A∑TEC Mission:
A∑TEC (Art Science Technology Research Consortium) is an alliance of five research groups intended to develop synergies between researchers in the Faculty of Technology concerned with creative practice at the intersection of Science/Art/and Technology.
It comprises The Centre for Advanced Inquiry into the Integrative Arts (CAiiA), The Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR), Transtechnology Research, Nascent Art and Technology Research and the Art and Social Technologies Research Group.

The Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research

The centre is divided into 4 main teams: Evolutionary Music Team, Music and the Brain Team, Music Technology Team and Musical Practice Team. The first team is concerned with the problem of musical evolution. Activity here includes research into modelling the evolution of musical style, evolution of musical grammars and generative performance. The second team is mostly concerned with the problem of representation of musical experience in the brain. Research is focusing on active perception, role of timbre in musical expectancies, development of experience-dependent abstractions and brain-computer interface. Whereas the third team is concerned with the conversion of basic scientific research into practical music technology the fourth is concerned with musical practices using new technology and contemporary music. Projects here include music in the community, music facilitation for disability and sonic arts.

 

The Planetary Collegium

Through transdisciplinary inquiry and shared discourse, the Planetary Collegium aims to produce new knowledge and new practice in the context of the arts , with special reference to technoetic research and to advances in science and technology. It seeks outcomes that involve new language, systems, structures, and behaviours, and insight into the nature of mind, matter and human identity. Its research reflects the social, technological and spiritual aspirations of emerging planetary society, while sustaining a critical awareness of the retrograde forces and fields that inhibit social development. The Planetary Collegium is a community of artists, theorists and scholars, based throughout the world, working at the cutting edge of a wide field of inquiry – installation, dance and performance, architecture, music, narrative, design - in the context of telematic and technoetic practices.. The Collegium is based at its CAiiA-Hub in the University of Plymouth, with nodes in Zurich, Milan and Beijing.

 

Art and Social Technologies Research

The Social Technologies and Art research group examines creative practice at the intersection of art, technology and society. It supports interdisciplinary research with an emphasis on practice informed by theory. The group aims to test the pertinence of existing theoretical models and proposes new ways of drawing together thinking and practice appropriate to contemporary techno-cultural production and its social impact. The group has a special interest in the production of experimental, participatory and distributed technological systems - developed and changed through social networks of users and programmers - that challenge orthodox social relations. The research extends the usual description of social technologies that simply connect people or allow for collaboration. The concern is how sociality goes beyond technology itself to the communities and individuals who use it. The assertion is that practice in art and technology is increasingly characterised as social.

Nascent Art and Technology Research

The symptoms of Nascent - Art & Technology Research can be described as collaborative, experimental, practice-based and applied, and engage with intelligent environments, interactive art, ubiquitous computing, sonic architecture and the construction and dissemination of emergent ‘transmedia’ forms.

Nascent explores the transformative potential of digital technology (hardware & software), both as a catalyst for the evolution of cultural forms and as a substrate for transdisciplinary research and innovation. In this context digital technology acts as a ‘Rosetta Stone’ for arts/science collaborations and as a critical ‘lens’ for viewing emergent scientific and cultural knowledge.

The key research question for the Nascent - Art & Technology Research is:

“What are the transformative qualities of digital 'technology' and how do these qualities manifest themselves (through & within: methodologies, trans-disciplinarity and practice - applied and critical)?”

Transtechnology Research

Research is led from a historical and theoretical perspective. Its key concern is the understanding of science and technology as a manifestation of a range of human desires and cultural imperatives. Its major research project concerns the philosophical aspects of science and technology and the history of popular arts in particular cinema and its derivatives. Other topics currently being researched concern the spiritual aspects of nineteenth century and digital technology, early cinema and the technological imaginary, anoetic technology, the interpretation of science and technology in popular culture, and the historiography of technology.