At Duncan of Jordanstone (DOJ), where I am doing my phd, there have been three main schools/ departments/ academic groups (call them what you will, they are a bit vague themselves) : Design, Fine Art and Media Arts & Imaging. Media Arts & Imaging has been an excellent home for practicioner’s whose work sits somewhere between the disciplines of Fine Art and Design… like me. But this is all to change, and as of January 2009, those in Media Arts & Imaging will be divvied up between Design and Fine Art.

This puts my phd in an odd place. I don’t engage in university politics, as usually I am too busy, but I think there does need to be some sort of recognition that there is a space that sits between Fine Art and Design which is inhabited by a silent but hardworking mass of practicioners. Perhaps Media Arts is not the right term, indeed the term New Media feels somewhat outdated, but to totally do away with a thinking space that allows fairly free cross over and blending of disciplines and ways of thinking is somewhat short sighted.

The ways in which artists and designers think can sometimes be very different, and when one thinks in a way that is different to those around them, it can be very isolating. I know, I’ve spent my life switching between the commercial web/ interactive designer and the impoverished artist before realising I could attempt to blend the two.

For those not familiar with such a dilemna, an over simplified way to perhaps gain an understanding of the differences between art and design is to remember that: Design is “function fitting form” – ie the main aim often is functionality where as I try to describe art to my students as “concepts, ideas, aesthetics, etc fitting form”. There needn’t be a function, per se in the same way as the products of design have “function”. Of course art does have a function in our society to enrich and enliven people’s imaginations, give space to new ideas and debates, and to challenge people, but this is more esoteric than the “usefulness” of design. Bear in mind this is a very simplified and leaving out a lot of stuff overview of the main differences, and there is much to be debated in this area.

Over the past year, I have come to realise that with my own practice, the approach I take to creating works is that of a designer, but the final pieces that I produce are definitely works of art rather than design. I like the structure and clarity of the design process, and working for years as a designer with deadlines breathing down my neck, my approach to anything must be focused for I need to know round about where my end point is going to be. Yet I take a philosophical and critically engaged approach, drawing from theoretical concepts and exploring them through the works I create. This is more in keeping with fine art, because usually when one is a designer there is no time or freedom for exploring philosophical debates. Then there is the added dimension that I am pushing the boundaries of what can be done with digital technology so draw expertise and advice from those in computing as well. I don’t see boundaries in disciplines. I have works I want to make and whatever means I need to employ to do so, I will. I am not alone in this way of thinking and working; there are many of us out there, and the great thing about DOJ was that there was a whole school which recognised that… but not anymore…

The reasons for doing away with Media Arts & Imaging are political and financial, and I also suspect so that some prominent academics can jiggle various figures, budgets and outcomes to add glory to their own careers. I highly doubt the shift has pedagogy at it heart, but then if we are truly honest, true pedagogues are actually very rare people… They need to be rather more selfless than the pressure to publish by the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and British funding bodies allows them to be.

The irony of it all is that the RAE results have just come out and for Art and Design the University of Dundee (ie DOJ) with a quality ranking of 12th out of 71 institutions on the UK and 1st in Scotland, and a power ranking of 6th in the Uk and 2nd in Scotland so clearly they mustn’t have been doing things too wrongly. In this light, the decision (which was made before the RAE results came out) to get rid of Media Arts & Imaging seems a bit hasty and rather premature.

So now I am departmentless, and as yet, I am not sure whether my phd is now being administered through Fine Art or Design, or what this will mean for the future of my work…