MA Virtual and Augmented Reality

Program Overview

This immersive arts program develops creative, critical, and technical skills for crafting and sharing immersive experiences. It emphasizes using immersive technologies, creating hybridized post-digital works, working across disciplines, and collaborating with communities and industries. The program prepares graduates for careers in immersive technologies, media, and the intersection of art, technology, and social impact.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

Objectives:

The program emphasizes:

• Using immersive technologies in creative practices.
• Creating hybridised post-digital works.
• Working across disciplines.
• Operating at the forefront of the immersive sector.
• Collaboration with communities and industries (digital, cultural, creative and third sectors).

Program Description:

• The course offers a broad interdisciplinary approach to immersive practices.
• Covers a wide range of techniques and technologies, including virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), hypertext, choose your own adventure games, role playing games (RPGs), interactive storytelling, escape rooms, immersive theatre, performance capture, digital dance, multichannel audio, ASMR, spatial composition, site-responsive work, projection mapping, real-time mobile technologies, 5G and IoT.
• Focuses on producing hybridized post-digital work, challenging media disciplines and encouraging students to operate at the forefront of the evolving immersive sector.
• Involves realizing and actualizing live projects with collaborators from communities, industries, digital, cultural, creative and third sectors.

Outline:

Modules:

• Immersive Spaces: Critically examines the design, extension, creation, management, and augmentation of spaces in the context of immersive experiences.
Explores theoretical conceptions of space and place, focusing on understanding and applying space-making to produce immersive experiences.
• Research Methods: Equips students with the theoretical, conceptual, investigative and practical tools needed to develop independent research and comprehend suitable methods for specific research projects.
• Creative Futures and Social Change: Explores the changing world of work for Arts and Humanities graduates in the context of new technology and the evolving global economy, where jobs and skills rapidly change and evolve.
Guides students through a reflection process on potential future work environments, equipping them to thrive and create a better future for society.
• Collaborative Social Challenge Project: Applies and responds to a specific social challenge through interdisciplinary collaboration with peers, external collaborators, or local organizations.
• Immersive Technologies: Critically examines new and emerging immersive technologies in the field of augmented and virtual reality, focusing on different approaches and techniques for each.
• Final Major Project (Research and Planning): Develops a body of research-informed work in a specialization of choice, demonstrating a critical awareness of current developments and trends.
• Collaborative Community Project: Creates an interdisciplinary response to a community issue through collaborative engagement with a local group or organization, exploring opportunities to utilize work for the benefit of the community.
• Immersive Play: Introduces gameful, playful thinking to conceptualization, design, development and evaluation of immersive experiences.
Examines play in its broadest sense, focusing on understanding and application of game principles and mechanics to create immersive experiences.
• Final Major Project (Production and Sharing): Manages the completion of a substantial piece of independent research practice informed by the wider contexts of the chosen discipline, well-conceived, well-rounded, coherent, and of a standard appropriate to master’s level.
• Collaborative Enterprise Project: Explores opportunities to monetize work and considers roles in the future media and performing arts workforce, through an interdisciplinary response to a live brief generated by exploring opportunities for enterprise, with the support and guidance of a local group or organization.

Program Structure and Schedule:

The program can be studied full-time or part-time.

Full-time:

Contact hours average around eight hours per week in the first year, comprising seminars, workshops, masterclasses, critiques, artist talks and lectures.

Part-time:

Contact hours vary and are tailored for each part-time cohort, depending on the number of applicants.

Modules are delivered through:

• Seminars
• Group critiques
• Artist lectures and talks
• Masterclasses
• Tutorials
• Workshops

Self-directed study is also a significant component of the program:

• Approximately 300 hours per semester, depending on individual module demands.
• Involves working on assignments, group project activities, research, reading and maintaining an online portfolio.
• Supported by skills sessions.

Assessment:

Assessment methods include:

• Immersive artefacts/bodies of works
• Contextual documents
• Portfolios
• Proposals
• Presentations
• Research books

Teaching:

Teaching methods:

• Focuses on a "flipped classroom" model, requiring guided reading and preparation tasks before class sessions.
• Utilizes active and engaging methods such as discussions, workshops, group critiques, one-to-one supervision, presentations, seminars, field trips and guest lectures.
• Encourages collaboration, experimentation, and self-reflection.

Faculty:

Led by experienced and internationally renowned academics and practitioners in the field of immersive arts and technologies, with expertise in a wide range of areas, including immersive theatre, performance capture, interactive media arts, installation, projection, site-specific working, immersive sound design, multichannel music composition, animation and games art, and play and games design.

Careers:

Potential career paths:

• Technical roles in immersive technologies and media
• Developers, artists, writers, performers, directors, and facilitators of immersive work
• Roles at the intersection of art, technology, and social impact

Opportunities:

• The course prepares graduates to work across the realization and actualization of live projects, collaborating with communities and industries across digital, cultural, creative, and third sectors.
• Graduates can pursue roles in diverse fields such as museums, cultural institutions, media organizations, NGOs, research labs, universities, theater companies, performance art groups, film and television companies

Tuition Fees and Payment Information:

• UK, Ireland , Channel Islands or Isle of Man: £11,200 | £4,000 (Work placement option additional fee)
• £18,600 | £4,000 (Work placement option additional fee) per year without EU support bursary
• International: £18,600 | £4,000 (Work placement option additional fee)