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Very useful question Andreas and have enjoyed the enthusiasm from the discussion. Just wanted to support previous posts but especially to point to Sally-Jane's paragraph on funding, which often trumps philosophical concerns. I can only talk about anglophone unis, but as a generalisation in the UK-descended systems (inc. Aus/NZ) the relatively high levels of government funding allow more chance of relatively autonomous projects if appropriate supervision can be found in the hosting engineering departments/institutions (not at all guaranteed in Engineering!). In the U.S., it is much more the attachment to a particular supervisor and research unit that administers the financial support that determines the project. As much as we wish knowledge to be 'global', the rubric for the decision may be quite different depending on the unspecified locations of the artists seeking your advice (or potential locations, I'm assuming they are not from outside Euro/US in which case they probably will find it hard to go anywhere without a boatload of cash). Cheers, Danny -- http://www.dannybutt.net Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland Recent article: "The Art of the Exegesis", Mute Magazine <http://metamute.org/editorial/articles/art-exegesis> +64 21 456 379 On 21/08/2012, at 8:27 PM, Sally-Jane Norman wrote: > Dear Andreas, all > > Can't resist jumping in, essentially to agree with points Simon and Peter have made already (and also to concur with Armin's patently raised eyebrows)... > > In my experience of European systems, choice of supervisor/ co-supervision frameworks tends to be paramount (i.e. more determinant than enrollment in a given PhD "programme"), and it's really a question of potential students identifying the kind of mentoring, and preferably the actual academics (supervision may be provided by two or more individuals, according to establishments) that are most likely to spur their research. > > Simon's mentioned Newcastle, and Patrick Olivier at Culture Lab is a computer scientist who energetically rallies PhDs that are most often "engineering". His group is a bustling if not chaotic mix of informatics and electronics engineers, with designers thrown into the mix (Pete Wright, ex Sheffield, is part of the team). Some of the projects are Research Council funded, some directly industry-sponsored (i.e. patent- or pre-patent led, with confidentiality clauses that I always find problematic insofar as I see a PhD as having to generate openly shareable insights); a (very) few are self-funded (as we know all too well, "hard science" researchers tend for a whole bunch of complex, if not contradictory reasons not to (have to) deal with the sometimes excruciating living and working conditions of "hard arts & humanities" researchers). While I was there, one Microsoft funded PhD project developing turntabling and sampling techniques for film editing became a collaborative platform for a bunch of artists and "techies", one of whom - from a literature background - has just been accepted for an AHRC funded digital design PhD with Patrick (bearing in mind that this kind of cross-over represents build-up of activity over a period of six years, as we opened Culture Lab - and brought in Patrick's then nascent team - in 2006). > > On the music technology side, as Andrew's stated for De Montfort, and as per SARC in Belfast, music technologies in York and a bunch of other places (or at European level, IRCAM and associated Paris universities, Norwegian music technology in Trondheim, etc), things perhaps need to be nuanced given the fact that this domain has been open to engineering for decades (maybe Johannes Goebel, at EMPAC, is best placed to comment on this aspect as someone with thorough knowledge of international practices via ZKM, Stanford, etc). Hexagram in Montreal has solid engineering type PhDs coming through Concordia and UQAM in all kinds of media, and McGill's music technology people no doubt have common points with Queen Mary's as described by Saul. Specific computer interaction design strengths in places like Royal College and Goldsmiths are well known. Sussex has a history of hard "engineering" projects with strong interdisciplinary openings (especially those enrolled in COGS), and the recent fusion of its schools of engineering and informatics opens up new perspectives. > > But in my opinion choices and positioning ultimately, as has been well formulated by Simon, Peter and others, boil down to the candidate's having an idea upstream of the qualities - in terms of academic supervision and institutional environment - s/he seeks. And irrespective of the increasing tendency for Research Councils to "front-load" PhD resources to a limited number of privileged institutions, I'd still maintain that well tuned, well informed, committed supervisors in institutions disparagingly portrayed as "secondary" are worth a helluva lot more than some of the prestigious institution high fliers who can barely fit tutorials in to their glamorous schedules. But that opens up another can of worms... > > best > sj > > > > Sally Jane Norman > Professor of Performance Technologies > Director, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts > Arts B 156 > University of Sussex > Sally Jane Norman > Professor of Performance Technologies > Director, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts > Arts B 156 > University of Sussex > Brighton BN1 9QN > United Kingdom > www.sussex.ac.uk/acca/ > > ________________________________________ > From: Curating digital art - www.crumbweb.org [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Andreas Broeckmann [[log in to unmask]] > Sent: Monday, 20 August 2012 5:17 p.m. > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] question: engineering PhDs for artists? > > dear friends, > > over the last weeks i've had two requests for advice from artists who > are working with digital technologies and who feel that career-wise it > might be good to do a PhD, even though they are both not the "i want to > sit down, study a theoretical topic related to my practice, and work on > a philological book for 3 years" types. > > rather, they are artist-engineers who build things and invent new usages > of old and new technologies, their's is an artistic practice that is > closely related to the construction and moulding of ideas in technical > hardware. > > what i am wondering is whether for artists like this, rather than going > into heady art&research PhD programs, it would not be better to try and > find a *technical* department that understands the cultural significance > of their work. if they have to submit a phd-thesis about their work as > techno-cultural-artistic devices, incl. technical and artistic > explanations and contextualisation, that might be more realistic - and > possibly more appropriate - to achieve? > > do people have experiences with such "engineering PhDs for artists"? and > can you name schools that are open to such research, possibly in > cooperation with a partner art school? > > best regards from a steaming hot berlin, > > -a > > -- > ------------------------------------------------------------- > Leuphana Universität Lüneburg - Leuphana Arts Program (LAP) > Dr. Andreas Broeckmann > Scharnhorststraße 1, C5.225, 21335 Lüneburg, Germany > [log in to unmask] http://www.leuphana.de/lap > -------------------------------------------------------------