An exciting opportunity has arisen for a practice-based researcher to investigate the implications for the practices of artists, arts professionals and cultural organisations, and also ways in which festival curation and arts practice can address the consequences of technological change for society at large.
FutureEverything’s founder and board director Dr. Drew Hemment (Edinburgh Futures Institute) with NEoN Digital Arts Festival (Directed by Donna Holford-Lovell) and Prof. Sarah Cook (University of Glasgow) are seeking outstanding practice-based research candidates for a collaborative doctoral award fully funded for three years by the SGSAH to start in October 2020.
NEoN (North East of North) is Scotland’s first digital art festival, based in Dundee. It aims to advance the understanding and accessibility of digital and technology-driven art and design forms and to encourage high quality within the production of this medium. For over ten years, NEoN has organised exhibitions, workshops, talks, conferences, live performances and public discussions and established itself as a platform to showcase national and international digital artists.
Over the past 30 years, digital culture festivals such as NEoN have provided a key site through which the digital turn has been critically questioned and creatively explored together with diverse audiences. These festivals have incubated novel approaches and methods for commissioning, presenting and preserving digital art. However, their often grassroots character has limited the documentation and study of these phenomena. This project seeks to address this gap through a novel combination of archival/curatorial practice methods, evaluating how commissioning digital art at such events stimulates digital creativity and might secure the legacy of digital art.