The SMARTlab Digital Media Institute PhD Programme

SMARTlab PhD Seminar

Running from 7-12 JULY 2008

SMARTlab runs three annual seminar sessions for our students from around the world at UEL, London each year in February, July and October. The next seminar will take place from 18-22 February, with an intensive introduction for new and transfer students on the 17th.

As well as giving students ample time for both one-to-one peer support and ideas exchange within the international group, the SMARTlab seminar week also includes a series of talks and seminars designed to meet the needs of each student.

The seminars cater to the wide range of subject areas, fields of research and specialties of our students. The current session aims to get back to basics and explore the nature of a practice-based PhD and the aim for an original contribution to knowledge in cross-disciplinary fields. The week long programme also includes practical and academic advice on theory, writing and funding, as well as discussion, debate, and special events. Steve Di Paola will be speaking on modelling intelligent expression and cognitive knowledge systems, and students will be presenting their own research.

The seminar also gives students the chance to gain supervision with their supervisors across the different schools of UEL.

DocSMARTs: Practice-based PhDs (Live and Online) in Media Art
http://www.SMARTlabphd.com

Artists, and indeed technologists working in artistic domains, have long encountered difficulties in placing their work in relation to the academy: in finding appropriate ways to 'measure' artistic practice in 'research exercises', in identifying appropriately flexible and experimental forms for artistic research processes and outcomes, and also in competing for academic funding.

The SMARTlab Digital Media Institute supports a highly selective group of PhD researchers. This groups works together live and online, with contributors from all around the world, to co-create and debate the nature of 'practice-based research'. Candidates are encouraged to work together on joint experiments, to share work in progress for group feedback, and to meet regularly with experts joining debates online and offering feedback to the cohort.

We meet 'live' three times a year (in February, July, and October) for intensive one-week retreat seminars here at our MAGIC Playroom and associated studios. These seminars focus on research methods and transdisciplinary critical practices, group critique, feedback and the relationship between practice and theory.

We accept applications on a rolling basis, at any time. SMARTlab sits outside the academic faculty structure at UEL, and has an unusual route to the application process whereby core SMARTlab Faculty do a first scan of proposals and then match selected projects with suitable supervisors from across the university, with Direction of Studies, and practice-based methods and group critique handled by the SMARTlab core staff.

We are currently focusing our recruitment of students on our core research groups: Performance Technologies, Mobile Platform Games, Accessible Technologies & Personal/Community Fabrication, Immersive Play, Multimodal Interfaces, Haptics & Robotics, Assistive Technology, Wearable Computing and SMARTfashion, SMARTart & gaming, Gender & Interactivity, Interactive Screen, Digital Narratives, Community Building Online, IT for the Developing World.

SMARTlab Faculty include professors & senior researchers/post-doc fellows of Creative Technology Innovation, Informatics, Computing, Technology, Performance, Fashion, Art, Engineering, and cognate disciplines.