PŪTAHI RANGAHAU/AUT RESEARCH CENTRE

Portals/Traces

Portals/Traces: Material Ecologies of Virtual Production is 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.

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.

How can a transnational virtual production and extended reality platform enable sustainable, equitable, and culturally grounded creative collaboration across disciplines and geographies?

The project addresses the challenge of connecting physically distributed creative practices—from film and textiles to design and performance—within a shared digital production ecosystem that respects a multiplicity of knowledge systems, cultural sovereignty, and environmental sustainability.

The hypothesis is that establishing a shared infrastructure—both technical (hardware, software, and data protocols) and cultural (ethical frameworks, co-design principles)—will allow institutions to collaboratively produce and exchange new forms of distributed creative research while maintaining cultural and intellectual ownership of creative outputs.

Timetable

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 –‘Projects’ 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.

Presentations

  • Research seminar at the School of Art and Design and Media, NTU Nanyang University, Singapore, March 2026
  • Research seminar at Cradle BUAS, Breda University of Technology, Netherlands, April 2026
  • Research seminar and fieldwork at Aberystwyth University, Cymru-Wales (UK), May 2026
  • Research seminars and fieldwork, Nottingham University, UK, May 2026
  • Research seminar and fieldwork, Aalto University, Finland, May 2026
  • Research seminar and fieldwork, University of Lapland, Finland, May 2026

Portals project

AUT Team