Profile
Dr. Richard A Carter is an academic and multidisciplinary digital artist based in the United Kingdom. He is a Lecturer in Digital Culture at the University of York. Carter’s subject expertise encompasses Digital Art and Culture (the cultural, social, and political impacts of digital technologies, specialising in historic and contemporary digital arts practices, sensing, environmental impacts, science and technology studies, media archaeology, and gaming cultures); Digital Literature and Interactive Storytelling (digital storytelling and writing practices, virtual environments, gaming and simulation); Digital Creativity and Design (generative algorithms, creative coding, web design, speculative and imaginary media).
Carter’s work addresses questions concerning the current state and future implications of digital activities, objects, and environments. Carter is interested particularly in the role of digital art and literature in shaping the future of storytelling, and how they can also provide insights into more-than-human modes of perception, knowledge, and agency, as these manifest in different spaces and contexts. In this regard, Carter has been focusing on the relationships between digital systems and the environment, and the possible roles of digital art in telling different stories about these relationships. Carter’s research is embedded within his artistic practice, meditating on the nature and potentials of sensing, knowing, and representation at the intersection between human and machinic actors. Carter’s art engages subsequently a wide range of technologies, formats, and modes—including drones and satellites, machine vision, generative algorithms, poetic text, and virtual worlds.
Carter’s artistic work has been published with numerous presses that are interested in contemporary and experimental writing practices, such as Guillemot Press, Paperview Books, After Progress, Poetrishy, Rewilding, Paratext, code::art, Filter, Trånslatiøns, The Mouth of a Lion, Taper, and others.
Carter can be contacted using his work email, or via Twitter, or on LinkedIn.
Academic Bio
As an undergraduate, Carter studied BA English with Media at University College Falmouth, graduating in 2010 with First Class honours. He pursued subsequently a Master’s in English at the University of Exeter, specialising in Criticism and Theory, and graduated from this with Distinction in 2011.
It was during his Master’s that Carter began exploring the relations between computing technology, creative expression, and more-than-human agency within the context of digital literary practices, making this the subject of his final dissertation. In 2012 Carter was awarded an AHRC doctoral studentship in Science, Technology, and Culture to develop his research on this topic for his PhD thesis, “Textual Entanglements: A Performative Approach towards Digital Literature”, supervised by Prof. Regenia Gagnier (Exeter), Prof. Laura Salisbury (Exeter), and Dr. Matt Hayler (Birmingham). In April 2016 Carter passed his viva voce, examined by Prof. N. Katherine Hayles (Duke) and Prof. Gabriella Giannachi (Exeter).
After completing his PhD, Carter lectured on the BSc Interactive Media programme at the University of York, convening and delivering modules across all three years of the taught programme. For his delivery, Carter was nominated by senior staff in 2018 for the York Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Award and was nominated by students, and then shortlisted, for the YUSU Excellence Awards under the category of “Teacher of the Year”.
In 2018 Carter was appointed as a Lecturer in Digital Media at the University of Roehampton, taking a leading role in developing and delivering the first iteration of the all-new BA Digital Media programme. In 2020, Carter became the Programme Convenor for this degree, and in 2021 was promoted to Senior Lecturer in Digital Media. Carter was nominated subsequently for an Aimhigher London Practitioner Award for supporting school students and families in their engagement and understanding of Higher Education.
In 2022, Carter was appointed as a Lecturer in Digital Culture at the University of York, leading the development and inaugural delivery of the new taught Master’s in Digital Media and Culture, launching in Autumn 2023.
Carter is a Co-Investigator on a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship project led by Dr. Beryl Pong at the University of Cambridge: “Droned Life: Data, Narrative, and the Aesthetics of Worldmaking”. The project investigates contemporary public understandings of drone technologies across the domestic and security spheres. Working in partnership with the Imperial War Museum Institute, Drone Wars UK, and Human Studio, the project will generate outputs that showcase how research-led virtual reality artworks can explicate and support the evolving relationships between drone technology and wider society.