MA Immersive Media

Associate Professor Stephanie Owens is an interdisciplinary artist, creative researcher, and curator interested in the influence of digital networks on contemporary aesthetics and the production of subjectivity.From 2011-2017 Stephanie was Director of the Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) where she organised Cornell’s first art biennial focused on intersections between art, design and nano science, which was the subject of “Collaboration on Campus: Nanotechnology and Contemporary Art“, a documentary by Art21. Her curatorial and collaborative projects focus on the relationship between materiality and cultural objects in the context of representational and post-representational aesthetics.She is a founder of Mobile Geographies, a locative-media initiative at The New School's Parsons School of Design (NYC) and co-founder of the storefront new media art space MediaNoche (NY), the first artist-run gallery for digital art in Upper Manhattan. Some of Stephanie's curatorial projects include Technologies of Place, funded by New York Foundation for the Arts, SELF[n]: Art & Distributed Subjectivity, Intimate Cosmologies: The Aesthetics of Scale in an Age of Nanotechnology (Cornell University), and Abject/Object Empathies (Cornell University).Stephanie exhibits her work internationally, including recent exhibitions at the First Beijing International Media Arts Exhibition (Beijing, China), Dashanzi Art Festival (Beijing, China), 5th Ewha Media Art Exhibition, (Seoul, Korea) and the Machinista International Arts and Technology Festival. Frequently a speaker on art and technology, she recently presented papers at College Art Association (CAA), SIGGRAPH (Los Angeles) and Consciousness Reframed: Art, Identity and the Technology of Transformation (Lisbon) and was the artist-in-residence in 2018 at COPE in Brooklyn, NY. She has taught digital media, art, aesthetics, interaction design and contemporary art theory at Cornell University, Universita IUAV di Venezia, Parsons MFA Design & Technology Program and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is founding director of Empathy Academy, a project-based research platform for collaborations in art, design and materials science with partner universities and organisations in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Stephanie is Dean of Arts, Design and Media at Arts University Plymouth and the Convener of the Making Futures Research Group. The Making Futures Research Group (MFRG) is a coalition of educators, artists, designers, scientists and social entrepreneurs at Arts University Plymouth who are interested in how traditional methods, materials and cultures of making might exist in future contexts through the use of emerging practices and technologies. As a group of active practitioners, the MFRG explores the interface between organic and digital materiality as a means to better understand the construction of identity and cultural representation. As an exploration of materiality in the context of making more broadly, it seeks to investigate, through materials research and the development of an interdisciplinary pedagogy, the link between matter, networks and place. Working as an interface between the studio curriculum and the Making Futures biennial conference at AUP, the MFRG operates on the horizon of matter and new technologies as a way of reimagining creative authorship across science, engineering, design and art.

Lindsey’s track record in the public and private sectors as a social entrepreneur, thinker and leader has seen her set up and develop products and services across the creative, learning and education sectors. From building award-winning programmes in the UK to driving ground-breaking initiatives internationally, Lindsey has the experience and skills at management, board and executive level to steer social business ideas towards success; making money and making a difference at the same time. Rooted in the creative industries, she has repeatedly worked at the intersection of creative technologies and social issues. From the early days, experimenting with interactive video to support people with diabetes, to developing a young people led, online content platform Chew TV – it was overtaken by the advent of Facebook – Lindsey has continually championed democratising emerging technologies. More recently, this has included strategic leadership of the highly successful Illuminate Light Festival; setting up a world leading 360 immersive dome at the Market Hall; and being a founder member of the Far SW Immersive Cluster. Lindsey Hall was awarded an MBE in 2023 for services to social enterprise and to the community in Cornwall and Plymouth.

Tom Milnes is an artist, curator and researcher based in Plymouth, UK. He is Senior Lecturer and Course Leader of Postgraduate Studies at Arts University Plymouth. Milnes’ research practice explores the materiality of technology, engaging with the cultural impact of 3D imaging media through glitch practice and Media Archaeology. He holds a Ph.D. from Falmouth University, with his thesis concentrating on glitch practices in 3D photogrammetry, and his research interests include Post-Digital processes, online cultures, and 3D image aesthetics. Milnes has recently published research papers with the Journal of Artistic Research and Visual Resources. Milnes has exhibited internationally including at: W139 - Amsterdam , iMKONSTHALL, Sweden, AND/OR - London, The Centre for Contemporary Art Laznia - Gdansk, and Gyeonggi International Biennale - Korea. Milnes has recently exhibited at FORMAT International Photography Festival. He is the curator and founder of the online platforms Digital Artist Residency and Polygon Palm.

Martial is Senior Lecturer & Course Leader for BA (Hons) Animation & Games at Arts University Plymouth. He is investigating and developing skills and research in areas of new and immersive technologies, such as AR and VR, to identify future trends. Martial is especially focused on how we can enhance these within the curriculum to support the needs and experience of our students. As part of his research, Martial has been invited to contribute as a speaker at national and international conferences such as ECEL European eLearning Conference at Sophia Antipolis Nice, Jisc RSC South West TurboTEL, and the Advance HE (Formerly HEA) Visitors and Residents Conference at Arts University Plymouth and London.​ He has recently been developing work with the Market Hall Immersive Dome and has worked on projection mapping projects for the Plymouth Illuminate festival since its creation in 2017. Martial has been proactively researching and applying technological developments in our Game Arts and Animation curriculum, and through his research has contributed to shaping Arts University Plymouth's Studio Lab for Embodied Media. The Studio Lab is a multidisciplinary team of artists and researchers who are collectively motivated to think about how we can approach the integration of biological and computational systems in a more sustainable and ethical way for the future, by establishing partnerships with regional research universities.