Hybridity is a defining feature of the digital environment, as current developments in software and hardware facilitate crossovers between traditional arts disciplines. We wish to interrogate and creatively explore this notion and its implications.  As boundaries dissolve between traditional practices then aesthetic, theoretical, ethical and technical questions are raised regarding their future alignment, meaning and development. The latest developments in digital technology require that we elaborate new categories of practice and criticism, which also involve rethinking our relationship to the history of traditional practices and, some would argue, to the very notion of history itself.

To explore the creative possibilities of new technologies is to engender new ways of visually critiquing society and culture, but also of articulating them. Furthermore, for artists and film-makers to harness recent developments in digital software is, in part, to move away from the reductive and rigid taxonomies of art and science.

The Research Centre’s focus on digital art will be complemented by a commitment to research into a wide range of traditional art practices, which may be characterized by their production of material forms. Several members of the centre have long-established and nationally-recognized practices in the fine and applied arts, involving painting, sculpture, installation art, non-digital forms of photography, ceramics, and a range of applied-art disciplines. In addition, several members are published historians, digital archivists and critics of digital and/or material forms of art. While the research centre will embrace the breadth of research interests among its members, it will also facilitate a dynamic discourse in which those practices, whether digital or material, may be compared and debated.

Research activities conducted by members of the Research Centre will feed back into teaching and the wider curriculum. By encouraging collaborative practice between members of D-MARC we will achieve:

• Mentoring and development of researchers new to research whether joining as associates or researchers
• The ongoing sharing of existing and future research in an open and supportive environment
• The sharing of expertise through collaborative research projects.

Links with Industry

The Research Centre wants to develop collaborative practice with the creative industries that will be associated with its activities. Research projects are being opened up to this sector and funding is available from a number of sources to support and develop the work of micro and small businesses. The Faculty Innovation and Knowledge Transfer Manager, Harold Convey, is there to help companies and academics establish new programmes for the development of companies.

One scheme is Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) and further information is available by following the links:

General information on this site About KTPs

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships website http://www.ktponline.org.uk/