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Between 1998 and 2025, Mike Phillips was the Director of Research at i-DAT. Its underpinning research concerned “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.” A strong Digital Practice was central to exploring the significance that data – its harvesting, processing and manifestation, as an (im)material – can play in contemporary culture. We deployed research methods that were collaborative and participatory at their core, engaging audiences and communities and cultivating a rich transdisciplinary approach through collaborations across the arts and sciences.

These research methodologies evolved over twenty-five years of practice-based initiatives, building 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), and numerous digital projects. Audience engagement and metrics built on a real-world experience as an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation (2012-2015).

Mike Phillips synthesised i-DAT’s speculative research themes: Cultural Computation / Digital Heritâge / Behaviourables & Futuribles* / Interactive & Immersive Environments / Ludic Systems and developed  two Research Excellence Framework 2014 & 2021 Impact Case Studies, Unit of assessment 34/32: Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory: REF2014: i-DAT Operating Systems: Harvesting Data and REF2021: Quorum: Cultural Computation – Enhancing Audience Engagement.

PGR: ResM/MPhil/PhD:

Mike Phillips has 77 PhD completions through i-DAT, CODEX, Planetary Collegium (Plymouth, Milan & Zurich), CogNovo, Robotics and Geology. He was Co-Director of the CODEX international Postgraduate Research network, in collaboration with Jiangnan University, Nanjing University of the Arts and Soochow University in China.

Over the last 20+ years Mike Phillips 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, Phillips curated the FUTURE HISTORY (2019-2020) exhibition which maps this influence on the emergence of contemporary art forms…