Artistic Integrated Research

Digital art builds bridges between creativity and innovation, expands creative expression, and strengthens social bonds while pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Contributions enrich culture, advance technology, and inspire new forms of communication and expression. 

The Artistic Integrated Research, or AIR, research group is driven by a central understanding: Any digital technology, any new device or code, software or hardware, technique or methodology, website or situation, can be used to read, write, or create a home for a digital narrative. 

A handheld projector can be used to place hidden digital works in the forest. Software for large game studios can create narratives that change based on location or using machine learning. Imagine walking through a natural history museum and finding animated AI stories hidden among exhibits about dinosaurs or climate change. 

Research in AIR will focus on creative outcomes, digital art, and writing. Creations that reside in art galleries; institutions such as libraries, universities, and delivered through digital platforms to large global audiences. Experimentation with theme and focus is also central, with an emphasis on digital writing and art that engages with critical themes, and explores all narrative media as a powerful literary element. 

Why and where works exist is also explored. How do we reach new audiences and change how they understand narrative experiences? Last but not least, much of AIR’s research will take place across the CDN. The AIR node has no thematic boundaries and will seek to attract scholars, students, writers, artists, and technologists to develop groundbreaking research, to create new creative rivers.