Speak to someone today and gain personal insight into our creative community. From finding accommodation and student finance to course content and employability, our approachable student ambassadors are available to answer your questions on live chat.

From writing and making the most of your CV to gaining industry experience, the acquisition of professional skills has been written into the programmes of study by our staff teams, who have ‘real world’ experience. They are also supported by our Industry Liaison Groups, who help inform the development of the higher education curriculum.
Students can look to progress into a career in app development, web design, interface and user experience design, virtual reality, augmented reality, digital data forecasting, interactive art and immersive media.
Graduates can become app developers, web designers, interface designers, UX designers, digital data forecasters, interactive artists, immersive media artists and more.

Future-facing and culturally powerful, the study of creative technology provides a comprehensive and critical study of computation as expression in interactive, networked, immersive and emergent forms.

Undergraduate study at Plymouth College of Art incorporates a fundamental awareness of the social implications of creative production and cultural ingenuity, and we are proud to apply this ethos to the field of digital technology on this pioneering new arts-based course, launching in September 2022. 
Creative Technologies is studio practice-based and requires students to imagine and develop original, dynamic and expressive works of art and design that demonstrate an understanding and fluency in digital software, network architectures, coding, contemporary media practices and theories of communication, systems, art and visual culture. Raising questions like “How can technology transform human behaviour?” and “What impact will digital advancements make upon society and the natural world?’ this course shares a natural synergy with subjects such as fine art, maths, design technology, computer science, software development, interface design and interactive media.

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From idea to exhibition, here you will gain the critical skills necessary to lead the development of interactive technologies with a full awareness of the social, cultural, ethical and environmental impact of those technologies in the connected contemporary world. You’ll be supported in developing your ability to use computers experientially, including how to use code to draw and connect virtual and physical worlds whilst exploring the internet as a living, evolving medium and how reciprocally, society influences technologies and their usage. You’ll also get hands-on with a wide range of specialist software and hardware, including HTML editors such as Adobe Dreamweaver, physical sensors, VR incubators and augmented reality tools. Core specialisms include; interaction design, interface design, social media design, interactive web media, mobile application design, web design, responsive and immersive environments, internet art, network-based art, and software art.

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Situated within the <a href="https://www.plymouthart.ac.uk/about-us/school-of-arts-media" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">School of Arts + Media</a>, you will be taught by our award-winning team of highly experienced academic staff, all of whom are active makers and researchers in contemporary art and new media practice. Course content is enriched with an established network of industry contributors and cultural partnerships, such as London’s Tate Exchange and local gallery Karst. 
As well as your course peers, you’ll be encouraged to collaborate with students from other specialisms, making full use of the college’s interdisciplinary open-access environment to challenge the status quo of creative technology. Key areas include the <a href="https://www.plymouthart.ac.uk/resources/multimedia-lab-equipment-resource-centre" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Multimedia Lab</a>, <a href="https://www.plymouthart.ac.uk/resources/material-lab">Materials Lab</a>, <a href="https://www.plymouthart.ac.uk/resources/fab-lab">Digital Fabrication Lab</a> and the School of Arts + Media’s StudioLab for Embodied Media — purposely designed to support projects that traverse the dynamic fields of Fine Art, Creative Technologies, and Animation and Games.

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You will become fully equipped to plan, code, design, and test new ideas in existing and emerging technologies as they are experienced in the public realm, in the studio and as a form of social enterprise.
Through studying Creative Technologies you’ll learn how digital code, platforms and media exist simultaneously in the studio, lab, and streets. Our cultural partnerships with galleries such as Tate and KARST, mean that studying technology includes the exploration of the digital evolution of traditional materials and methods to understand how the nature of art has been transformed by computational thinking.

In Year Three of full-time study, students are asked to focus their core studio practice on one of the following specialisms:
 
Data Visualization 
Meaningfully interpret graphic and digital representations of information sourced from online and offline behaviors, databases and activities. Be inspired by the potential of translating complex, numerical, dispersed, or illegible bodies of information into a computer-based interface that affords new insights as a result of visual transformation. This area of practice will include external collaboration with Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), The Met Office and Rothamsted Research amongst other environmental and big data partnerships.
 
Responsive + Immersive Environments
Engage with interactive digital technologies designed for large-scale environments, both synthetic and real. Students will imagine and code interfaces that unite physical and digital spaces through socially-engaged software, applications, media platforms and physical objects that explore hybrid and augmented worlds. These immersive environments may be built with existing tools or through the creation of experimental interfaces. From 360-degree surround screens and AR/VR headsets to mobile technologies and touch-sensing, here you will discover how to manipulate code and algorithms to design original user experiences for a wider range of audiences and sectors. This area of study and practice will be supported by the StudioLab for Embodied Media in partnership with like-minded institutions and projects such as the Plymouth-based Market Hall Digital Hub which has a newly constructed 360-degree immersive dome and Amazon Studios Mixed Reality Group.
 
Internet + Interactive Art
Create art and cultural interventions using interactive, web-based technologies, devices and interfaces and learn the fundamentals of coding and programming as a studio practice. You’ll utilise the web and other networked platforms in innovative ways, exploring themes such as hacking, social media, digital collectives, network aesthetics, emerging media practice and generative forms of digital art. Beyond consumption of media and digital culture, lies the opportunity to disrupt digital citizenship and propose new ways that computer interfaces and social networks can function. Within the historical context of visual culture and communication systems, you’ll use HTML, PHP, Javascript/JQuery, CSS, and databases to gain a working knowledge of network architectures, cloud computing, interaction design, user interfaces and mobile web design. This area of study will be supported by real-world projects for art, media and public audiences.

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Upon graduating, you’ll be fully equipped to create, intervene, innovate and speculate on new and emerging technologies in the public realm, in the studio and as a form of social enterprise. As an empowered global citizen you will propose transformative and sustainable future technologies that highlight the value of art and computer science intertwined. This degree can lead to a wide-range of rewarding careers, including; contemporary studio artists, interaction designers, web designers, digital art directors, media curators, immersive media producers and more.

Although many of our students do come in with top grades and high UCAS points, these aren’t necessarily essential for entry. We typically ask for a minimum of 112 UCAS points, but we understand that talented artists, designers and makers can have a wide range of relevant strengths and skills beyond formal qualifications. We’re just as interested in exploring your portfolio and discussing your creative experiences as we are in seeing your grades.
We recognise the value of a variety of qualifications and relevant experience and welcome applications from students who have followed less traditional routes. We also accept a range of international qualifications and will look at each application individually. 
For more information please consult our <a href="https://www.plymouthart.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/how-to-apply">How to Apply page</a> and the UCAS <a href="https://www.ucas.com/undergraduate/what-and-where-study/entry-requirements/ucas-tariff-points" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Tariff Table</a>.

<ul><li>Email: <a href="mailto:admissions@pca.ac.uk">admissions@pca.ac.uk</a></li><li>Call: 01752 203434</li><li>Whatsapp: 07722 744184</li></ul>

Technologies

Digital Media

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WIP virtual environment test 1 by Molly Erin McCarthy

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Our ‘fabrication laboratory’ is kitted-out with the latest in digital design technologies – from 3D printers to 3D scanners, a vinyl cutter, CNC milling machine, CNC router and laser cutter. It adds a whole new level of opportunity for students across all creative walks of life.

Fab Lab

Multimedia Lab

Our Multimedia Lab offers you the kit and expertise to become skilled in a wide range of processes and techniques across the fields of photomedia, moving image and sound.

Multimedia Lab & Equipment Resource Centre

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Our students make full use of our industry-standard dedicated studio spaces – including our infinity cove, green screen, and specialist sound studio (with Foley pit and vocal recording booth) – plus our stop-motion suite, our darkrooms, and plenty of individual edit suites, all up-to-date with the latest industry-standard software.

Media and Photography Studios

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Our Digital Print Bureau offers affordable and quick print services for all our students who are looking for anything from large-format or solvent printing, to photo printing, scanning or vinyl cutting, and a wide range of finishing services.

Imprint Lab and Digital Print Bureau

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In the Material Lab you will be encouraged to acquire haptic – touch-based – and manipulative skills and gain an understanding of material properties.

Material Lab

Plymouth College of Art wood workshop

Alongside the latest in new technology, we value the long-standing traditions of making in wood and plastics – and have developed an excellently-resourced workshop that is open to all our students.

3D Wood and Plastics Workshop

Our Equipment Resource Centre is comprehensively stocked with a wide range of professional apparatus and extensive support equipment. Our professional post-production editing facilities utilise current professional software packages including Adobe Creative Suite (Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop), Final Cut Pro, Avid Media Composer and ProTools. 
We have a team of enthusiastic and highly experienced lecturers and technicians, and we offer a visiting lecturer programme of internationally recognised experts from diverse sound art, film and media contexts, including writers, production designers, cinematographers, producers and editors from TV and film.

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<title>Creative Technologies Degree Course BA… | Plymouth College of Art</title>

Stephanie Owens by Melissa Groo

Stephanie Owens

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Jason Marks

Paul Hillon

Ben Mundy

Undergraduate

Full Time

Content Creation

Design

Media

Production

Sound

Explore the cultural reaches and limitless opportunities of existing and emerging technology, by approaching computer-based digital content as an art form on our BA (Hons) in Creative Technologies.

BA (Hons) Creative Technologies

Develop and extend your existing knowledge of processes and technologies associated with your field of study, through the exploration of associated methods and materials. You will be introduced to a range of practical methods, processes and techniques, and encouraged to think critically about your subject. 
Methods &amp; Materials is an introduction to ‘machine thinking’ and the non-linear aesthetics of creating with computers. The creative use of technology relies on an understanding of the language of programming/coding as the building blocks of interactive form and knowledge of the historical introduction of computers into culture and society. 
This unit will allow you to understand screen-based forms and the graphic user interface (GUI) through deep practical knowledge of how photons of light became a desktop metaphor, how colour and shape are created by numerical values, which led to challenging linear narratives with non-linear, interactive experiences.

Focusing on the geographical offerings and potential of a site specific location (e.g. Plymouth or other location), and its surroundings, you will orientate your practice through considering immediate geographies and the relationship of the local to the global. You will develop ways for generating creative ideas in response to a brief, with a primary focus on creative problem solving, methods and materials.
Place as understood by computation and digital technologies is often associated with GPS and the capacity of computers to both detect and identify human location. 
By unpacking and learning about geo-location using GPS and mobile technologies, you will learn how world-wide communication systems and software applications that track an individual’s location both situates and obscures our experience of place. 
The advent of mobile computing via smart phones and devices has made geo-location a dynamic, contemporary expression of place as both terrestrial and abstract, based on an everyday link between our physical bodies and the digital media. This unit will examine the impact that GPS/GIS has on the relationship we have to both our local environment and our sense of ourselves as connected citizens of the world and planet.

Engage with subject-specific ideas and applications, encouraging critical reflection on your individual creative practice and subject within the larger creative arts domain. You will be supported to undertake an imaginative approach to your subject that challenges historical and cultural assumptions.
Exploring Subject is a unit that looks at the unique aesthetic and social aspects of using technology creatively, both as a medium and contemporary art practice. Unlike more traditional subjects in art, technology-based art and design is a socio-cultural form that is realised through the participation of others who use it or encounter it in everyday life. Your work will be developed through a practical engagement defined by an awareness of the societal dimensions of connectivity via the internet and other forms of virtual interaction. 
By examining and researching ideas in systems theory, media art theory, and network theory, the unit grounds technological approaches to contemporary art in the wider scholarship and histories that have defined the critical and creative use of technology as a form of contemporary art practice.

Focus on collaboration as a practice, way of working and experience. Share your skills in pursuit of creative problem solving through mutual interest and cooperative approaches, while being introduced to methodologies from other disciplines.
The unit serves as a platform for the exchange of critical thinking and practical exploration, and as such is designed to extend the possibilities for interdisciplinary discourse and approaches to your practice. You will be encouraged to work with other courses in Arts + Media as a way to understand creative problem solving, and to develop your capability of working in groups to understand cooperative approaches to your discipline.
Through the introduction of issue-based learning and methodologies for team working and group work, you will engage in School-wide interdisciplinary approaches to thematic enquiry, providing opportunities for collaboration, emergent thinking and cross-pollination to establish through mutual objectives. The project will respond to a contemporary theme or real world issue, devised in advance by the teaching team.

Enhance your awareness of research-informed practice, the role of risk and failure, and the adoption of new or unfamiliar methodologies in developing creative practice. You will focus on the critical and practical processes used for idea generation, propositional and hypothetical creative outputs, rather than finished outcomes.
This unit builds on the knowledge of coding and programming learned in Level 4 to enlarge the frame of reference and understanding of computing practices in order to imagine futures for technology and its use in society. It takes as its background the premise of a connected society, and introduces the idea of citizen data and encourages a critical understanding of individual data profiles. As citizens of an increasingly data driven culture, learning in this unit asks you to transform passive consumption of information into action, where you will adopt an interventionist perspective, and learn other intentionally disruptive tactics to the digital status quo. 
Through the creation of a series of innovative data projects, this unit is designed to reveal the often hidden and ubiquitous systems used for gathering and deploying information in a visible artefact or instrument by challenging the assumptions and limits of those systems. The culmination of this act of making the invisible visible is to propose alternatives to the use and ownership of human data in the future.

Think deeper about how creative solutions might help solve real-world challenges. Draw on expertise and ideas from the arts and sciences to provide alternative propositions for solution-focussed practical enquiry.
Dealing with obstacles and challenges is a regular part of creative engagement and this unit introduces you the tools to overcome and transform these challenges. In order to be fully expressive in the use of technology, you will identify methods of creative thinking and discipline that lead to innovative solutions that work. 
By encouraging "divergent" and "convergent" thinking to find real-world solutions, you will be taught how to use your own creative practice to engage with wider issues linked to art, culture and technology. 
Through this engagement with wider culture, you will realise the potential reach of your work and begin to identify the creative influences that exist in the world around you. 
This unit will have a unique thematic brief that will be shared by all courses in the School of Arts + Media, which will give it an urgency around notions such as climate change, social equity, migration, automation, and other timely topics that will be shared by your peers in other subjects.

Through the use of real-world scenarios (live or simulated), you will be encouraged to use the methods, knowledge and understanding gained in previous study to place your work in relevant professional and creative contexts in order to facilitate knowledge transfer into the public domain. 
This unit focuses on the concepts and methodologies for developing immersive environments in the public realm. To do this, it introduces the practice of physical computing and the basic architecture of interactive systems which link physical space with virtual experiences. With the audience and user often one and the same in computer interaction, exploration of the role of the audience in this unit follows the main concepts art and technology that cross the digital and analogue divide: immersion and augmented reality. 
The context for learning in Ideas &amp; Audience will be the creation of a sculptural work or installation that bridges this physical and digital divide. Through a series of workshops and visits to local and regional sites that will form the target of your final project, you will build an understanding of the unique characteristics and histories of the site as the potential content to develop and extend through your digital intervention. You will use all sensory, environmental, historical and demographic information observed to propose a project that makes this information available to others in a novel way.

Develop individual authorship in your creative practice, and ownership of your learning through a self-initiated project. You will be introduced to methods for managing and producing an independent creative project, developing skills in project articulation and management to include consideration for project scope, time and resources management. 
The Emergent Practice unit focuses on authorship and the development of a personal practice in the field of creative technologies. Students will negotiate a self-directed project, which will be individually proposed and supported through tutorial and formative feedback to help guide you to develop a personal creative direction. 
The proposed project will be informed by individual research interest from the previous pathways previously explored which include projects that could be emergent/generative, interactive/participatory, networked, or intended for immersive or augmented environments. Practical work will be supported throughout this unit with theoretical studies of digital art project methodologies centred on historical case studies. You will be encouraged to incorporate and adapt at least one of the previously explored practices to fit your own process and/or aesthetic sensibilities.
You will be assigned a supervisor suitable to your area of focus who will support the initial conception of work, the proposal development, and will act as mentor throughout the process.You will develop your own unique process and outcome for this unit, but also be supported to engage with collaborators and/or external partner organisations in the realisation of the work.

You will be encouraged to further refine your aims and ambitions for your final year of study, by formulating and testing out ideas for your Final Project. You will present a creative pitch that outlines the key concepts and methods behind your project and demonstrates knowledge and understanding of appropriate contextual and professional frameworks.

You will produce a research-informed critical text that contextualises your research interests and demonstrates sustained critical engagement with your subject. This could be an extended critical essay or industry report; or an original publication (text &amp; image) and accompanying critical essay.

This unit will extend your understanding and consideration of appropriate audiences, end-users and markets for your work, and raise your awareness of industry-relevant technologies, techniques and innovations. Your learning will support the articulation of your personal career ambitions, informed by an awareness of professional contexts and graduate opportunities for creative practice.

The culmination of your undergraduate study providing a focussed period of consolidation and creativity, you will have the opportunity to realise a final major project to demonstrate your specialist knowledge and skills. At the end of the unit, you will have the opportunity to present this project to the public within the context of the annual PCA Summer Shows.
Please note unit details listed above are correct at time of publication and indicative content only. If you have any questions about course content and structure please email<a href="mailto:liaison@pca.ac.uk"> liaison@pca.ac.uk</a>.

In the School of <a href="https://www.plymouthart.ac.uk/about-us/school-of-arts-media">Arts + Media</a> we encourage an understanding of contemporary creative practice as an interdisciplinary endeavour that occurs in the lab, studio, street, landscape, library, theatre, and home. Artists today must rely on deep knowledge of traditional forms and materials as well as have meaningful opportunities to extend their creativity into professional contexts that influence where and how we experience culture in the public realm and in a post-studio environment.
Our unit structure applies to all of our undergraduate courses and creates a culture that promotes curiosity and creative thinking that extends beyond subject boundaries. Thematic approaches encourage an environment of free-flowing creative learning and opportunities for collaboration. Each unit will be contextualised by the subject specialism, and delivery will manifest uniquely through the specialist lens of each course. 
Browse through the Year One, Two and Three headings to see what you'll cover during the course of this degree. For more detailed information, including the content of each unit, assessment criteria and reading lists, take a look at the <a href="https://pca.objects.frb.io/production/files/courses/2021/USF-and-CSF-Documents/BA-Hons-Creative-Technologies-USFs.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">full course information</a> (Unit Specification Form) document. To request alternative formats of the full Unit Specification Form, please email <a href="mailto:admissions@pca.ac.uk">admissions@pca.ac.uk</a>.

BA (Hons) Creative Technologies

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