The Digital Design and Media Arts (DD+MA) cluster builds on the Faculty’s existing research strengths in digital design and media – defined broadly as the theory, practice and application of digital media and computational techniques in art, design and culture.

DD+MA supports theoretical, critical, applied, and practice-led modes of research, and takes a trans-disciplinary approach to research in this field, combining theory with practice and drawing on fields including design, art practice, cultural and critical theory, and human-computer interaction. Its aims are to develop new understandings of practice in digital design and media, both through analysis and experimentation; and to pursue applications of digital media that enrich public life and culture. 

Members

Assoc Prof Stephen Barrass - digital design, media arts, sonification

Assoc Prof Mitchell Whitelaw - digital materiality and design, data visualisation and generative systems

Dr Sam Hinton - gaming, digital culture and computer graphics 

Dr Lisa Scharoun - global visual culture

Dr Ana Sanchez-Laws - museum design

Associate Members

Geoff Hinchcliffe - interface poetics and dynamic graphic design

Tim Thomas - photographic and post-photographic image-making

Chris Hardy - industrial design, digital design and manufacturing

Erin Hinton - interior design

Adjuncts

Tim Sherratt – National Museum of Australia

PhD Students

Jonathan McCabe - generative art

Ben Ennis-Butler - data visualisation of cultural collections

Anton Schertenlieb - social media and data sonification

2011 Research Theme – Transmateriality

The cluster's theme for 2011 is Transmateriality – a term which motivates an exploration of the physical and tangible in digital design and the media arts. Current work in the area of data-driven and generative fabrication includes Whitelaw’s Measuring Cup and Local Colour, Barrass’s Physical Sonifications and Shape of Sound auditory dataforms, and Hardy’s digitally fabricated furniture.

2010 Research Theme – Cultural Interfaces

The cluster's theme for 2010 is Cultural Interfaces - both interfaces to digital culture and interface as culture. Our work in this area includes Hinton and Whitelaw's commonsExplorer a dynamic visualisation of the Flickr Commons, and Hinchcliffe's Twitter Modern Classics, which transforms tweets into vintage paperbacks.

Contact

Please direct enquiries to the cluster chair,

Stephen Barrass

ph. 61 2 6201 2945

stephen.barrass@canberra.edu.au