STEAM Imaging VI: Drop-in Q&A Sessions

Sign-up for either of these two drop-in Q&A sessions to chat with representatives from residency host Fraunhofer MEVIS and residency partner Design Informatics and to ask questions or find out more about this exciting residency and engagement programme for University of Edinburgh based PhD postgraduate students.

Event Details

This is series of online drop-in Q&A sessions for those interested in applying for STEAM Imaging VI: Resonant Connections through Design and Data, Residency and Engagement Programme to ask questions about the residency and engagment programme and application process.

Event Facilitators/Contributors:
Miriam Walsh, Inspace Manager
Bianka Hofmann, Head of Science Engagement, STEAM Imaging Programme Lead, Fraunhofer MEVIS
Nora-Josefin Breutigam, Senior Scientist MR Physics at Fraunhofer MEVIS

Date: Wed 28 May 2025
Time: 9:00-10:00/15:00–16:00 | Free/Ticketed
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

These are online only sessions taking place on Zoom.

About STEAM Imaging VI

Are you passionate about using design to make a positive impact and improve health and wellbeing in Society? Do you want to explore the space between creative and scientific practice and how collaborating across disciplines might enable better understanding of specialist healthcare tools and expertise?

Are you a University of Edinburgh postgraduate PhD student (creative), or a pair (creative + collaborator), interested in combining design thinking and data science, and curious about the future of research and development in digital medicine?

The Institute for Design Informatics (IDI) in partnership with the residencies’ host, the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine MEVIS, invites postgraduate students, combining design thinking and data science, to engage in a transdisciplinary exploration of MRI sequence development, using no-field, low field and research MRI scanners, where creativity meets cutting-edge medical technology. This is your unique opportunity to explore and demystify Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), while gaining valuable insights into the rapidly evolving digital medicine market.

If selected for the residency, you’ll gain hands-on experience with No-Field, Low Field, and Research MRI scanners (read more about this technology below) while exploring innovative ways to program MR sequences. Your creative perspective exploring and combining data science, design thinking, and critical inquiry will be invaluable as you share your insights with Fraunhofer scientists and school students in Bremen, Germany – a joint STEAM workshop is integral part of the programme as well as audience engagement in Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

This Residency & Science Engagement Program is a partnership between Fraunhofer MEVIS in Bremen, Germany, and the Institute for Design Informatics in Edinburgh to create this unique opportunity to explore the potential for application of creative multi- and transdisciplinary approaches in digital medicine. This collaboration involves the International Fraunhofer Talent School Bremen, Oberschule am Waller Ring in Bremen, and is supported by Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria.

Closing Date for Applications: 2nd June 2025


Design Informatics

Website: designinformatics.org

Instagram: designinformatics

Twitter: @DesignInf

Inspace

Website: inspace.ed.ac.uk

Instagram: inspacegallery

Twitter: @InspaceG

Operation Biodegradable

Discover how biomaterials and human-centred design could revolutionise surgical environments

‘Operation Biodegradable: Rethinking Surgical Environments’ is an interactive textile-based exhibition produced through a collaboration between the University of Edinburgh’s School of Design and Department of Clinical Neurosciences exploring the use of regenerative biomaterials within the surgical operating theatre.

Brought to you by staff, students and graduates at the University of Edinburgh, showcasing a range of artwork, artefacts and prototypes, it offers a hands-on opportunity to engage with and understand the challenges and potential solutions in designing an operating theatre that better supports surgeons and the environment. This exhibition will feature an event including performances exploring embodiment, materialism, artist talks and a panel discussion.

Exhibition Details

Dates: Sat-Sun, 19 – 27 Apr, 2025
Time: 10:00 – 17:00 | Free/Drop-In
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

Event Programme

Material Shadows: Performance and Panel Discussion

Performance followed by a panel discussion with researchers at the University of Edinburgh, joined by researchers at Lancaster University exploring embodiment, materialism and technology.
Date: Tues, 22 Apr, 2025
Time: 18:00-20:00 | Free/Ticketed
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

Operation Biodegradable Late Event

Join Inspace and the Institute for Design Informatics, for Operation Biodegradable an evening reception to celebrate the exhibition and to meet the researchers, designers, artists, students and graduates behind the work on display.
Date: Fri 25 Apr, 2025
Time: 17:00-20:00 | Free/Ticketed

About Inspace

Inspace is part of the Institute for Design Informatics and is a collaborative hub, commissioning and producing creative activity. Our public programme connects data, research and creative talent. We host events and exhibitions where people can explore, learn, debate and create. Our programme unlocks digital technologies, tools and data and explores their role in society through a creative lens. We are home to Inspace City Screens, a unique seven screen street front projection space visible from Potterrow in Edinburgh.

Design Informatics

Website: designinformatics.org

Instagram: designinformatics

Twitter: @DesignInf

Inspace

Website: inspace.ed.ac.uk

Instagram: inspacegallery

Twitter: @InspaceG

Design, Data and Beyond

Join Design Informatics students to explore their intergalactic connections of data, technology and matter.

Join students from our Institute for Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh to explore their intergalactic connections of data, technology and matter, presented through a series of creative prototypes that reflect on human (and beyond human) experiences of the future. 

Students have created a series of creative responses and prototype connections between technology, data, living and non-living entities. Through this interactive exhibition, they examine limits and boundaries of our systems where bodily interfaces connect with more than human experiences, where design fiction meets science communication, and where digital, virtual and artificial merge with sustainable matters. 

This is an interactive exhibition which represents circa 70 students’ work from the MSc and MA Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh.

Exhibition Details

Dates: Sat-Mon, 5 – 7 Apr, 2025
Time: 10:00 – 17:00 | Free/Drop-In
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

MA/MSc Programmes

Design Informatics MA and MSc programmes focus on providing foundational skills on the integration of design thinking and data science with an emphasis on exploring the role of data-driven technologies in society and the potential of such technologies to be a social good. Students are supported to develop an ethically aware, critically reflective technical practice at the interface between data and society by combining theory and research with an open-ended process of making and hacking.

About Inspace

Inspace is part of the Institute for Design Informatics and is a collaborative hub, commissioning and producing creative activity. Our public programme connects data, research and creative talent. We host events and exhibitions where people can explore, learn, debate and create. Our programme unlocks digital technologies, tools and data and explores their role in society through a creative lens. We are home to Inspace City Screens, a unique seven screen street front projection space visible from Potterrow in Edinburgh.

Design Informatics

Website: designinformatics.org

Instagram: designinformatics

Twitter: @DesignInf

Inspace

Website: inspace.ed.ac.uk

Instagram: inspacegallery

Twitter: @InspaceG

BRAID Art Commission Recipients Announced   

Inspace is thrilled to share Bridging Responsible AI Divides (BRAID) programme announcement of the selection of seven outstanding UK-based artists for their commissioning project, aimed at exploring and enriching the responsible AI ecosystem through artistic expression, and to be premiered at Inspace for the 2025 Edinburgh Art Festival.  

This initiative, part of BRAID’s ongoing efforts to integrate the arts and humanities with the uptake of AI across our society, focuses on art’s ability to critically engage audiences in thinking about responsibility in AI usage and developments. The artists will not only create artworks but also participate in programmed activities developed to engage our network of stakeholders and audiences. Congratulations to the selected artists.

Selected artists

Image by Arda Awais

Identity 2.0

Identity 2.0 is a creative studio imagining better digital futures. Their work explores inclusive stories about our relationship to technology.

Since 2018, they’ve transformed research into creative mediums and playful knowledge spaces and have worked with Stop Killer Robots, The Royal Society, and Museum of London. They have also spoken at the World Wide Web Foundation, University of Oxford and University Arts of London about curating exhibitions, using art for social change, and creative entrepreneurship.

www.identity20.org

Julie Freeman

Julie Freeman works with natural living systems and emergent technologies. Her large scale installations, sound sculptures and online artworks have, since the early 1990s, pioneered her conceptual and critical approach to working with sound and real-time data as living and malleable art materials. 

Julie has shown work at leading institutions including the V&A, the ICA, Modern Art Oxford, the Barbican and the Science Museum, as well as internationally. She has been recognised by many organisations including the BBC, The Guardian, and New Scientist.  

Julie founded the Open Data Institute’s art programme ‘Data as Culture’ in 2012. She is a TED Fellow, co-founder of Fine Acts, and runs Translating Nature, a digital and data art studio. 

www.translatingnature.org

Kiki Shervington-White

Kiki is a visual artist and multimedia storyteller based out of Birmingham. She has a degree in Design for Art Direction from the University of the Arts, and over five years of experience in content creation for TV, film, and social media. Specialising in visual communication, Kiki uses her experience of public engagement in science, cultural organising and creative placemaking to explore the intersection of art direction and interaction design within communications, firmly believing that storytelling can drive positive change.

Kiki is dedicated to promoting equitable and inclusive creative experiences for all and takes a culturally responsive approach to producing engaging media that resonates with Black communities in the UK, in particular. She is committed to uplifting Black Women in their communities to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to participate fully in society.

www.civicsciencemedia.com

Louise Ashcroft

Speaking fiction to power, Louise Ashcroft’s work meddles with the bizarre logic of late capitalism and playfully addresses its social issues. Her recent film ‘What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting’ (2024) is a research-comedy foray into the fertility industry’s inequalities and her own queer journey to non-parenthood. A related project ‘No Kids Nursery Rhymes’ (2024-5) surveyed 180 childfree (by choice or otherwise) people, turning their complex experiences into catchy songs, which were sung by a choir of non-parents. In other work, Louise is anarchically redesigning St.Peter’s School Huntingdon in partnership with Wysing Arts Centre and hundreds of pupils who are making animated cardboard dioramas.

Past projects have involved guerrilla residencies in shopping centres, a generative storytelling coat with 50 pockets which turns feely trash into collectively improvised fables, and a collab with recycling plant workers in Exeter searching for the dark sublime of landfill by making glitchy e-waste instruments. 

www.louiseashcroft.org

Images Credit: Lena Kuzmich 2021

Rachel Maclean

Rachel Maclean has spent the last decade showcasing her ground-breaking work in galleries, museums, film festivals and on television. Working across a variety of media, including video, digital print, paintings and VR, she makes complex and layered works that reference politics, fairy tales, celebrity culture and more. 

She has shown her work widely, both in the UK and internationally, receiving critical acclaim in the spheres of film and visual art. Her major exhibitions include solo shows at Tate Britain and National Gallery, London; Arsenal Contemporary, New York; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Germany;  and KWM Art Centre, Beijing. Maclean represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale in 2017 with her film commission Spite Your Face. 

 In 2013, Maclean was awarded the prestigious Margaret Tait Award. She has been twice shortlisted for the Jarman Award.  

www.rachelmaclean.com

Studio Above&Below

Studio Above&Below

Studio Above&Below is an award-winning art and technology practice founded by Daria Jelonek (DE) and Perry-James Sugden (UK) after graduating from the Royal College of Art. Grounded in research-based methodologies, their work bridges the gaps between humans, machines, and our umwelt, exploring how media art can foster more meditative, healing, and sustainable interactions with our surroundings.

Since its founding in 2018, the duo has specialised in creating immersive artworks that combine Mixed Realities (XR), digital art, and data systems to make invisible phenomena tangible, challenging predetermined technological structures. Their large-scale public artworks integrate advanced technologies, such as real-time environmental data and meditative scenography, to give our umwelt a voice and reveal the unseen.

Image courtesy of the Artist

Wesley Goatley

Wesley Goatley is a critical artist and researcher based in London, UK. His work critically interrogates the myths and manipulations of the AI industry and its relations to society, geopolitics, and the climate crisis, and how art practice can intervene.

He has given talks on his practice and research at events such as Global Art Forum Singapore, the McLuhan Center for Culture and Technology in Toronto, CTM Festival Berlin, and the European Data Forum Eindhoven.

His installations, performances, and films have been shown at international venues including Eyebeam in New York, Berghain in Berlin, The Nam June Paik Art Center in Seoul, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. He has a 25-year practice as an experimental performer and musician, including work for labels such as Kranky (US) and Southern (UK).

www.wesleygoatley.com

The commissioned artworks, which range from digital installations to sculptural interventions, zines and comedy sketches, are set to address themes that reimagine AI uptake, inspire activism and resilience, and showcase artistic creativity in the field. These themes align with BRAID’s mission to build public awareness, break down structural barriers in AI, and reimagine responsible AI perspectives and practices.

The project will culminate in an exhibition based at Inspace during the Edinburgh Art Festival in August 2025, providing a platform for artists to share their visions and for audiences to reflect on the role of AI in our society.

Representing more than an exhibition, the project is a step towards better, more thoughtful conversations about the future of AI in our lives, and we look forward to working with the artists across the year to bring these conversations to life.

This art commissioning programme is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and delivered by BRAID in partnership with Inspace at the Institute for Design Informatics, with support from Edinburgh Art Festival and Better Images of AI.

About BRAID

BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides) is a 3-year national research programme funded by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council, led by The University of Edinburgh in partnership with the Ada Lovelace Institute and the BBC. It is co-directed by Shannon Vallor and Ewa Luger, working alongside a team of co-investigators representing the breadth of the Arts and Humanities.

About Institute for Design Informatics

In the Institute for Design Informatics, we fuse design and creative methodologies with data, data science and data-driven technologies. We create prototypes and experiences that make real to people the ideas that underpin the data society, and aim to ensure that new technologies sustain and enhance human values.

About Inspace

Inspace is part of the Institute for Design Informatics and is a collaborative hub, commissioning and producing creative activity. Our public programme connects data, research and creative talent. We host events and exhibitions where people can explore, learn, debate and create. Our programme unlocks digital technologies, tools and data and explores their role in society through a creative lens. We are home to Inspace City Screens, a unique seven screen street front projection space visible from Potterrow in Edinburgh.

Authenticity Unmasked: Commission Recipients Announced   

We are delighted to share the news of the recipients of the Authenticity Unmasked: Unveiling AI-Driven Realities Through Art artist commissions, the culmination of which will be exhibited during the 2025 Edinburgh summer festivals as part of a broader AI, Art and Creativity showcase. More details to be announced soon.

Across the next few months these selected artists will explore AI’s role in reshaping authenticity perceptions, challenging audiences to question when, and why, digital content is perceived as real.

AI-generated content is reshaping how we perceive truth and authenticity. From viral deep fakes to AI-altered political videos designed to manipulate public opinion, digital authenticity is increasingly uncertain. AI tools can even rewrite personal history, generating images of moments that never existed or altering past memories.

The commissioned artworks will be presented at a public exhibit as part of the Edinburgh Festivals in August 2025. They will challenge our understanding of authenticity,  engaging audiences in questions such as: When do we care if content is authentic? What shapes our perception of digital truth? How can we foster trust in digital media?

This Commission programme is presented in collaboration with Adobe and the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), co-founded by Adobe in 2019 to enhance transparency and provenance in digital media.


Selected artists

Georgia Gardner

Georgia Gardner is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher from Scotland, working with research-driven performance, video, sound, and writing. Georgia’s practice explores embodiment, (dis)obedience, and intersecting forms of reproduction that create a social template for success. This template instigates a rhythm of other-oriented striving and quiets self-conceptions of worthiness. Queering this template that often correlates otherness with failure, Georgia’s practice spends time with our everyday, embodied, and empathetic rebellions.

“I am interested in researching how the central concepts of my practice interact with the developing technological ecology in the arts. Particularly, I am thinking about technomorality and how my artistic values—empathy, embodiment, and introspection—conflict with artificial production.”

https://georgiagardner.com/

Kinnari Saraiya

Kinnari Saraiya (b. Bombay, based in London) is an artist, curator, writer and thinker of the colonial present. She works within the gaps in knowledge, the inaccuracies of interpretations, the mistranslations of a text, where myth weaves around a historical narrative forcing the collision of pre-humanist thought and posthumanist desire. Through the recovery and binding of ancient and new tools, resources, and technologies, her work constructs a portal, a time capsule that helps define, find, create, escape, and imagine a fluid future.

“I’m really excited to be part of this commission, experimenting with artificial intelligence, algorithms, and archives to build speculative stories and challenge how we remember, interpret, and imagine new futures.”

https://www.kinnarisaraiya.com/

dmstfctn

dmstfctn, (f.k.a Demystification Committee), is a London-based duo formed by Oliver Smith and Francesco Tacchini, working with installation, performance, films, and video games. Their work has focused on opaque systems of technology and power, most recently looking at anomalies in artificial intelligence. dmstfctn often directly involve audiences in their work, inviting them into the ‘demystification’ of systems by replicating and replaying them together, and into their ‘remystification’ by building worlds, characters and myths atop them. They have performed and exhibited internationally in venues such as Berghain, Serpentine, HKW and Onassis, and at festivals such as Unsound, CTM and transmediale.
“We’ve been searching for the deceptive characters role-played by AI systems for the last few years. We look forward to think back and think further on this with a new research community.”

https://dmstfctn.net/

About CREA-TEC

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), stands as one of the most disruptive technological advancements since the inception of the internet. The CREA-TEC project addresses the challenge of guiding responsible innovation in the development of AI-assisted tools for the creation and consumption of creative content. 

CREA-TEC is led by Dr Caterina Moruzzi, Chancellor’s Fellow in Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, and the creativity technology company Adobe. The project will last 18 months, from May 2024 to October 2025.

About Institute for Design Informatics

In the Institute for Design Informatics, we fuse design and creative methodologies with data, data science and data-driven technologies. We create prototypes and experiences that make real to people the ideas that underpin the data society, and aim to ensure that new technologies sustain and enhance human values.

About Inspace

Inspace is part of the Institute for Design Informatics and is a collaborative hub, commissioning and producing creative activity. Our public programme connects data, research and creative talent. We host events and exhibitions where people can explore, learn, debate and create. Our programme unlocks digital technologies, tools and data and explores their role in society through a creative lens. We are home to Inspace City Screens, a unique seven screen street front projection space visible from Potterrow in Edinburgh.

Coast to Coast

Coast to Coast is a photography exhibition of work created during journeys by Parkinson across the United States of America, capturing analogue and digital photography of the landscape, translating these into a display for Inspace City Screens, lighting up the dark wintery skies of Edinburgh.

A photography exhibition by Caroline Parkinson of work largely created on a three-week road trip in July 2023 through the United States of America (USA) – from New York to Niagara, through Chicago, Dallas to Oklahoma, through to Colorado, down to Las Vegas, through the length of Arizona, to San Diego and LA. This 2023 collection is supplemented with images from three previous trips to specific places to create a deeper narrative within this set of work. The images and small dataset from which this work emerges comprise slide and black and white photographic film, and a small selection of digital images. These have been scanned and translated into large scale digital representations to allow for panoramic viewing of this journey through the landscape via projection onto Inspace City Screens.

Caroline is part of a photography network in Arizona – Through Each Others Eyes, where professional photographers exchange and showcase work made in each other’s countries. It is in this spirit that the aim of the exhibition is to light up the dark of Scotland’s winter nights with warm images from USA taking viewers in Edinburgh’s streets to different cities and warmer landscapes using the unique City Screens at Inspace.

Delivered in partnership with Sam Healy, Ray Interactive.

Exhibition Details

Dates: Fri-Sun, 14 – 16 Mar, 2025
Time: 17:00 – 3:00 | Street viewing daily
Location: Inspace City Screens, Potterrow, Edinburgh

About Inspace

Inspace is part of the Institute for Design Informatics and is a collaborative hub, commissioning and producing creative activity. Our public programme connects data, research and creative talent. We host events and exhibitions where people can explore, learn, debate and create. Our programme unlocks digital technologies, tools and data and explores their role in society through a creative lens. We are home to Inspace City Screens, a unique seven screen street front projection space visible from Potterrow in Edinburgh.

Design Informatics

Website: designinformatics.org

Instagram: designinformatics

Twitter: @DesignInf

Inspace

Website: inspace.ed.ac.uk

Instagram: inspacegallery

Twitter: @InspaceG

You’re Not Alone

You’re Not Alone is a Photovoice* exhibition presenting the experiences and priorities of Autistic people with eating disorders.

This exhibition will feature photographs, drawings and digital art produced through research conducted by the Eating Disorders and Autism Collaborative (EDAC).

*Photovoice is a participatory research method that uses photography and storytelling to document and share people’s experiences

Exhibition Details

Dates: 1-8 Mar, 2025 [closed Sun/Tues/Thurs]
Time: 10am-5pm | Free/Drop-in
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

Sensitive Content Notice: The images in this exhibition include potentially triggering materials such as food, scales, special diets, and drawings of clinical settings.

Programmed Events

The first day of You’re Not Alone exhibition, on the 1st of Mar, will feature two special events:
Quiet Hour: 12:00-13:00, 1 Mar, 2025 | Free/Drop-in
Meet the Researchers: 13:00-17:00, 1 Mar, 2025 | Free/Drop-in
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

‘Quiet Hour’ is a time when the exhibition environment is adjusted to prioritise the sensory needs of autistic people, or anyone else who may prefer a more relaxed experience. People are welcome to attend with their families, friends, and carers.

For ‘Meet the Researchers’ afternoon visitors are welcome to drop into the exhibition to engage with Eating Disorder and Autism Collaborative (EDAC) staff members who will be there to talk to people and answer questions about the project and the exhibition.

This research project and exhibition is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Economic and Social Research Council, Medical Research Council, National Institute for Health and Care Research, Medical Research Foundation and the University of Edinburgh. The exhibition is supported by Inspace and the Institute for Design Informatics.

About Inspace

Inspace is part of the Institute for Design Informatics and is a collaborative hub, commissioning and producing creative activity. Our public programme connects data, research and creative talent. We host events and exhibitions where people can explore, learn, debate and create. Our programme unlocks digital technologies, tools and data and explores their role in society through a creative lens. We are home to Inspace City Screens, a unique seven screen street front projection space visible from Potterrow in Edinburgh.

Design Informatics

Website: designinformatics.org

Instagram: designinformatics

Twitter: @DesignInf

Inspace

Website: inspace.ed.ac.uk

Instagram: inspacegallery

Twitter: @InspaceG

Material Shadows: Performance and Panel Discussion

Join this event including a performance followed by a panel discussion as part of Operation Biodegradable exhibition.

Join this event including a performance followed by a panel discussion to hear from researchers at the University of Edinburgh, joined by researchers at Lancaster University exploring embodiment, materialism and technology, as part of Operation Biodegradable exhibition, for the 2025 Edinburgh Science Festival.

This performance is a collaboration between several artists led by Theodore Koterwas and will be based on interactions with an AI within a physical environment. The set has adapted a system developed by Joseph Lindley and Roger Whitham who originally used it for Shadowplay, an interactive installation playing with Shadows and AI.

The panel discussion will invite researchers and key members of the exhibition to create an open and expansive dialogue around the exhibition themes, inviting audiences to ask questions and share their own comments observations.

Event Details

Date:  Tue 22 April 2025
Time: 18:00 – 20:00 | Free/Ticketed (Doors Open 5:30pm)
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

*Please register your ticket for the Performance and Panel Discussion Event. The exhibition is open to drop-in.

Performers and Speakers

Theodore Koterwas (performer and speaker) is an artist, designer and musician is an artist working with data, physical phenomena and the human body to make things resonate. He seeks to draw critical attention to aspects of daily experience that go unnoticed but profoundly impact on how we understand each other, technology and the environment. His multidisciplinary practice produces art installations, performances, museum exhibitions, and software applications for public engagement, creative collaboration, and teaching and learning.

Ruby Marshall (performer and speaker) is an artist, designer and musician is a Lecturer in Soft Robotics at Design Informatics. Her research focuses on actuated textile design and function, looking at how physical properties can be varied and tuned to produce a desired system output. Although trained and qualified as an Aero-Mechanical engineer Ruby’s interests lie in soft robotics for human well-being with a view to exploring and creating novel, biological and eco-friendly robotics.

Beth Davidson (performer) is an artist, designer and musician is an interdisciplinary designer and 2024 graduate from MA in Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Through this course and concurrent research opportunities she has moved away from fashion to focus on social design. Her research interests include embodied interaction, soma design, co-design, and disability studies. Beth comes to the domain of human computer interaction with a critical and conceptual lens which explores how the body is represented and utilised in design methods.

Mark Hughes (speaker) is consultant neurosurgeon and honorary senior lecturer. He underwent neurosurgical training in London, Edinburgh, New York, and Leeds – and completed a Wellcome Trust-funded PhD en route. His subspecialist work focuses on pituitary tumours and anterior skull base neurosurgery.

Roger Whitham is a designer, researcher and educator based at ImaginationLancaster, Lancaster University. His research centres on collaborative interactions that span distinct contexts, technologies, sectors and scales; explored through co-design, tools and visualisation.

About the Exhibition

Discover how biomaterials and human-centred design could revolutionise surgical environments at this exhibition brought to you by staff, students and graduates at the University of Edinburgh. Showcasing a range of artwork, artefacts and prototypes, it offers a hands-on opportunity to engage with and understand the challenges and potential solutions in designing an operating theatre that better supports surgeons and the environment.

About Inspace:

Inspace is part of the Institute for Design Informatics and is a collaborative hub, commissioning and producing creative activity. Our public programme connects data, research and creative talent. We host events and exhibitions where people can explore, learn, debate and create. Our programme unlocks digital technologies, tools and data and explores their role in society through a creative lens. We are home to Inspace City Screens, a unique seven screen street front projection space visible from Potterrow in Edinburgh.

Design Informatics

Website: designinformatics.org

Instagram: designinformatics

Twitter: @DesignInf

Inspace

Website: inspace.ed.ac.uk

Instagram: inspacegallery

Twitter: @InspaceG

Operation Biodegradable Late Event

Join Inspace and the Institute for Design Informatics, for Operation Biodegradable evening reception to celebrate the exhibition.

Join Inspace and the Institute for Design Informatics, for Operation Biodegradable evening reception to celebrate the exhibition, part of the 2025 Edinburgh Science Festival, and to meet the researchers, designers, artists, students and graduates behind the work on display.

About the Exhibition

Discover how biomaterials and human-centred design could revolutionise surgical environments at this exhibition brought to you by staff, students and graduates at the University of Edinburgh. Showcasing a range of artwork, artefacts and prototypes, it offers a hands-on opportunity to engage with and understand the challenges and potential solutions in designing an operating theatre that better supports surgeons and the environment.

Event Details

Date: Fri 25 April 2025
Time: 17:00 – 19:00 | Free/Ticketed
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

About Inspace:

Inspace is part of the Institute for Design Informatics and is a collaborative hub, commissioning and producing creative activity. Our public programme connects data, research and creative talent. We host events and exhibitions where people can explore, learn, debate and create. Our programme unlocks digital technologies, tools and data and explores their role in society through a creative lens. We are home to Inspace City Screens, a unique seven screen street front projection space visible from Potterrow in Edinburgh.

Design Informatics

Website: designinformatics.org

Instagram: designinformatics

Twitter: @DesignInf

Inspace

Website: inspace.ed.ac.uk

Instagram: inspacegallery

Twitter: @InspaceG

Inspace at the 2025 Edinburgh Science Festival

From intergalactic connections of data, technology and matter, to biomaterials and human-centred design, this is just a glimpse of the two featured exhibits Inspace will present at this year’s Festival.

We are delighted to announce that we are back again this year partnering with the Edinburgh Science Festival to bring you two featured exhibitions along with performances and late events.

This year’s Edinburgh Science Festival theme of Spaceship Earth draws on inspiration from science fiction and science fact, questioning how we might better live on Earth. As scientists begin to ponder the wonders of long-term space travel, the Festival invites visitors to enter the mind of an astronaut as a poignant reminder that resources on earth are finite and that we have the tools to utilise to create a sustainable future for us all.  

– Edinburgh Science Foundation

Check out the programme highlights below and we look forward to seeing you there! 

Programme highlights

Sat-Mon, 5 – 7 Apr, 2025

Design, Data and Beyond exhibition at Inspace features the work of Design Informatics MSc/MA students presenting a series of creative prototypes which explore their intergalactic connections of data, technology and matter and that reflect on human (and beyond human) experiences of the future.

Sat-Sun, 19 – 27 Apr, 2025

Operation Biodegradable exhibition and event programme at Inspace presents artwork, artefacts and prototypes by staff, students and graduates at the University of Edinburgh inviting you to engage with and understand the challenges and potential solutions in designing an operating theatre that better supports surgeons and the environment. 

About Edinburgh Science Festival 

Edinburgh Science Foundation is an educational charity, founded in 1989. Best known for organising Edinburgh’s annual Science Festival – the world’s first public celebration of science and technology as a festival – as well as their science education outreach programmes, Generation Science and Careers Hive and their community engagement work. Their mission is to inspire, encourage and challenge people of all ages and backgrounds to explore and understand the world around them.  

About the Institute for Design Informatics

In the Institute for Design Informatics, we fuse design and creative methodologies with data, data science and data-driven technologies. We create prototypes and experiences that make real to people the ideas that underpin the data society, and aim to ensure that new technologies sustain and enhance human values.

About Inspace

Inspace is part of the Institute for Design Informatics and is a collaborative hub, commissioning and producing creative activity. Our public programme connects data, research and creative talent. We host events and exhibitions where people can explore, learn, debate and create. Our programme unlocks digital technologies, tools and data and explores their role in society through a creative lens. We are home to Inspace City Screens, a unique seven screen street front projection space visible from Potterrow in Edinburgh.