Convenors:
Prof. dr. Michael Punt – michael.punt@plymouth.ac.uk
Dr. Hannah Drayson – hannah.drayson@plymouth.ac.uk
Dr. Martha Blassnigg – 08.09.69 – 27.09.15
Transtechnology Research,
10 Kirkby Place,
University of Plymouth,
Drake Circus,
Plymouth,
PL4 8AA.
Transtechnology Research is a transdisciplinary research group founded in 2005 in the School of Computing and Mathematics. Since then it has supervised over 30 PhD completions and been awarded in excess of £2.5m in research funding and bursaries. It is currently situated in the School of Art Design and Architecture in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Its constituency is drawn from historians, philosophers, anthropologists, artists and designers and is led from a historical and theoretical perspective with the objective of understanding science and technology as a manifestation of a range of human desires and cultural imperatives. Its aim is to provide a doctoral and post-doctoral environment for researchers who need to undertake academic research informed by their own and others creative practice. Its overarching research project concerns the historical and philosophical aspects of science and technology and the popular arts.
The key objective is to understand the significance of creative agency in the process of technology acquiring meaning both before, and after, it enters into the public domain. Using a range of practice and theory based methods, the group is concerned to make apparent evidence of human desire and cultural imperatives as they are manifested in the way that science and technology is practiced, innovated by entrepreneurs and interpreted by its users.
Topics currently being researched concern:
– the historical and philosophical aspects of media and digital technology
– early cinema and the technological imaginary
– cognitive aspects of audio-visual media and design
– affective interaction and instrumentation
– storytelling, perception and non-human animals
– the role of the colour blue in transcendental art and creative practices
– experimental, advertising, and amateur film practice– the cultural significance of space exploration
– intellectual property and creativity
– theoretical and practical aspects of holistic science
– transdisciplinary methodologies in the Arts, Sciences and Humanities
In this context Transtechnology Research led a three year research project funded under the HERA JRP call ‘Humanities as a Source of Creativity and Innovation’ in collaboration with the VU University, Amsterdam, the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, the EYE Film Institute Netherlands and The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. It also currently holds doctoral and post-doctoral research grants from UK, EU, Brazilian and Portuguese Research Councils.
Transtechnology Research is a constituent member of the Cognition Institute at Plymouth University (http://cognition.plymouth.ac.uk/), involving a wide consortium of researchers with international recognition in the areas of cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience, computational neuroscience, cognitive robotics, cognitive development and behavioural change in psychology, creative arts and humanities.
Transtechnology Research also hosts the UK editorial office of Leonardo and the international office of Leonardo Reviews and Leonardo Reviews Quarterly (http://www.leonardo.info/). It has recently launched the Transtechnology Research: Open Access Papers, a series of peer-reviewed open access papers and image-essays arising from doctoral and post-doctoral research, funded projects and international research collaborations at Transtechnology Research, Plymouth University.
Transtechnology Research: Open Access Papers is published throughout the year on the Transtechnology Research website http://www.trans-techresearch.net/papers/ and annually collected into a volume made available as a print-on-demand hard copy version.