Digital Arts and Intermedia Practices (M.Phil.)

Overview

Course Overview

In the new M.Phil. in Digital Arts and Intermedia Practices, students critically engage with emergent digital technologies and infrastructures through artistic research and practice.

Working across artistic disciplines, students examine diverse applications of AR and VR (augmented & virtual reality), AI (artificial intelligence), interactive design, game design, immersive environments, and urban media interventions. Students customise their programme with electives in performance studies, documentary film, and writing for computer games alongside core modules that draw from 21st century visual art, sound art, interactive art, and new media art, leading to an independent project focused on their own practice or research.

Throughout the programme, students link digital art practices with topical issues, considering the impact of the digital (as constituted by technologies, practices, and cultures) on civic life, urban governance, social interaction, freedom of information, and states of crisis. Through diverse modalities of experiential learning, the programme offers a space for students to probe fundamental questions related to the increasingly blurred territories between public and private space and notions of the self and the collective, and to explore new solutions to issues related to sustainability and social equity on both a local and a global scale.

Students work directly with partners including practicing artists, contemporary arts institutions (The Douglas Hyde Gallery), urban media studios (Algorithm) and global innovation consultancies (The Dock, Accenture’s flagship R&D centre). These partnerships provide a transdisciplinary foundation that draws together a range of interests, skillsets, values, and ambitions.

Is This Course for Me?

This programme is for students with both practice- and theory-based backgrounds, who are driven to work across different artistic disciplines, and who want to develop highly transferrable skills rooted in critical theory and creative digital technologies.

The programme does not require any specific technological skillset.

Career Opportunities

This programme prepares students to develop professional artistic and curatorial practices and to pursue advanced research. Equally the programme equips students with the critical and technological skills to enter the creative industries through careers in digital media, interactive design, experience design, exhibition design, design consultancy, advertising, and marketing.

Course Structure

The full-time programme consists of 2 elements:

• 6 taught modules (10 ECTS each) delivered equally across 2 semesters (60 ECTS)
• Research Project (30 ECTS)

The part-time programme consists of 2 elements:

• Year 1 (40 ECTS) = 4 taught modules (10 ECTS each)
• Year 2 (50 ECTS) = 2 taught modules (10 ECTS each) + Research Project (30 ECTS)

Course Content

Both full-time and part-time students will take 4 core modules and 2 elective modules as well as completing an independent research project.

Core Modules (10 ECTS each): *

• Contextualising Digital Art: Histories, Theories, Publics, Practices
• Digital Storyworlds
• Digital Art as Critical Spatial Practice
• Collaborative Intermedia Studio: Advanced Digital Arts Production

Elective Modules (10 ECTS each): *

• Strategies of Performance Analysis
• Creative Documentary
• Writing for Computer Games 1
• Writing for Computer Games 2

Research Project (30 ECTS):

The final project for the programme is a self-directed research project developed in a subject area relevant to each student’s practice and research interests. There are three options:

• A written dissertation of no more than 15,000 words exploring a specific theme, practitioner, technology, or institution relevant to the field of digital art and intermedia practice. The essay can be accompanied by any combination of media resources (e.g., supplementary audio or visual material), to be reviewed with input from the course director.
• A practice-oriented work or exhibition developed on a realistic scale with available resources accompanied by a critical reflection (5,000-8,000 words) to accompany the work. Both elements to be developed in consultation with the course director.
• A document or proposal developed to advance the student’s professional practice, developed in consultation with the course director. Examples of this could be a draft proposal for an Arts Council Project Award or a public art commission.

* Module titles are for illustration purposes only. The School reserves the right to change modules.