ABOUT

i-DAT is an Open Research Lab for playful experimentation with creative technology and consists of two entangled parts: i-DAT Research and the i-DAT Collective. We think deeply and differently about how we intertwingle with data and computational systems in an increasingly technologically mediated world.

PROJECTS

i -DAT’s Projects are delivered by the i-DAT Collective, a collaborative group of interdisciplinary artists, technologists, and researchers. These provocative prototypes are rooted in i-DAT’s core research themes which are concerned with making ‘data’ palpable, tangible and accessible and are outlined below…

NEWS

Donald Rodney Visceral Canker, Spike Island (25 May-8 Sept 2024) / Nottingham Contemporary (28 Sept-5 Jan 2024) / Whitechapel (12 Feb-4 May 2025). “Visceral Canker aims to introduce a new generation of audiences to Rodney’s life and work, cementing his place as a vital figure in British art.”

Cultural Computation: audience behaviours, environments, ‘things’ and Artificial Intelligence.

Digital Heritâge: recognises that history is a pile of debris, some of which is digital or can be transfigured through digital processes.

Behaviourables & Futuribles: the Internet of Things, remote sensors, robotics, Props & Wearables – (everywareables?)..

Interactive & Immersive Environments: The digital Umwelt – new experiences in enhanced physical, augmented & virtual spaces.

Ludic Systems: Playful subversion – real-time social gaming and playful soft-hard-ware.

PhD+

• i-DAT’s research themes & projects provide a rich context for {F/T| P/T, local | remote} PhDs & Post-Docs, from a variety of disciplines, who can engage with these initiatives and build research activity grounded in their creative practice.
• i-DAT nurtures a vibrant, networked, transdisciplinary research community…

PGR Community

i-DAT’s PGR Community is…

• …entangled with an international network of researchers, practitioners, projects, and symposia…
• …frequently infiltrated by professional digital artists and designers…
• … and equally infectious to real-world interdisciplinary projects and collaborations.

PhD Archive

• An archive of PhD completions, mapping out the broad range of research expertise…
• contributing to disciplines such as: New Media, Fine Art, Design, Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Architecture, Performance…
• through i-DAT, and research collaborations with the Planetary Collegium, CogNovo, 3D3, etc…

PEOPLE

i-DAT Researchers / Supervisors / Residents / Artists / Advisory Network / Editors / Alumni…

Core Staff: Dr Rafael Arrivabene / Chris Booth / Dr Gianni Corino / Celine Dearing / Musaab Garghouti / Dr Lauren Hayhurst / Joel Hodges / Prof Mike Phillips / Dr Andrew Prior / Dr James Sweeting / Dr Dylan Yamada-Rice

IVT

i-DAT manages the Immersive Vision Theatre, a transdisciplinary instrument for the manifestation of material and imaginary worlds.

We deliver shows, productions and research into immersive media (Virtual Reality and Fulldome) environments.

i-DAT is proud to be a founding partner in the FullDome UK: http://www.fulldome.org.uk/

ARCHIVE

donald.rodney: autoicon
“It’s as though he’s alert to the current debate in the House of Commons chamber. We briefly discuss love, pain and flowers and when I ask him about the internet, he amusingly replies, “Excuse me?” Even with its Y2K interface, Autoicon is a technological wonder. It doesn’t just imagine black people in the future, it preserves them so that they arrive there safely and in their own image.”

(Kadish Morris The Guardian, 28/10/20)

Research:

i-DAT’s underpinning research concerns making ‘data’, tangible, accessible and playable. It involves creating new experiences through the design, construction and diffusion of immersive, networked, sensing and intelligent ‘things’ and software.

Digital Practice is central to exploring the significance that data – its harvesting, processing and manifestation, as an (im)material – can play in contemporary culture.

The research is collaborative and participatory at its core, engaging audiences and communities and cultivating a rich transdisciplinary approach through collaborations across the arts and sciences.

i-DAT’s research ethos and methodologies have evolved over twenty-five years of practice-based initiatives and build on a series of ‘Operating Systems’, large scale European and UKRI funded collaborative projects, such as the South West Creative Technology Network (£6.5 million Research England), the Impact Lab (£6.4 million ERDF), eHealth (ERDF), and digital projects.

This R&D has contributed to the strategic activities of not-for-profit, public, private, and community sectors, including Arts Council England, Councils, UNESCO Biosphere, museums, festivals, and Schools.

i-DAT’s projects are delivered by the i-DAT Collective, a collaborative network of interdisciplinary artists, technologists and researchers. i-DAT’s audience engagement and metrics research builds on its previous real-world experience as an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation.

◯ ◯ ◯

PGR: ResM/MPhil/PhD…

i-DAT’s research themes and projects provide a rich context for {Full Time or Part Time / local or remote} research students from a variety of disciplines, who can engage with these initiatives and build research activity grounded in their creative practice.

i-DAT’s core supervisory team has more than 80 PhD completions in a broad range of areas (design, software, interactive architecture, play, performance, and robotics). i-DAT also supports Professor Roy Ascott’s Planetary Collegium.

Supervisory teams draw on collaborating research groups in the School of Art, Design & Architecture / Faculty of Arts, Humanities & Business, the Sustainable Earth Institute, the Cognition Institute. and eHealth.

Past, Present and Future i-DAT PhD’s can be found here ◯ ◯ ◯

i-DAT is the catalyst behind the CODEX international Postgraduate Research network, in collaboration with Jiangnan University, Nanjing University of the Arts and Soochow University in China.

Please contact a member of i-DAT to help develop your research proposal before submitting through University of Plymouth application process for ResM/MPhil/PhD.

Cultural Computation:
Quorum creates playful synergies between audience behaviours, interactive media environments, physical objects (or things) and modern integrative, sub-symbolic, computational techniques. Quorum proposes new analytical techniques which focus on enhancing audience engagement through the use of conversational AI, Artificial Neural Networks, Self Organising Maps and Deep Learning Networks to innovatively integrate subjective and objective data.

Digital Heritâge:

Glancing in the rear-view mirror whilst being blown backwards into the future, the Digital Heritâge research theme recognises that history is a pile of debris, some of which is digital or can be transfigured through digital processes. Not some fetishistic obsession with a decaying past but a speculative archaeology which explores material and immaterial artefacts, lost dreams and forgotten systems. What things could be and could have been.

Behaviourables & Futuribles*:
i-DAT’s creative interventions into the realms of the Internet of Things, remote sensors, robotics, Props and Wearables (everywareables?) has established a rich framework for investigating the emergent properties of things that sense and like to talk about it. The design, engineering and fabrication of these devices or things, is a very haptic and intimate part of this research theme.

Interactive & Immersive Environments:
The development of meaningful experiences in digitally enhanced physical, augmented and virtual spaces presents the research challenge for this theme. The digital Umwelt is explored through interventions in the fabric of urban and rural environments, augmentation using real-time data layering on mobile devises and the construction of immersive virtual environments for head mounted systems or the shared VR of the fulldome environment.

Ludic Systems:
Playful subversion runs through all of i-DAT’s activities. It is both a creative methodology (ludile) and a provocation for critical engagement. Embedded in most of our project outputs this theme also manifests itself in projects that engage audiences in real-time city wide social gaming, interactive systems and playful software. The approach runs through our workshopping, participatory design and co-development processes.

Research Excellence Framework 2014 & 2021 Impact Case Studies, Unit of assessment 34/32: Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory.

Studentships/Fellowships:

Entrepreneurial Futures – Immersive Design Researcher in Residence (DRIR) 2024-2025: [CLOSED] The Immersive Technologies strand of the Entrepreneurial Futures project offers dedicated support for enterprises in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly to explore how immersive technologies – including augmented (AR), mixed (MR) and virtual reality (VR) and 360 Full Dome – can be used for innovation, audience engagement and problem-solving across a wide range of contexts and industries.
https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/research/entrepreneurial-futures/immersive-technologies

Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business studentships 2023: [CLOSED]
The full-time studentships are supported for three years and will start on 01 October 2023.
Building on our recent success in REF 2021, the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business at the University of Plymouth is making a strategic investment in eight funded PhD Studentships and invites talented applicants to submit outstanding PhD research proposals and applications connecting with all our disciplines across the arts, humanities, social sciences and practice as research.
The closing date for applications is 12 noon on 17 April 2023. 

iMayflower Innovative Placements Scheme: [CLOSED] Postgraduate research projects – R&D Studentship award includes £3,000 Scholarship grant + £2,000 project budget. The iMayflower Masters R&D Studentship Scheme pairs talented new postgraduate design, art, heritage, digital and built environment students with innovative local companies to tackle a research project that contributes to the development of a new product, service or experience. The following projects are accepting applications until 30th July 2021: https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/business-partners/the-bridge/imayflower/innovative-placements

South West Creative Technology Network Fellowships: [CLOSED] Not strictly PGR funding but i-DAT is a partner in the South West Creative Technology Network (SWCTN), a £6.5 million project to expand the use of creative technologies across the South West of England. The network offers three one-year funded programmes around the themes of immersion, automation and data. The collaboration will invest in interdisciplinary fellowships and prototype production across three challenge areas: Immersion, Automation and Data. Our focus on creative technology brings together arts, design, computer sciences, engineering and business development to deliver new products and services. www swctn.org.uk

AHRC 3D3 Consortium: [CLOSED] i-DAT contributes to the Arts and Humanities Doctoral Training Centre in the Faculty of Art, Plymouth University (http://3d3research.co.uk/). In collaboration with University of the West of England (lead) and Falmouth University, Plymouth University has been successfully awarded a Centres for Doctoral Training (CDT). The studentship places will be advertised by the CDT on an annual basis, and studentship will be awarded on open competition. http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/Funding-Opportunities/Postgraduate-funding/Pages/Centres-for-Doctoral-Training.aspx

CogNovo: [CLOSED] i-DAT contributes to the Cognition Institute and a partner in the CogNovo Project is a multi-national doctoral training network that offers research training in Cognitive Innovation, both as a new field of scientific investigation and as a strategy for research and innovation. EU FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-ITN-IDP 604764; 2013-17 €4.1m) “CogNovo: Cognitive Innovation”. Using creative technologies to promote behaviour change.

ALErT Project: [CLOSED] i-DAT is also involved in PhD supervision of the ALErT Project developing immersive geological simulations with Professor Iain Stewart on the EU FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-ITN-IDP 607996; 2013-17).

Workshops/Symposia/Conferences:

The i-DAT Research Workshops build on the heritage of a series of practice based production workshops, seminars and symposia. These include: FulldomeUK, Skunk-Works, Balance Unbalance 2017, Transimage 2016, Scale Electric, Far Away So Close, AHO+Bartlett=i-DAT, VR/IVT Research Group, etc.

E/M/D/L / The Overview: Leonardo 50th Anniversary Celebration. Tate Collective TIWWA development workshop.

Workshop methodologies critically and playfully engage with themes, technologies and behaviours which frame the symptoms of individual and collective practices of the i-DAT research community.

From 2018 i-DAT will be delivering research workshops in collaboration with the Message and Design Knowledge research groups through the Design Area Research activities.

Research Environment:

i-DAT’s provides a highly connected research environment which incorporates its international transdisciplinary network, conferences, publications and funding opportunities.

Some examples of these activities can be found here…

Contact:
i-DAT
204 Roland Levinsky Building
University of Plymouth
Plymouth, PL4 8AA, UK
eml: contact@i-dat.org
tel: ++447971993023

Location:
Google Maps: https://bit.ly/3BiOjvi
Download the Campus Map {RLB & IVT}

Management:
Research: Prof Mike Phillips
Internationalisation/CODEX: Dr Gianni Corino
Digital Design Subject Leader: Dr Andrew Prior
b-DAT: Musaab Garghouti
MA Experience Design: Prof Dylan Yamada-Rice
BA Game Arts & Design: Joel Hodges
MA Game Design: Dr Rafael Arrivabene
Immersive Vision Theatre: Luke Christison

About:

i-DAT is an Open Research Lab for playful experimentation with creative technology. Since its formation in 1998 at the University of Plymouth, i-DAT has delivered world-class research which is manifest as a range of public projects (boundary-fluid art works, interventions, systems and cultural prototypes). i-DAT’s projects are delivered through interdisciplinary collaborations which place people and communities at their core. i-DAT is a vertex in an international network of researchers and practitioners and host to a community of PhD students and artists.

i-DAT’s mission is to engage people in thinking deeper and differently about how they intertwingle with data and computational systems in an increasingly technologically mediated world.

i-DAT manages the Immersive Vision Theatre, delivering shows, productions and research into immersive media (Virtual Reality and Fulldome) environments.

Future History:

i-DAT’s past, present and future is intimately entangled with a suite of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at the University of Plymouth. BSc MediaLab Arts (1992) and MSc Digital Futures (2000) provided the foundations for BA/BSc Digital Media Design/BA/BSc Internet Design/BA Game Arts & Design /MA Game Design / MA Experience Design.

Future History supports a synthesis, evolution and entanglement with these programmes, their activities, and our alumni.

Over the last 20+ years i-DAT has had a syncretic relationship with Roy Ascott’s Planetary Collegium (& its CAiiA (Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts), STAR (Science Technology and Art Research) and CAiiA-STAR manifestations).

Rooted in the cybernetic, telematic and interactive behaviours defined by Roy Ascott, FUTURE HISTORY maps this influence on the emergence of contemporary art forms…

i-DAT Proto-Lab, Salon and Bureau:

Located in 204/205/205A Roland Levinsky Building, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, PL48AA.

Immersive Vision Theatre:

i-DAT manages the 30 seat Immersive Vision Theatre (IVT), a transdisciplinary instrument for the manifestation of material, immaterial and imaginary worlds. The IVT’s ‘Full Dome’ architecture houses 2 powerful high-resolution fish eye projectors 10.1 speaker spatialised audio system.

Digital Studios:

Games Lab – Roland Levinsky 201 (New 2023) /

Digital Art & Technology Studios – Roland Levinsky 209 & 2010.

[IBM Smarter Planet Lab  - depreciated]

Immersive Media Lab:

The Immersive Media Lab is a new digital initiative which sits alongside the Digital Fabrication Lab on the ground floor of the Roland Levinsky Building. These spaces are celebrate a dynamic engagement with (post)digital innovation as a catalyst for playful experimentation.

Logorythm ◯ ◯ ◯:

Logorythm ([ i ] [>] […]) (v1.0) defined in 1998 to = ‘i’ (the Institute) ‘>’ (more than) ‘…’ (the sum of its parts). Black graphic re-versioned 2008 (v2.0), + logo(rhythm).org text & subtle squircles & robust red.

Correct spelling of i-DAT = i-DAT. Variations on a theme (including Microsoft Word) are prohibited 1998-2018: I-DAT/IDAT/IDat/I-dat/i-dat./idat/iDAT… 2018 -… all recombinated versions are permissible with the 20th anniversary Ctrl+Alt+Del v3.0 logorythm.

The Ctrl+Alt+Del reversion of the i-DAT logorythm (v3.0) refreshes, redefines and reduces for the C21st.  Stripped of ‘i’ and ‘>’, the logorythm is reduced to Unicode characters.
◯ ◯ ◯. U+25EF x 3 extracts the […] from logorythm V1.0 & 2.0, thereby retaining the ‘everything else’ or ‘parts’ that the institute was more than the sum of.

◯ is U+25EF in the Unicode character set, a unique cross platform code to define the  new i-DAT logorythm = [U+25EF U+2008 U+25EF U+2008 U+25EF] or [U+25EF U+2008 x 3] = ◯ ◯ ◯

In addition, these Unicode characters can be placed within a 4-dimensional matrix under the influence of orbiting forces. Iterations of this 3D temporal logo (v4.0) will emerge from time to time in various fulldome and VR spaces…

i-DAT Logorhythm {.png / .eps /.pdf / .ai}

Disclaimer:

i-DAT makes every possible effort to ensure that the information published on this website is accurate and up to date, but does not accept any responsibility for errors or omissions and reserves the right to make amendments at any time and without prior notice. i-DAT does not accept responsibility for the information provided on external sites reached via links from any of its web pages. The characters and incidents portrayed and the names used herein are fictitious and any similarity to the names character of history of any person is entirely accidental and unintentional. All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental, and should not be construed.*

Future History:

*1998 – Ctrl+Alt+Del 2018 – ∞

Ctrl+Alt+Del: /ˈkrɒnɪk(ə)l/ Changelog: