Digital Arts and Intermedia Practices (M.Phil.)

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.