Jon Swords
Biographic Data
| ID | 911090 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jon Swords |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jon |
| FAMILY NAME | Swords |
| SIGNATURE | SWORDS J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northumbria University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2318-9566 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 38 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
XR stories as innovation and cultural intermediary for the creative industries
Cultural and innovation intermediation in the cultural-creative industries
The aim of this article is to examine the multiple intermediary processes undertaken by actors in a creative R&D project. Intermediaries of different kinds have long been crucial enablers of economic activity and have been theorised in ways that help us recognise the importance of intermediation in the cultural economy, but at the same time, the flexibility of applications of the concept has been critiqued for its messiness. In other parts of the…
The importance of professional skills within the changing media landscape of the UK screen industries: A case study of the ‘disruptive’ phenomenon of virtual production
Rapid technological developments are changing media practices within the screen industries, with these shifts exacerbating already existent skills shortages and gaps.This paper focuses on the case study example of virtual production, a new media practice of making film and television content, to demonstrate the continuing importance of professional (or 'transferable') skills.Professional skills are skills required to act efficiently in different …
The emergence of virtual production – a research agenda
Virtual production is increasingly seen as a way to make film and television more efficiently by harnessing the power of game engines to create unique locations and sets, offer directors more flexibility, and to cut carbon emissions. But while the technologies at the centre of virtual production are not new, their combination into filmmaking pipelines is in its infancy and the field is evolving fast. Indeed, so rapid is its evolution that pinning…
‘It used to be fix-it in post production! now it’s fix-it in pre-production’: How virtual production is changing production networks in film and television
This article examines how the development of virtual production is disrupting the film and television industry. Virtual production is a way of creating content which captures digital assets and environments ‘in camera’ and in real-time during shooting, rather than these assets being added in post-production. We review the use of the production network concept - a systematic way of examining a set of linked economic activities - to analyse film an…
Creative industries spatial policy in the United Kingdom, 1995–present
The aim of this article is to explore the construction of spatial policy for the creative industries in the UK over the last three decades. The nature of much creative work benefits from, and therefore leads to co-location of firms, practitioners, supporting organisations and infrastructure. Since the advantages of a buoyant creative economy were recognised by policymakers in the 1990s, developing spatial policy to enhance these benefits has been…
Deepening precarity – the impact of Covid-19 on freelancers in the UK television industry
This article explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on freelancers in the UK television industry. Precarious careers are a dominant feature of the sector and the result of deregulation in 1990s. Employment and working practices which reproduce precarity lead to exploitation of workers, and discrimination and exclusion of those who do not fit perceived norms. Drawing on in-depth interviews with television workers based in northern England, w…
Platforms, sex work and their interconnectedness
This article examines the interconnectedness of sex work with the platform economy. It does this by mobilizing two concepts from the platform economy literature: the platform stack (which captures the structure of platforms) and interpenetration (which describes the processes through which platforms intersect). Exploring these concepts, the article draws on a dataset of linked platforms used by 54 cam workers and documented observations of 55 dif…
Colliding epistemologies, productive tensions and usable pasts in the generation of heritage-led immersive experiences
The growth of immersive technologies offers new ways in which heritage can be made usable. Virtual, augmented and mixed reality experiences are the latest media forms through which historical narratives can be told and heritage experienced. There are many challenges to create experiences which engage users in a meaningful way from the origination stage, through design and content creation to delivery, all of which bring together practitioners fro…
Interpenetration and intermediation of crowd-patronage platforms
Web platforms are becoming part of everyday life for internet users. They come in many forms, offering a range of products and services for both producers and consumers as they (re)produce multi-sided markets. Platforms act as key intermediaries, bringing together third parties and shaping the provision of access to information, finance, content and networks. They operate within an ecosystem, connected through technical service provision and oper…
Cryptocarbon: The promises and pitfalls of forest protection on a blockchain
Crowd-patronage-Intermediaries, geographies and relationships in patronage networks
A topological road map of Newcastle upon Tyne
Tracing postrepresentational visions of the city: Representing the unrepresentable Skateworlds of Tyneside
In any visualisation of the city more is left unseen than made visible. Contemporary visualisations of the city are increasingly influenced by quantification, and thus anything which cannot be quantified is hidden. In contrast, we explore the use of 'lo-fi', doodled, participatory maps made by skateboarders in Tyneside, England, as a means to represent their cityscape. Drawing on established work an skateboarding and recent developments in cartog…
Visualizing urban and regional worlds: Power, Politics, and Practices
Featured Graphic. UK Government Spending in Times of Austerity
Featured Graphic. Changing UK Government Departmental Spending Limits 2009/10-2012/13
Please mind the gap: Students' perspectives of the transition in academic skills between A-level and degree-level geography
This paper explores first-year undergraduates' perceptions of the transition from studying geography at pre-university level to studying for a degree. This move is the largest step students make in their education, and the debate about it in the UK has been reignited due to the government's planned changes to A-level geography. However, missing from most of this debate is an appreciation of the way in which geography students themselves perceive …
Featured Graphic: Labour's Three-Term Spending Record, 1997-2010
Approaching disaster management through social learning
Purpose Coping with and adjusting to disruptive challenges has always been a characteristic of human development. Formalisation of this has led to the emergence of a number approaches addressing disruptive challenges. Often formalised practice has a narrow focus. Increasingly complex challenges require a refocus of formalised approaches. Drawing from these approaches, the purpose of this paper is to posit that a greater focus on preparedness thro…
Geographies of Skateboarding – Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead, UK
This map is the result of a year-long research project on the geographies of skateboarding in Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead, UK. Skateboarders are often seen as invaders of urban space, subverting it for their own purposes, contrary to the normative actions of others. In the capitalist system, abstract space is created in which behaviour is prescribed and dictated, often for commercial consumption practices. Borden (2001) has suggested that t…
Geographers and geography: Making waves for the wrong reasons
We were driven initially to write this Commentary by a sense of exhilaration and exasperation. The exhilaration came from the opportunity to address global issues of climate change through adaptation at the local level, an issue that will be addressed in Copenhagen in December 2009. The sense of exasperation came from an increasingly populist but determinist universalising geography that was determinist in both a physical/biological sense but als…
Cryptocarbon: The promises and pitfalls of forest protection on a blockchain
Crowd-patronage-Intermediaries, geographies and relationships in patronage networks
Please mind the gap: Students' perspectives of the transition in academic skills between A-level and degree-level geography
This paper explores first-year undergraduates' perceptions of the transition from studying geography at pre-university level to studying for a degree. This move is the largest step students make in their education, and the debate about it in the UK has been reignited due to the government's planned changes to A-level geography. However, missing from most of this debate is an appreciation of the way in which geography students themselves perceive …
Tracing postrepresentational visions of the city: Representing the unrepresentable Skateworlds of Tyneside
In any visualisation of the city more is left unseen than made visible. Contemporary visualisations of the city are increasingly influenced by quantification, and thus anything which cannot be quantified is hidden. In contrast, we explore the use of 'lo-fi', doodled, participatory maps made by skateboarders in Tyneside, England, as a means to represent their cityscape. Drawing on established work an skateboarding and recent developments in cartog…
Visualizing urban and regional worlds: Power, Politics, and Practices
Colliding epistemologies, productive tensions and usable pasts in the generation of heritage-led immersive experiences
The growth of immersive technologies offers new ways in which heritage can be made usable. Virtual, augmented and mixed reality experiences are the latest media forms through which historical narratives can be told and heritage experienced. There are many challenges to create experiences which engage users in a meaningful way from the origination stage, through design and content creation to delivery, all of which bring together practitioners fro…
A topological road map of Newcastle upon Tyne
Featured Graphic. UK Government Spending in Times of Austerity
Geographers and geography: Making waves for the wrong reasons
We were driven initially to write this Commentary by a sense of exhilaration and exasperation. The exhilaration came from the opportunity to address global issues of climate change through adaptation at the local level, an issue that will be addressed in Copenhagen in December 2009. The sense of exasperation came from an increasingly populist but determinist universalising geography that was determinist in both a physical/biological sense but als…
Approaching disaster management through social learning
Purpose Coping with and adjusting to disruptive challenges has always been a characteristic of human development. Formalisation of this has led to the emergence of a number approaches addressing disruptive challenges. Often formalised practice has a narrow focus. Increasingly complex challenges require a refocus of formalised approaches. Drawing from these approaches, the purpose of this paper is to posit that a greater focus on preparedness thro…
Geographies of Skateboarding – Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead, UK
This map is the result of a year-long research project on the geographies of skateboarding in Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead, UK. Skateboarders are often seen as invaders of urban space, subverting it for their own purposes, contrary to the normative actions of others. In the capitalist system, abstract space is created in which behaviour is prescribed and dictated, often for commercial consumption practices. Borden (2001) has suggested that t…
Geographers and geography: Making waves for the wrong reasons
We were driven initially to write this Commentary by a sense of exhilaration and exasperation. The exhilaration came from the opportunity to address global issues of climate change through adaptation at the local level, an issue that will be addressed in Copenhagen in December 2009. The sense of exasperation came from an increasingly populist but determinist universalising geography that was determinist in both a physical/biological sense but als…
Featured Graphic: Labour's Three-Term Spending Record, 1997-2010
Please mind the gap: Students' perspectives of the transition in academic skills between A-level and degree-level geography
This paper explores first-year undergraduates' perceptions of the transition from studying geography at pre-university level to studying for a degree. This move is the largest step students make in their education, and the debate about it in the UK has been reignited due to the government's planned changes to A-level geography. However, missing from most of this debate is an appreciation of the way in which geography students themselves perceive …
Featured Graphic. UK Government Spending in Times of Austerity
Featured Graphic. Changing UK Government Departmental Spending Limits 2009/10-2012/13
Tracing postrepresentational visions of the city: Representing the unrepresentable Skateworlds of Tyneside
In any visualisation of the city more is left unseen than made visible. Contemporary visualisations of the city are increasingly influenced by quantification, and thus anything which cannot be quantified is hidden. In contrast, we explore the use of 'lo-fi', doodled, participatory maps made by skateboarders in Tyneside, England, as a means to represent their cityscape. Drawing on established work an skateboarding and recent developments in cartog…
Visualizing urban and regional worlds: Power, Politics, and Practices
Crowd-patronage-Intermediaries, geographies and relationships in patronage networks
A topological road map of Newcastle upon Tyne
Cryptocarbon: The promises and pitfalls of forest protection on a blockchain
Interpenetration and intermediation of crowd-patronage platforms
Web platforms are becoming part of everyday life for internet users. They come in many forms, offering a range of products and services for both producers and consumers as they (re)produce multi-sided markets. Platforms act as key intermediaries, bringing together third parties and shaping the provision of access to information, finance, content and networks. They operate within an ecosystem, connected through technical service provision and oper…
Platforms, sex work and their interconnectedness
This article examines the interconnectedness of sex work with the platform economy. It does this by mobilizing two concepts from the platform economy literature: the platform stack (which captures the structure of platforms) and interpenetration (which describes the processes through which platforms intersect). Exploring these concepts, the article draws on a dataset of linked platforms used by 54 cam workers and documented observations of 55 dif…
Colliding epistemologies, productive tensions and usable pasts in the generation of heritage-led immersive experiences
The growth of immersive technologies offers new ways in which heritage can be made usable. Virtual, augmented and mixed reality experiences are the latest media forms through which historical narratives can be told and heritage experienced. There are many challenges to create experiences which engage users in a meaningful way from the origination stage, through design and content creation to delivery, all of which bring together practitioners fro…
Creative industries spatial policy in the United Kingdom, 1995–present
The aim of this article is to explore the construction of spatial policy for the creative industries in the UK over the last three decades. The nature of much creative work benefits from, and therefore leads to co-location of firms, practitioners, supporting organisations and infrastructure. Since the advantages of a buoyant creative economy were recognised by policymakers in the 1990s, developing spatial policy to enhance these benefits has been…
Deepening precarity – the impact of Covid-19 on freelancers in the UK television industry
This article explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on freelancers in the UK television industry. Precarious careers are a dominant feature of the sector and the result of deregulation in 1990s. Employment and working practices which reproduce precarity lead to exploitation of workers, and discrimination and exclusion of those who do not fit perceived norms. Drawing on in-depth interviews with television workers based in northern England, w…
The importance of professional skills within the changing media landscape of the UK screen industries: A case study of the ‘disruptive’ phenomenon of virtual production
Rapid technological developments are changing media practices within the screen industries, with these shifts exacerbating already existent skills shortages and gaps.This paper focuses on the case study example of virtual production, a new media practice of making film and television content, to demonstrate the continuing importance of professional (or 'transferable') skills.Professional skills are skills required to act efficiently in different …
The emergence of virtual production – a research agenda
Virtual production is increasingly seen as a way to make film and television more efficiently by harnessing the power of game engines to create unique locations and sets, offer directors more flexibility, and to cut carbon emissions. But while the technologies at the centre of virtual production are not new, their combination into filmmaking pipelines is in its infancy and the field is evolving fast. Indeed, so rapid is its evolution that pinning…
‘It used to be fix-it in post production! now it’s fix-it in pre-production’: How virtual production is changing production networks in film and television
This article examines how the development of virtual production is disrupting the film and television industry. Virtual production is a way of creating content which captures digital assets and environments ‘in camera’ and in real-time during shooting, rather than these assets being added in post-production. We review the use of the production network concept - a systematic way of examining a set of linked economic activities - to analyse film an…
XR stories as innovation and cultural intermediary for the creative industries
Cultural and innovation intermediation in the cultural-creative industries
The aim of this article is to examine the multiple intermediary processes undertaken by actors in a creative R&D project. Intermediaries of different kinds have long been crucial enablers of economic activity and have been theorised in ways that help us recognise the importance of intermediation in the cultural economy, but at the same time, the flexibility of applications of the concept has been critiqued for its messiness. In other parts of the…
Political science (12 works) · Business (11 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Economics (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Cultural Industries and Urban Development (8 works) · Art (5 works) · Engineering (5 works) · Geography (5 works) · Law (5 works)