many educators and students working together to reimagine what inclusive education looks like. From being involved in the research to presenting at the RAISE Conference, this experience has shown me that students have a pivotal role to play in shaping not only our own learning journeys but also the broader academic landscape.

Author Bio: Selin Abdik is a second-year BASc Arts and Sciences student at UCL, specialising in the interdisciplinary application of technology. Selin has a strong interest in how technology can drive innovation and create impactful change across various fields. As a co-presenter at the 2024 RAISE Conference, Selin contributed insights on student involvement in research and policy changes within higher education. You can find out more about Selin’s work via Linkedin.

This project was supported by funding from UCL’s Centre for Humanities Education. The author wished to express their thanks to UCL CHE and the Randolph Quirk Endowment.

RAISE 2025 will be happening on September 4-5 September at the University of Glasgow.

by Dr Simon Rowberry (UCL Centre for Publishing)

Edited 16 May 2024 to add: Inksights is now live! Check out the podcast here. 

In an era where digital landscapes evolve at lightning speed, equipping students with future-proof skills is more crucial than ever. With generative AI and multimedia platforms redefining professional boundaries, how can educational institutions stay ahead?

The answer: overhauling our curriculum for agility by embedding digital literacy throughout, and offering opportunities for students to work on real-world, career-enhancing projects.

A team of seven MA Publishing students, led by Amy, Lily and Mira, have been doing just this by working on Inksights, a podcast aimed at combining academic and industry perspectives on current publishing topics.

Each episode will blend interviews, reviews, debates, and news stories. Each member of team focuses on a different part of the podcast’s creation, production and marketing.

Finding your voice and preferred ways of collaborating

During the Inksights podcast’s pilot recording, the team tackled the art of collaboration head-on. The hosts encountered a challenge—avoiding interruptions—but ingeniously resolved it by adopting a lip balm stick as their “talking stick.” This simple yet effective strategy ensured clear, orderly discussions.

The Inksights team also skilfully navigated the challenge of sounding distinct and dynamic, steering clear of a “robotic” tone. The pilot showcases this success, achieved through planning and ensuring each host’s voice was unique and engaging. You can listen to it below (13:09 minutes long):

 

Methods of collaboration and working with guests were also challenges. While exploring various platforms, students discovered that each had its pros and cons. Zoom emerged as a standout for virtual sessions: the team praised it “for virtual interview/podcast recordings. The recording was quickly processed and available to access on the cloud by the production team.”

Working collaboratively on a podcast requires digital collaboration tools, which have proliferated over the last five years. The Inksights team are still finding the collaborative workflow that is most suitable for their needs. They are spending time to get this right early to avoid having to pivot to another setup later.

Our next steps include continuing to develop networks with similar groups of students and academics working on generative AI/podcasting across the University and the sector to gain further valuable insights and share good practice.

What Generative AI (currently) can and cannot do

Eden leads the generative AI project, focusing on images, videos, and animations. These are under-developed areas within publishing and require tools beyond Open AI’s Chat-GPT.

Through this scoping work, Eden notes: “I have become much more knowledgeable with this cutting-edge technology than industry professionals, putting me in a better position for job prospects.”

The projects highlight the constraints of today’s Generative AI tools in publishing. For example, it is possible to ask Chat-GPT to generate a book cover image, but this image appears in a square frame that requires further editing.

The file format of the output frequently clashes with current publishing workflows. This shifts human effort towards tedious tasks like cropping and format conversion, detracting from the creative focus on aesthetics and composition.

Likewise, most Generative AI services focus on a single media output, making cross-platform integrating challenging.

The Inksight podcast team’s experience with Zoom illustrates the benefits of human intervention as it “allows us to have video material to use for promotional purposes (Reels, YouTube, UCL publishing Instagram).”

This underscores the ongoing need to balance automation with human creativity, a vital skill for enhancing our students’ future employability.

The sustainability of extra-curricular media projects

The one-year format of our MA programme presents a significant hurdle for extracurricular activities as demonstrated by previous projects including Uncovering Publishing and Shelf Healing. Just as students hone their skills, they are ready to graduate, often having secured industry positions.

We do not yet have a practical solution to this challenge, but as the two projects continue to develop, we will look for ways to ensure greater continuity between cohorts and ensure teaching colleagues are equipped with the relevant skills to assist new groups of students.

The Inksights team are currently editing the first full episode of the podcast with the aim to release it by the end of Term 2.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Amy, Eden, Lily and Mira for providing their thoughts on their progress to date. Simon used GPT-4 to improve the readability and conciseness of the first draft.