Digital Cultures, Digital Media

Digital Cultures, Digital Media

Digital Cultures focusses on innovative engagements within digital public spaces. Our contribution to consortium projects, SiDE and The Creative Exchange (Bowers, Shaw 2012-17), and UKRI calls, such as ‘Next Generation of Immersive Experiences’, is characterised by innovative research conducted in and with public space (Schofield 2018). Projects have included acoustic interventions in church buildings (Shaw, Bowers 2019), and work introducing innovative digital creative methods into cultural organisations, changing their working practices and developing Augmented Reality (AR) apps to connect Tyneside children with literary archives (Schofield 2018).

This theme addresses the multiple relationships digital technologies can have with aesthetic practice. The work concerns not just the aesthetically-informed creation of digital artefacts but also investigations of how the digital impacts traditional practices and materials. The research is trans-disciplinary in character, drawing on multiple scholarly perspectives, with both theoretical inspiration and empirical groundwork motivating the design and creation of artefacts and artworks. An important concern of the theme is to impact communities and academic fields with a practical concern for the design and use of digital technologies. Accordingly, much of the research is delivered to computing conferences and publication outlets (especially in HCI, Human-Computer Interaction) alongside traditional artistic settings.

Specific research topics have included: theorisations of media archaeology and provocative pieces exploring data as a material, the use of sensor-based systems to connect computation with other materialities, digital fabrication, the use of design traditions to inform the development of innovative interaction ideas, exploring digital technologies in live performance settings, sound art, improvisation and intermedia performance, data visualisation, wearable technologies, bio-signal interaction and embodiment, interventions in tourism and cultural heritage sites, aesthetic artefacts for domestic settings.

Digital Cultures research, which is based in and supported by Culture Lab, involves close collaboration with researchers across the arts and humanities, and, notably, with computer scientists in the university. Working closely with Newcastle University's Institute for Creative Arts Practice, Digital Cultures supports a lively community of PhD students and an interdisciplinary Master’s programme in Creative Arts Practice.