The local committee includes some of the world’s most outstanding and influential researchers in digital arts and performance who are at the forefront of developing the field of new interactive technologies. They belong to Brunel’s Centre for Contemporary and Digital Performance (CCDP) which provides an open interactive laboratory for exploratory research in the time-based arts of theatre, performance and performance media.

http://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/centres/ccdp.

Research in art and performance practices is rapidly expanding in the contemporary global context of the arts, sciences, education, communication/information economies and creative industries. The polycentric emphases in the new research environment rest on a distinctive trans-disciplinary vision which increasingly fuses installation/performance, writing/composition, theory and performance ethnography with digital creativity, science, and engineering. The Centre and its partners seek to explore and to help define the future of arts and performance practice in its intersections with digital cultures, and with new media technologies and communications in the creative industries. Combining live theatre with engineering, performance with scientific theory (in the various associations performance has made with research activity in cybernetics, AI, robotics, biology and the cognitive sciences), the Centre will drive a series of projects over the next five years and beyond which continue to build members’ national and international relations with other research ventures into performance cultures.

The wider research goal is to explore the limits of what is possible in technologically sophisticated media and performance arts, both from an embodied and experiential performance art and an engineering viewpoint. Combining physical performance and site specific art with new virtual performance modalities in eScience, engineering, and theory, the Centre drives a series of projects which pioneer creative innovative practices to be used in contemporary production.

Members of the Centre have extensive international collaborations with partners in Europe, the USA, Japan and have secured considerable funding from the AHRC, Wellcome Trust, Arts Council and a range of arts of cultural agencies to support their research and performance activities.

Given its interests and networks, the DRHA Conference would provide an important forum of debate central to CCDP’s overall research concerns and trajectory.

The creative industries in the UK are recognised as being among the best in the world. They form a growing sector that out-performs the rest of the economy’s growth in terms of jobs, and driving innovation. Brunel’s Collaborative Research Network (CRN) in Creative Industries, led by Brunel’s PVC for Development Steve Dixon is pivotal to DRHA 2010 and brings together over 60 researchers from across the University to foster interdisciplinary research and to examine key issues, trends and future directions within the Creative Industries. Brunel is ideally placed to conduct interdisciplinary research in the creative and cultural industries, with many established research centres studying different sectors, as well as internationally renowned creative practitioners. The Network draws on expertise from the fields of design, software, social sciences, film, broadcast media, music, drama, dance, performance art, creative writing, journalism, video games, business, creative IP, interactive media and 3D technologies.

The Network interacts with external researchers and partners, organises conferences and events, engages in knowledge transfer activities with the professional creative industries, and develops new collaborative investigations and creative projects with the aim of positioning Brunel at the forefront of research in the creative industries.

Its priority themes include: multidisciplinary analysis of cultural, socio-economic and business issues and trends in the creative industries; the development of new technologies, platforms, and creative forms; content generation and interdisciplinary practice-as-research. See:

http://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/networks/creative

Other Centres who have a particular expertise in promoting the use of new technologies and support interdisciplinary collaboration and would participate in the conference are Brunel’s:

• The Institute for Ageing Studies (BIAS) is a research centre and collaborative network bringing together staff from different schools in Brunel University for the purpose of conducting interdisciplinary research in gerontology. The Art’s stream for this centre is led be Sue Broadhurst

http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/acad/health/healthres/researchareas/bbias

• Institute of Bioengineering (BIB) which has developed a high calibre engineering and design team, whose space flight hardware technology and research on new biotechnology for the European Space Agency has led to lateral thinking approaches that have developed into spin-offs from space. The Institute has excellent workshops and prototyping facilities and staff who are experienced in developing liquid handling facilities for biological organisms.

http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/acad/bib

• Centre for Contemporary Music (CCMP) Practice which is the most significant grouping of specialist composers in a UK University. Their research focuses on contemporary compositional practice in the broadest possible sense. Particular research interests include: composition in mixed-media contexts, and involving for example, live electronics and/or video; electroacoustic music in recorded format; the relationship between composition and both improvisation and performance; sound design for installation and choreography

 http://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/centres/ccmp 

• Centre for Contemporary Writing (BCCW) which has a strong profile and extensive record of achievement in areas of Contemporary Writing and Culture, Marginalised and Non-canonical Literature, and Creative Practice in Research. Research themes explored across these areas include trauma, poetics, philosophy, identity and the breakdown in the divisions between critical and creative practice

http://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/centres/bccw

• Human Centred Design Institute is an approach that integrates multidisciplinary expertise towards enhancing human well-being and empowering people. It leads to systems, machines, products, services and processes which are physically, cognitively and emotionally intuitive to use.

http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/acad/sed/sedres/dm/hcdi

• Screen Media Research Centre (SMRC), based at Brunel, who provide a base for significant, original and internationally excellent contributions to the study of a range of screen media, principally in the areas of film, television and videogames. Four themes provide major strands within which the work of the Centre is organised: Cult Media and Transgression; Spectacle, Documentary and the Real; National and Transnational Film and Television; The Politics of Representation.

http://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/centres/smrc