Portals/Traces

Principle Investigator: A/P Dafydd sills-Jones

Portals/Traces: Material Ecologies of Virtual Productionis a multi-phase international research project led by the AUT Virtual Creative Design Research Centre that explores how virtual production, extended reality (XR), and AI can support sustainable, culturally grounded transnational creative practice. The project runs in three phases across 2026-7:

Phase 1 – 'Portals' (Platform for Open Research, Technology, AI, and Linked Systems) establishes a shared digital infrastructure linking AUT’s virtual production, motion-capture, photogrammetry, immersive visualisation, and AI facilities with partner institutions across the UK, Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific, enabling interoperable workflows, real-time collaboration, and ethically governed data exchange.

Phase 2 – 'Traces' (Transnational Research in Arts, Culture, and Ecological Systems) activates this infrastructure through networked creative projects across film, textiles, sound, performance, and immersive media, foregrounding the material, cultural, and ecological traces embedded within digitally distributed production processes.

Phase 3 extends the platform through open calls and expanded partnerships, inviting external practitioners and communities to engage with the infrastructure and generating new creative works, research outputs, and international funding pathways.

The project brings together academic and industry partners including Aberystwyth University, Cardiff University, University of Nottingham, Breda University of Applied Sciences, NTU Singapore, IIT Hyderabad, Swinburne University of Technology, University of Lapland, and Zhejiang-Wanli University, positioning AUT as a hub for intercultural virtual production research and collaborative creative technologies.