Study level

  • PhD
  • Master of Philosophy

Faculty/School

Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice

Topic status

We're looking for students to study this topic.

Research centre

Design Lab

Supervisors

Associate Professor Jen Seevinck
Position
Associate Professor (Interactive and Visual Design)
Division / Faculty
Faculty of CI, Education & Social Justice

Overview

This suggested practice-based research project seeks, overall, to ask how interactive art engages audiences, how it is created and, depending on the applicant's interest and expertise, how it might be a collaborative effort between artist and technologist.

ituated within the nascent area of interactive art, contributing new understandings and research into the form and design of interactive art works; and new insights into audience experience of interactive art.

The project can engage with themes and theories in its exploration of interactive art experience. This would reflect your areas of interest. Some areas in which we've previously worked and supervised include:

  • emergence
  • generative art
  • sustainability and the environment
  • more-than-human
  • speculative and critical design
  • art-science intersections
  • data visualisation
  • psychotherapy
  • health, wellbeing
  • diversionary therapy
  • drawing
  • citizen science
  • augmented reality
  • virtual reality.

Research activities

We'll consult with you to discuss and determine the research project activities, to reflect your interest and expertise.

As a guide, we expect it would be practice-based, requiring the practical development of specific creative and/or technical outcomes in interactive art alongside an exegesis.

Specifically, you can expect to be doing the following activities:

  • conduct a literature review and develop an expert understanding of interactive digital art
  • develop strong understanding of key theoretical or site specific issues of interest to you. This might be engaging with theory around emergence, generative art, sustainability and the environment, more-than-human interactions and experiences, and art-science intersections, data visualisation, ubiquitous computing, etc
  • create interactive artworks. Depending on your interests, this practical component may involve a digital arts based role or a technology co-creator role. This will involve interaction design methods including iterative design to prototype, data visualisation and techniques for digital authoring and/or development
  • evaluate audience and stakeholder experiences of the artwork. This qualitative research into audience experience builds on state of the art practices in creating interactive art and utilised methods such as audience observation, interviews, surveys
  • publication about your work.

Outcomes

This PhD project could include the following outcomes:

  • two interactive art systems that engage with issues surrounding the themed area of interest, either individually or collaboratively designed and developed, using interaction design methods such as iterative design, and user (audience) evaluation and research, as well as reflective practice methods
  • exhibition and installation of these works for public viewing
  • two audience evaluation studies - one for each artwork
  • publications about the work and research
  • an exegesis.

Skills and experience

The project suits someone who is either:

  • a digital artist used to working in a creative role with interactive technology, and interested in pushing the medium of interactive digital art further
  • a technologist, for example, a programmer or IT engineer who has developed applications or products for people to use and has an interest in using these skills creatively in collaboration with artists.

You should be interested in the creative process and creative outcomes, either as an artist or designer yourself, or as a technologist looking to work in a creative team and collaborate in the creation of new ground breaking and socially significant interactive art systems.

Ideally, but not necessarily, you should be interested in and already working in:

  • interactive art
  • interaction design
  • digital art
  • IT, computer science or computer engineering.

You may have previously made or designed:

  • interaction designs
  • augmented reality applications
  • art installations
  • experiences for people, like interactive theatre, performance art, film.

You may have created using:

  • tangible media
  • physical computing, mechatronics or robotics
  • projection mapping
  • 3D graphics
  • gaming, or virtual or augmented reality
  • web or creative coding
  • other digital products or services.

You must be:

  • familiar and comfortable with digital media
  • motivated and self directed, able to research to find out what you don't already know.

Scholarships

You may be eligible to apply for a research scholarship.

Explore our research scholarships

Keywords

Contact

Contact the supervisor for more information.