About

The Art & Social Technologies (AST) research group examines creative practice at the intersection of art, technology and society. The AST 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 assertion is that practice in art and technology is increasingly characterised in terms of its social impact.

The group has a special interest in the production of experimental, performative, participatory and distributed art-technological systems - developed and changed through social networks of users and programmers - that challenge orthodox social relations. The research extends the usual description of technologies that simply connect people or allow for collaboration. The concern is how sociality extends beyond technology itself to the communities and individuals who use it.

Praxis lies at the core of AST's approach to interdisciplinary research in the following areas:
→ critical theory and practice in art and technology
→ distributed systems for curatorial and artistic practices
→ interactive and performative aspects of technology
→ relational and participatory potential of technology
→ the development of open and sustainable software/hardware platforms
→ collective ownership, intellectual property and the politics of FLOSS

The group's organisational structure reflects its intellectual concerns in being distributed as an open system and shared intellectual resource. The group have a rotating chair. Members are: Dr Joasia Krysa, Dr Anya Lewin, Dr Geoff Cox, Hugo de Rijke, Phil Ellis, Andy Prior, Magda Tyzlik-Carver, Robert Jackson, Helen Pritchard, Dan Livingstone.

For details of projects or research opportunities within this group, please contact us.