Edinburgh College of Art launches its ‘Vision’ of academic research

Edinburgh College of Art is delighted to launch Vision, a major new publication about its current and future research projects in the creative disciplines.

A lavishly illustrated book, Vision includes focus features on the College’s current research groups as well as profiles of over 100 staff and their ‘visions’ of future research developments.

With the aim of progressing lively and accessible public engagement with academic research, Vision presents ground-breaking creative thinking across a vast range of art, design, architecture and landscape architecture disciplines. It also highlights the increase in cross-disciplinary and external collaboration in projects where experts in architecture, digital design, visual communications, business, anthropology, medical and computer science work with us to develop imaginative solutions to theoretical and practical issues.

Among the exciting projects explored in Vision:

·        Stem Cell Stories. Supported by the Wellcome Trust, an international team of filmmakers and scientists are testing and creating visual language to answer the rigorous demands of scientists working at the cutting edge of new discoveries. A forthcoming feature documentary will assess the implications of an extraordinary breakthrough in stem cell biology, where human adult cells have been made to revert to the properties of the earlier cells, effectively reversing biological time.

·         STONE. A three-year research initiative looking at stone carving practices all over the world, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and conceived and structured by sculptors Jake Harvey and Joel Fisher and filmmaker Noe Mendelle. STONE has so far disseminated its research via a ‘colloque’ seminar and a live stone carving event (August 2009). The project will culminate with an electronic online archive.

·         OPENspace. The research centre for inclusive access for all age groups to outdoor environments, based in the School for Landscape Architecture at Edinburgh College of Art and the School of the Built Environment at Heriot-Watt University.

 ·         Edinburgh Cast Collection. Conserving, interpreting and researching the plaster cast collection founded by the Trustees’ Academy in the late 18th century, and including medieval and Renaissance casts as well as a full set of Parthenon casts made by Lord Elgin’s cast makers in Athens in 1804. Funded research began in December 2008 to help establish the Edinburgh collection’s profile as one of the most important surviving cast collections of the 19th century.

·         Scottish Documentary Institute. A research centre based at Edinburgh College of Art specialising in the development, production and distribution of creative documentaries in cinema.

·         ScotMARK – the Scottish Matrix for Architectural Research and Knowledge. Edinburgh College of Art’s Centre for Architecture Research, with the remit for widening research and Knowledge Transfer activities.

Promoting Edinburgh College of Art as a hub of dynamic thinking, Vision is the indispensable guide to the research activities of our staff.

Inviting new collaborations and partnerships, Vision will be distributed across major academic, cultural, artistic and architectural organisations around the world.

On the publication of Vision, Professor Ian Howard, Principal of Edinburgh College of Art, says: ‘Public engagement with academic research is something we are committed to and passionate about. We have published Vision in the hope that future participation and collaboration in research practices can be expanded and realised as more and more people recognise the quality and diversity of our research.’

Vision can be viewed and downloaded from the Edinburgh College of Art website: www.eca.ac.uk/research. Limited hard copies of Vision are available on request for potential partners from the academic and cultural sectors. Requests to research[at]eca.ac.uk

Further information on current research activities across the disciplines at Edinburgh College of Art (including new projects and groups such as TOTeM and CIRCLE) can be found on the website.

·         Vision is designed by H&A Graphics and features original photography by John K. McGregor.

·         Edinburgh College of Art has an international reputation as one of the most successful independent art colleges in the UK, as well as statistically being one of the most popular. Founded in 1907, but with a history dating back to the 18th century, the College is now home to over 1,700 full-time students studying a range of programmes across art and design, architecture and landscape architecture at undergraduate, postgraduate and research degree level. The College is an academic partner of the University of Edinburgh.  For further information visit www.eca.ac.uk

Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201

eca is an accredited institution of the University of Edinburgh

All information contained herein provided by Edinburgh College of Art