(Dis)Connected Technology & Creativity

The impact of technology on the development of the professional field and education is essential. The field of the arts must also relate to this. Here, technology can inspire, facilitate, and innovate a creative making process or distract, frustrate, and even sabotage it.

It, therefore, brings both an artistic opportunity and a professional problem: technology enables a large group of artists to achieve new forms of artistic expression while simultaneously ensuring that specific skills, expertise, and roles are no longer needed or at least drastically change. The professorship focuses on the influence of technology in creative-making processes by deploying it in art and design practice, where technology can be both subject, medium, and co-creator. Technological developments are continuously researched, adapted, and designed to be and remain suitable for creative making processes in, for, and through the arts.

The Heart of the Professorship

It is almost impossible to imagine our lives without technology. It connects people worldwide via the internet, allowing different ideas, perspectives, and knowledge to be shared, deepened, and discussed. It will enable unheard voices to be heard, connect with like-minded individuals, learn from each other, and find support.

However, the omnipresence of technology also has negative consequences. Technology can simultaneously disconnect people through fake news, polarization, insecurity caused by social media, and loss of privacy.

Embracing both the positive power and negative consequences of technology forms the starting point for the ambitions and focus of the professorship. It asserts that the arts have an essential role in making this ambiguity meaningfully experienceable, critically questioning it, and offering inspiring examples and alternatives.

Therefore, the professorship (Dis)Connected Technology & Creativity focuses on stimulating makers who, thanks to and despite technology, empower people through meaningful digital experiences to connect openly with themselves, with others, society, and the world around us.

Themes of the Professorship

Regarding technology, we focus on two 'specific' technologies: Extended Reality and (generative) Artificial Intelligence. Additionally, we employ three core themes: (Dis) Trust, (Dis) Embody, and (Dis) Empower.

(Dis) Trust represents the perspective of ethical and philosophical questions around technology in context and the impact of technology on the trust we as social beings have in each other as part of a global society.

(Dis) Embody represents the relationship between 1) technology, maker, and making process, 2) the role that the body and personal experience play in this, and 3) the impact of technological experiences on one's own and society's normative body image.

(Dis) Empower represents the perspective of creating one's knowledge and skills around the meaningful deployment, adaptation, and experience of technology in the context of creative-making processes as well as the capacity of technological experiences to empower people (and society as a whole) in their work and life