This panel will discuss alternative models of arts education that have emerged from Roy Ascott’s career and practice. Ascott, the founder of the University of Plymouth’s Plane- tary Collegium, is widely regarded for his role as an arts educator and theoretician. In a field that integrates arts, technology and science, he has presented concepts and terminology that frame debates and define new territories. He has published and presented his work internationally, and given keynote addresses at several arts-science con- gresses, including ISEA.
It has been over 20 years since Ascott founded a radi- cal distributed research centre and doctoral program. He founded the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts (CAiiA) in 1994 at University College of Wales Newport, and latter established STAR (Science Technolo- gy and Art Research) in the School of Computing at Plym- outh University. CAiiA-STAR constituted a joint research platform, with access to supervisory and technical re- sources at both universities.
In 2003, Ascott relocated the platform to Plymouth University, giving it its present name Planetary Collegium. The Planetary Collegium’s global reach extends beyond the UK through mimetic nodes in Italy, Switzerland and Greece, with a new node currently forming in China. Suc- cessfully graduating over 50 PhDs, the Planetary Collegi- um is host to a dynamic community of over 70 doctoral candidates and researchers.
This panel will discuss the singular aspects of Ascott’s pedagogical challenge to conventional models of advanced art research in Europe and North America. Its panelists will present a history of Ascott’s innovative curricula as well as the development and operation of the Planetary Collegium and its nodes. Finally it will demonstrate how Ascott and the Planetary Collegium have affected advanced studies in the arts beyond the Collegium itself.
