Cameramen on the cutting edge of sports filming, having just sailed across the Atlantic with the Volvo Ocean Race teams, will take part in an NUI Galway symposium entitled ‘Representing Sport: Europe, Tradition and Modernity'. The international symposium runs from 2-3 June and will bring together leading academics and practitioners concerned with the representation of sport through history and in contemporary life.
The symposium is being organised by NUI Galway's Huston School of Film & Digital Media and its School of Languages, with support from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
On 2 June, at 2pm, the lecture on ‘Broadcasting the Volvo Ocean Race', supported by Inmarsat, the official technology sponsor for the race, and will demonstrate how high-definition television (HDTV) has changed international sailing events and high-octane sports. With HDTV and other technologies has come the introduction of an 11th person, known as the media crewman, onto each of the Volvo Ocean Race boats. Their job during the 37,000 nautical mile trip is to send back a daily quota of words, photos and video via Inmarsat's FleetBroadband from the race route, but they cannot partake in sailing the boat.
During the lecture Ian Walker, skipper of Green Dragon, will be joined by media crewmembers from Puma (Rick Deppe), Ericsson (Guy Salter) and Telfonica (Gabriele Olivo) to share their experiences of reporting the race to a potential audience of two billion.
Rick Deppe, an experienced British sailor and acclaimed videographer, whose credits include Deadliest Catch on Discovery Channel, has said: "My job is to keep the camera rolling and get some great shots over the course of nine months of action".
The ‘Representing Sport' symposium is jointly organised by Dr Seán Crosson, from NUI Galway's Huston School of Film & Digital Media, and Dr Phil Dine, from NUI Galway's School of Languages. Dr Seán Crosson comments: "From the fine arts, through print and audio-visual culture, sport has been an enduring subject of representation. This has increasingly been the case with the development of the contemporary global media industry, where representations of sport, from soccer to boxing and athletics, constitute one of the most popular subjects. Nowhere is the link between sporting traditions and technological modernity more apparent than in the state-of-the-art broadcasting of the Volvo Ocean Race".
As well as considering the representation of sport in Ireland, the two-day symposium will focus on its representation across Europe and around the world. Presentations will be made on various topics from Roy Keane to French surfing culture to German identity. Among the distinguished contributors to the conference will be: Professor Sébastien Darbon (Institut d'ethnologie méditerranéenne et comparative, Aix-en-Provence, France) on ‘The European Origins of the Global Sports System'; Professor John Bale (Visiting Professor of Sports Studies, University of Aarhus, Denmark and Professor of Sports Geography, Keele University, UK) on ‘Europeans Writing the African "Olympian"'; Professor Arnd Krüger (Institut für Sportwissenschaften, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany) on ‘Sport and Identity in Germany since Reunification'; Dr Marcus Free (Department of Media and Communication Studies, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick) on ‘The Contrariness of Roy Keane as Fantasy Embodiment of the "New Ireland"'; Cathal Kilcline (IRCHSS Government of Ireland Scholar, NUI, Galway) on ‘The Myths and Realities of Mediterranean Surfing Culture'; Dr Borja García (School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, Loughborough University, UK) on ‘The Governance of Sport in Europe'; and Ken McCue, (Founder and International Officer of Sport Against Racism Ireland (SARI), and visiting lecturer at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK) on ‘Who's SARI Now - From Grassroots to Global Goals'.
While entry to the symposium is free, prior registration is essential for Inmarsat's ‘Broadcasting the Volvo Ocean Race' lecture. Please contact Dee Quinn at dee.quinn@nuigalway.ie or call 091 495076. A full programme for the Symposium is available at http://www.filmschool.ie/
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Further information is available from Seán Crosson at +353 (0) 91 495687 (mobile 086 3859872) or sean.crosson@nuigalway.ie and Phil Dine at +353 (0) 91 492391 or philip.dine@nuigalway.ie
