Creative practice and experimentation

Use creative, experimental, technological methods to better understand being human, the world we live in, our capabilities and limitations, and to explore how things might be different, how we can change ourselves and the world. Digital art, immersive design, and physical computing are key capabilities.

Lucy Suchman’s book Human-Machine Reconfigurations (2012) is a good introduction to this strand of research.

Examples

  1. The Tilt Brush VR app allows participants to artistically create richly decorated 3D spaces. Leaving and later re-entering such virtual spaces gives an insight into what makes a space into a home, how artistic practice leads to belonging. This might lead to us re-evaluate the importance of community-created art in shared spaces.
  2. Virtual retellings of historical events may enable a more accessible way for people to learn about those events, but how might the medium change our relationship with the past in good or bad ways? Should we gamify history? What are the ethical issues with, for example, enabling people to play parts on the wrong side of history? For example, as Nazis? Also, how might experiencing recent history in such an evocative medium change people’s memories, or even create false memories? Ethical questions to be explored by DAH research.
  3. AI-powered language translation is enabling new ways in which people can engage with people from other cultures, but how might this change those cultures, and nature of inter-cultural relationships? Does it lead to more understanding and cooperation, or less? Will inter-cultural engagements become more instrumental and impatient? How might we experiment with these technologies to investigate these questions?

Technologies and techniques

  • 2D digital art forms.
  • 3D digital art and design, including 3D printing.
  • Physical computing with sensors and interfaces (e.g. Arduino).
  • Augmented Reality.
  • Virtual Reality.
  • Immersive space and experience design (Figmin XR, Horizon Worlds, Unreal, Unity, Godot).
  • User experience data capture and analysis.

Next

Patterns in large real-world datasets | Human stories in close-up | Creative practice and experimentation

We also run (and record) sessions that cover transferable capabilities.