The Science Fiction research cluster sets out to explore science fiction as 21st century critique: how its narratives, premises and iconography reflect existing concerns in visual culture and critical practice. With postmodernism dissolving into a complex and shifting assemblage of heterogeneous modernisms, science fiction has emerged as 'an extreme metaphor' for our current cultural condition.
Continuing developments in space travel, artificial intelligence and robotics, together with emergent patterns of social control through technology, make this a vital new area for research. Taking in interdisciplinary approach to both theory and practice, the Science Fiction cluster seeks to use fine art, illustration, architecture, cinema, critical narrative and graphic design as areas of cross-disciplinary investigation, the overall aim being to uncover the common ground that is opening up between art and science.
