John James Marshall thesis.pdf - OpenAIR @ RGU - Robert Gordon ...

transition to an information-based economy offers opportunities for art and
design practitioners to develop new production paradigms, design vocabularies
and methodologies. However, research and teaching in universities will also
need to embrace this development to stay competitive. The Cox Review of
Creativity in Business (Cox, 2005, p.33) recommends that multidisciplinary
postgraduate programmes in creativity, technology and business be created
within certain universities as centres of excellence. In his 2006 RSA lecture
Stephen Heppell (Heppell, 2006) indicates that education needs to be ‘projectbased’
rather than ‘discipline-based’. However, since universities are structured
around disciplines - there are obvious disadvantages for cross-disciplinary
research and teaching (Russell, 2000). For these types of programmes to
survive within the disciplinary structure of the university support for boundarycrossing
research such as the current study will have to increase.
Since the mid 1990s computer-based technologies have become increasingly
affordable to and usable by a mass population (in the industrialised world).
This has resulted in a democratisation of digital technologies. This has come
with similar effects on the manufacturing processes more commonly associated
with industrial production (Von Hippel, 2005, p.13). In recent years the use of
digital technologies in art and design disciplines has also increased
dramatically. Until now the discourse surrounding this development has mostly
focused on the benefits this has brought for productivity. This has only recently
touched on the possibilities that visual computing brings to the way in which we
work (for example Callicott, 2001; Lynn & Rashid, 2002; Atkinson, 2003;
Hensel, Menges & Weinstock, 2004; and Gershenfeld, 2005). Artists, designers,
engineers, architects and craftspeople are now using a common digital toolset
(Callicott, 2001, p.64). As production methods become more accessible, new
creative possibilities arise that would not have been possible formerly. The
present study provides an opportunity to explore and evaluate what new types
of computer-aided designed and manufactured objects are being created by art
and design practitioners.
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