Digital Aesthetics Research Center (DARC) is based at The School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University, and functions as a shared intellectual resource that identifies, analyses, and mediates current research and practices in art and digital culture. 

The centre builds on a broad understanding of ‘digital aesthetics’: we are interested in how to read, write, see, visualize, hear, compose, create, and imagine with media and technologies – from the archaeologies of media and computational culture to the most recent techniques of AI and data. Our aim is to extend the discussion of digital aesthetics to include contemporary perspectives on wider ecologies and politics of software, sensing, infrastructures, data, and platforms – especially as they unfold in art and experimental practices. These perspectives are reflected in numerous publications and transdisciplinary research projects that the centre’s members are engaged in], as well as DARC’s affiliation with neighbouring, partner research centres.

DARC emphasizes the dissemination of research – making research public and creating a public through research. Members of DARC continuously organise talks, public events, research and PhD seminars, conferences, exhibitions, workshops, and more, bringing together local as well as international artists, researchers, curators, and publics – often in close collaboration with renowned cultural partner institutions. All activities are publicised through our website. DARC also functions as a publisher of the academic journal APRJA, and the free yearly newspaper A peer-reviewed newspaper (in collaboration with Centre for the Study of the Networked Image, London South Bank University, and transmediale festival, Berlin).

Since its inauguration in 2002, DARC has strived to be attentive to how research (the knowledge it produces, its practices, and agendas) is conditioned by its own organization. We take a collective approach and seek to recognize our network of people and institutions, as well as to be sensitive to concerns of diversity and inclusion. Starting out as a member-based association, DARC became an official research centre at Arts, Aarhus University in 2011, but continues to be, first and foremost, defined by its the members.