The Data Image Lab at Winchester School of Art is located within the School’s Design Studio 3015. The Lab is committed to interdisciplinary inquiry, working in close collaboration with researchers and practitioners across all areas of the sciences, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics, as well as with partners in business, social and civic enterprise, the creative and cultural spheres, and the third sector. The work of the Lab responds directly to the UK’s industrial strategy ‘grand challenge’ of artificial intelligence and data, but equally connects with the growing everyday presence of data and its visualisations.
While taking a deliberately collaborative approach in all of its work, a defining feature of the Data Image Lab is its situating within the specialist knowledge and practices of art and design. Not only does this perspective provide a productive, makerly approach to the exploration of data and its dissemination, it also, crucially, provides collaborators with the opportunity to enter into a more reflective, deliberative, and dialogic ‘space’ to enhance and stimulate new research and advances in knowledge. Central, then, to the Lab’s mission – in working with a range of partners – is the application of art and design methodologies to enrich our critical, conceptual and makerly understanding of data, visualisations and society.
As part of a developing portfolio, we welcome expressions of interest from all areas. Work can be of a both a commercial or purely inquiry-led nature. We also welcome contributions to the Lab’s ‘research papers’.
To find out more about the lab, contact: Prof. Sunil Manghani (s.manghani@soton.ac.uk)