Editorial

Abstract

The plethora and availability of digital tools and practices have transformed the ways art is created, perceived and disseminated. This had a distinct impact on how research is conducted across the arts and humanities as a whole from practice-led to process-focused and people-centred research. Airea’s first issue “Computational tools and digital methods in creative practices” germinated from a series of research focuses that began in 2016 when the research network (sIREN) was established by PhD students in Edinburgh College of Art, the University of Edinburgh. sIREN's aim is to create a dialogue between several fields and promote new perceptions of research based on diverse methodological approaches. It seeks to form a platform of communication among arts and other disciplines, technologies and digital media, theory, practice and collaboration. For this, we organised a series seminars-workshops during the academic year 2016-2017 that brought together invited speakers from the University of Edinburgh (across Edinburgh College of Art, School of Education, School of Informatics, Edinburgh Centre for Robotics and School of Geosciences), the University of Warwick (Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies), the University of Newcastle (School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape) and the National Library of Scotland, followed by an international conference in May 2017, which included an interactive format of hands-on workshops, papers and a performance session.