The Transdisciplinarity thematic at Digital Art Weeks 2010 seeks to explore issues related to hybrid practices that involve, but are not limited to art, music, writing, science, theory, and spirituality. What does it mean to be a transdisciplinary practitioner and how is it possible to achieve genuine hybridity in an era still dominated by specialist disciplines? In a series of talks, performances, installations, demonstrations and hybrid events Transdisciplinarity will illustrate the fertile ground occupied by artists, scholars and scientists who have chosen to work in the cracks between mediums. Forgoing the banal rhetoric of “multimedia” that dominated the end of the 20th in the digital arena, we will instead attempt to illustrate the power of gaining expertise in unfamiliar terrain, of learning the styles, forms and tropes of the other. Pursuing new amalgams that would only be possible by adding one form of expertise to another subject area, Transdisciplinarity will serve as a starting point for discussing our possible transdisciplinary futures.

Chairs:
Dr Steve Gibson and Dr Donna Leishman

Keynote: Transliteracy: Crossing Divides
Prof. Sue Thomas, Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University, UK
Talk: Creating a Transdisciplinary Research Institute: the Institute Of Creative Technologies at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.
Prof. Andrew Hugill, Director, Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University, UK
Talk: This Is Not A Game
Donna Leishman, Programme Director, Illustration, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee, Scotland
Talk: Prolonging Software Life for Digital Art Systems
Hongji Yang, Software Technology Research Laboratory (STRL)/Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University, UK
Talk: The Art of Mobility
Prof. Martin Rieser, Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University, UK
Talk: Game Arts and Ludic Society
Prof. Margarete Jahrmann, Department of Interactive Design, Zurich University of the Arts