Imaginative, original and full of ideas, Creative Technology combines technical and creative skills to create the technologies of the future. At Middlesex, you'll have the opportunity to learn about and experiment with different types of technology and use them to design and build your own inventions.
Technology has become fundamentally important to art, design and culture and the skills associated with the once-separate creative and technical worlds increasingly overlap. This is a highly practical course with an emphasis on collaboration and experimentation. You will benefit from your lecturers creative, academic and technical expertise, and you'll be encouraged to step out of your comfort zone and tackle something new.
You'll work with your peers on group projects and in the past students have made an interactive cushion, immersive VR and AR environments, Hololens environments, 360 videos, projection mapping projects, locative mobileapps, novel gaming environments and, wearable tech, that showed the news.
You'll benefit from the cutting-edge facilities in our £80 million Art, Design and Media building, which is equipped with TV, radio and sound studios, workshops for digital image processing and a digital publishing suite.
We welcome students from any background onto this course, in the past, for example, we have had journalists, artists, designers, programmers, marketing and TV executives, engineers biologists and teachers. It's an unusual opportunity for students with diverse skills to work together, and it's this variety that gives it so much character.
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The focus of the programme is making projects. You will be, building, testing, entering hackathons, interacting, brainstorming, prototyping, working with clients on live projects, entering competitions – and having fun. We are always looking for ways of getting students involved in exciting, current projects, including, if possible placements.
In addition to an in-depth knowledge of this subject, you will also be competent in computer programming, the various methods of completing research, and organising and planning projects. You will also have an understanding of business models, users and audiences, ethics, copyright, intellectual property, and licensing. Students have graduated from the programme to become Creative Technologists, UX consultants, VR entrepreneurs, audio specialists, Lecturers and researchers – and movers and shakers in the Creative Industries.
This module will give you the practical insight and understanding of why creative technical projects succeed or fail. More specifically, it will provide the means to orientate and situate your work in relation to a range of industry practices, organisational structures and business processes. You will develop an informed, practical understanding of key business and/or organisational aspects of creative technology. You learn to understand, work and negotiate productively with the different needs and constraints of creative technical work and industry/business practice to gain an appreciation of the economic and organisational implications of rapid change in the creative industries.
This module aims to give you a theoretical and practical understanding of the skills and tools required to work collaboratively on creative technical projects. You will develop, extend and refine your creative and technical skills within a project and your competencies in the use of specific technologies. You will also be given the opportunity to develop a practical exploration of the advantages and challenges presented by working with creative technologies.
The Final Project module enables students to integrate, refine, deepen and extend the skills and knowledge acquired in previous modules on the programme. It will promote and facilitate the development of innovative and experimental project work with creative technologies, and foster the development of an informed, organised and analytical approach to the challenges of creative technical practice.
This module provides an introduction to a range of novel techniques and technologies, such as AR, VR, EEG interfaces, eye tracking, locative media and other emerging technologies. You will develop skills in video documentation, presentation and ideation.
You can find more information about this course in the programme specification. Module and programme information is indicative and may be subject to change.
As well as working on your projects and attending practical workshops, you'll also be taught through lectures, seminars and presentations by visiting speakers. This is a very collaborative course and you'll be in constant discussion with staff and other students about your work, whether in class or through social media.
We encourage innovative ways of submitting work, including group blogs, content management systems and online environments, and your written assignments can include videos, animations, images, sketchbooks, spreadsheets, diagrams and flowcharts.
You may also have the opportunity to visit practising creative technologists and artists. As well as placement opportunities, when you are not at the University, you'll be expected to do your own independent study, reading and online learning.
Although there are no exams you will be assessed via coursework. This will include practical projects, both individual and group, written analyses of real-life projects or products, business plans, project proposals, presentations and pitches. Some of this assessed work will be done in groups.
As well as receiving regular feedback and support from your tutors, students will assess and give feedback on each other's work. You'll also keep a record of your own progress, aims and areas for development, which will form part of your overall assessment.
For your final creative technology project, you'll develop and conduct a piece of original research, with reference to existing research, either individually or in groups of up to four. You will also have the option to complete the project with an external company - you will receive support to help find a placement if you wish to do this You will be assessed through written report. If you do your final project in a group, each student will write an individual report, and you'll be assessed both individually and as a group.
Our students produce a wide variety of inspiring and innovative creative content. Have a look at their work; scroll through the 10 videos below:
This course has such a wide scope that the variety of careers which will be open to you is almost endless. Music producer, games developer, application designer or developer, website producer, digital platforms engineer or social and locative media engineer are just some of the many, many roles you could do. You could work for a wide range of employers in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors, or even start your own business.
As well as in-depth knowledge of your subject, our course will provide you with many transferable skills. It will improve your research, data collection and interpretation and presentation skills, as well as your confidence and your ability to work under your own initiative and manage your own time. The strong focus on principles and concepts will help you develop the capacity for lifelong independent study.
Teaching, studying and doing research on the Masters Programme will involve full use of the broad range of facilities available at our Hendon Campus. Core elements of the course will be delivered in the state of the art facilities in our new £80 million Art, Design and Media Building. Having access to the full range of facilities in Phase 3 increases the scope for what you can do on the programme – we have fully equipped television, radio and sound studios, state of the art workshops for digital image processing, a comprehensive digital publishing suite. Find out more about our Digital Media Workshops.
The digital media workshops, like the digital publishing studio, have their own dedicated servers that are designed to cope with high bandwidth data traffic, to ensure that resource-intensive projects don't suffer from contention issues.
We also have a range of specialist facilities, including some state of the art haptic robotics technologies, for example, and a dedicated, twenty seat specialist graphics and games programming laboratory, which we currently use for work using Microsoft's XNA games studio and will be using to develop Unity games.
The programme is designed to help you explore the creative possibilities of online collaboration in the development of your project work. Creative technical work in the future is likely to involve more and more co-operation in online, virtual spaces, so we will be encouraging you to think in an informed and organised way about the best ways of developing your practical projects.
You will use a range of technologies in developing, documenting and disseminating your work – from the humble blog to more sophisticated content management systems and fully-fledged online environments such as Second Life.
We take the position that the students of today will define the creative technologies of the future. Our academic, creative and technical expertise on this programme is applied to helping you find the best ways of engaging with the technologies of today to produce the experiences of tomorrow.
Dr Passmore has a background in psychology (BSc), and computer science (MSc, PhD), and conducted research in a range of areas from visual perception to visualisation and image processing. He set up the first European Net Yaroze Games programming laboratory sponsored by Sony.
Dr Moar's research interests focus on Constructionism and Vygotskian approaches to learning and play, non-conventional interfaces, and locative applications. He has worked on pioneering developments such as using GPS and mobile technology to progress a narrative.
Debbie runs her own successful Product Design consultancy in 3D design specialising in design-led giftware for international clients and also works as a freelance journalist for Xymara.com. Her research interests and specialisms are creativity, innovation and trends.
Carl is a University Teaching Fellow and his teaching and research encompasses the areas of sensors, interactive Genetic Algorithms and audio and video processing. He is particularly interested in synthesiser technology and interface design using a physical computing approach. He has over 100 synthesisers in his personal collection and has developed some MIDI interfaces that were exhibited at New Scientist Live. He belongs to the AI and Smart Homes research groups and recently has been working with simple EEG systems and generative art to explore new ways of working and creating games. Carl has experience of audio engineering and production engineering and enjoy supervising practical student projects.
Start: October 2019, EU/INT induction: September 2019
Duration: 1 year full-time, 2 years part-time
Code: PGN2P3