i-DAT is a lab for creative research, experimentation and innovation across the fields of digital Art, Science and Technology, generating social, economic and cultural benefit. Located within the Faculty of Arts at Plymouth University, it has been delivering high quality and experimental national and international arts and cultural activities since 1998.

i-DAT became an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation in March 2012. It continues to evolve its programme of activities, pushing the boundaries of digital arts / creative media practice, instigating playful opportunities for research, production and collaboration and making technological innovations accessible to artistic talent and audiences. One of i-DAT’s core aims is to demystify and democratise these processes, supporting a culture of innovation in the arts enabled through digital technologies.

i-DAT’s activities are focused around making ‘data’ generated by human, ecological, economic and societal activity tangible and readily available to the public, artists, engineers and scientists for artistic expression with a cultural and / or a social impact.

As a networked organisation and cultural broker i-DAT's transdisciplinary agenda fosters open innovation, Knowledge Transfer and mutually beneficial relationships between companies, institutions, communities and individuals.

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Funders & Collaborators...

i-DAT receives core funding from:

i-DAT's activities are underpinned by a critical research agenda. It is host to a transdisciplinary research community that comprises practice-based PhD students, supervisory teams (drawn from Science, Technology, Architecture and Art and Design), practicing artists and industrial collaborators.

i-DAT's research 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.

i-DAT's ToolBox and Activities provide a rich context for Full Time and Part Time PhD research students from a variety of disciplines, who can either engage with these major initiatives or build their research activity grounded in their own creative practice. Individual research student profiles can be found on the People page of this site. i-DAT's research embraces transdisciplinarity as an inevitable consequence and emergent principal of digital practice, where theory and practice / form and content, are reflexively linked.

If you are interested in applying to i-DAT for a MPhil/PhD: more information

i-DAT Research Workshops:

The i-DAT Research Workshops build on the heritage of a series of practice based production workshops, seminars and symposia. These include: Scale Electric, Far Away So Close, AHO+Bartlett=i-DAT, etc.

These workshops critically and playfully engage with themes, technologies and behaviours which form the symptoms manifest in the individual and collective practices of the i-DAT research community.

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