Research Projects

d.leishman@dundee.ac.uk
www.6amhoover.com

Context and background

Dr Donna Leishman is a media artist and researcher; her work is a combination of critical writing and practice-led research in digital art. Her research career began in 1999, and has seen her cross disciplines such as electronic literature, ludology (the study of games), digital media and more recently human computer interaction, sociology and psychology. She investigates a variety of subjects such as social and literary identity, immersion
and interactivity.

Research themes include contemporary human activity within digital media: exploring how digitally mediated narratives extend authorship and reception, what role media technologies have in forming or disturbing social identity and ultimately what art and design practices can offer to current debates and societal challenges.

Aims and objectives

Leishman’s research aims to provide a wider public understanding of human experience within our digital and physical existence. Her research process often combines interdisciplinary perspectives, interviews, practice, archival resources and engagement with emergent theories. As an artist she experiments in the aesthetics of confusion and dishabituation, as a form of focusing user attention and creating immersion. Her public engagement activities seek to present new ways of thinking that influence curriculum within Digital Humanities in HEIs and inform creative practice beyond the academy.

Outputs

Since 1999 Leishman’s website 6amhoover.com has been the platform to experience her practice. Her artworks have been presented in museums, galleries, conferences and festivals around the world including: The Arnolfini, UK (2011), the Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow (2002), the Digital Arts and Culture conference, Melbourne (2003) and UkinNY Festival, New York City (2001). She has presented for: ISEA (2011), Digital Art Weeks Xi’an, China (2010), CRUMB/Culture Lab, Newcastle (2009) and CultureNet, Capilanou University, Canada (2008). Her works have been featured in The New York Times, The List, The Herald, Create Online, Computer Arts, The Scotsman, The Guardian, Desktop Magazine (AUS), TIRWEB and Design Week.

Leishman has held a variety of academic duties: chair, presenter, panellist, editor, referee and judge. Dissemination of research comes primarily via critical writing in the form of journal papers, presentations and essays, supported both by practice-led and theory based arguments.

Recent research activity includes: The Flash Community: Implications for Post-Conceptualism, a paper for the online journal Dichtung Digital, for a Digital Communities Special Issue (2012). Working with MIT press/Leonardo on a publication called Without Sin: Taboo And Freedom Within Digital Media (2012). Developing the new critical practice Borderline and an associated paper Out of Place: Digital In-Grouping for the European ELMCIP research network’s conference Remediating the Social (2012) and a proposal for the monograph Digital Poetics in a Handbag: Women pioneers in digital writing.

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