Edinburgh is well-known as a festival city; a bustling and beautiful hub where creatives flock to try out innovative new material, join an extensive art community, and enjoy the many art galleries, open mic nights, and comedy gigs packed into every nook, cranny, and close of the city.

But Edinburgh is also one of the largest tech hubs in the UK, with a burgeoning startup scene bolstered by four universities. It also boasts a thriving business and funding community, making it an attractive place for innovation.

Edinburgh’s, and Scotland’s, two sides, much like Old Town and New Town, needed a bridge to more closely bring its creative industries and tech sector together, however.

“You need a designer to make art for a website, or you need a tech expert to make a website to sell your art, that’s often where the intersection starts and ends,” explained Nicola Osborne, project manager of Creative Informatics, to DIGIT at the National Museum of Scotland on 4 April.

“The perception can be that you get a designer or creative in to make something look good, and you get a tech expert to build things, but that oversimplifies these areas of expertise – and combining creative and tech expertise can create much more interesting work” explained Nicola Osborne.

At the National Museum of Scotland, as well as renowned arts venue Summerhall, is Unleashing the Power of Data; exhibitions which celebrate the existence and culmination of Creative Informatics—a five-and-a-half year programme that’s helped to bridge the gap between the creative industries and the tech sector.

While the current exhibits—which offer numerous interactive pieces—are a celebration of what can be achieved when you combine some of the best minds from art and technology in Scotland, it’s ultimately but a snippet of what Creative Informatics has achieved throughout the last half a decade.

Creative Informatics’ Journey

Creative Informatics began when the people behind it were told that they were receiving a substantial amount of funding—£10 million—from AHRC, the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

“When we got the call for the funding, I knew then that what we were building was a community,” Melissa Terras, the director of Creative Informatics told DIGIT.

And it’s done good on its mission of building community, as well as much, much more: Creative Informatics has over the course of the last few years funded 47 new companies, 212 new products and services, created 454 new jobs, and brought about £53.2m in economic returns.

Conceived just before the pandemic, Creative Informatics started by reaching out to already-developed communities in Edinburgh and the South of Scotland, aiming to bring together tech experts and artists to collaborate on ideas and products.

It then hosted social mixers, hands-on workshops, and developed a product, service, and startup accelerator programme with CodeBase.

However, in 2020, COVID-19 began to change how we both lived and worked. In response, and by partnering with Visual Arts Scotland, Creative Informatics brought its pursuit for community and engagement online, allowing the artistic and tech communities in Scotland to meet virtually while navigating unfamiliar territory.

At this critical time, the lockdowns meant many people turned to creative pursuits and hobbies, while also relying on technology to maintain connections and communities.

Also in response, Playable Technology, an accessibility tech firm, applied its focus accessibility and technology to create a way for people—not least children—to easily create music at home using, of all things, digital Lego-like blocks.

In 2024, and by using data and AI, Playable Technology created another tool for the creative pursuit of music-making which is currently being displayed at an Creative Informatics exhibit.

For the exhibition, the team put together four different ‘instruments’ to allow collaboration between people to create musical compositions complete with drums, bass, synth, and guitar, all through the plastic block toys.

Art and AI Intersect

Creative Informatics’ journey has also transformed amid the recent rapid development of AI.

Not too long ago, AI was an exciting tool that could help artists trial new ideas faster.But now, AI is everywhere, and considered by some as the asan enemy lurking to take creative peoples’ jobs.

Creative Informatics’ aim is to “future-proof” artists for a data-driven digital world, Osborne said, but she also noted that perceptions and conversations around technology have shifted since the project’s inception.

“The conversation used to be about how we can use AI in this project,” she said. “Now, more often than not, people ask if a project actually needs AI.”

People look to emerging areas so the conversation used to be about how technologies like blockchain would form part of a project,” she said. “More recently creatives have been exploring AI – but for any new technology we’ve queried why that’s the right choice, and what it will add.”

At its start, Creative Informatics did not have to grapple with data and AI ethics outside of GDPR compliance, but now artists and technologists alike are concerned about copyright infringement, ethical and responsible AI, and if there are other ways to harness data without the use of AI.

But for Ben Schogler, founder and creator of Playable Technology, AI is just another tool for artists.

“Technology has always played a pivotal role in creation,” he said. “People used to get up in arms about sampling in music, and now it’s seen as a valid tool. We feel the same about AI.

“It’s just another tool; we’re finding our feet with it, but it is something that can help people experience music that otherwise wouldn’t be able to. It facilitates creation for people who otherwise don’t have the skills or ability,” he said.

The Finished Projects

While Creative Informatics’ journey is difficult to sum up in just one exhibit—the varied intersections of art and technology are myriad and diverse—the Edinburgh Science Festival played host to 15 finished creative informatics projects, all utilising data for artistic expression.

The projects ranged from educational, such as a foraging video game using local data on flora and fauna to teach users about edible plants in their local region, and artistic renditions of climate data to better communicate the impacts of climate change.

Creatives are great at making data feel tangible, engaging and to communicate and connect with people in meaningful and sometimes emotional ways,” Osborne explained.

And data can help bring stories to fruition, and give new life to the past. Using digital innovation and physical modelling, Edinburgh’s lost Empire Palace theatre was brought to life, allowing people to explore the historic theatre which has been revamped into the Edinburgh Festival Theatre.

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Artists took climate and environmental data to create communicative and beautiful designs expressing the changing ecosystem. Geospatial data was used to describe different environments in colourful displays.

Data was also used to render new quilt designs based on a range of different sets, such as star sign alignments, birth charts, and constellations, but these are just the start of the possibilities.

Using data can also make art more accessible, as a number of the exhibits showcased.

Beat Blocks Live, developed by Playable Technology, allows people to create music with a four piece band using lego blocks, harnessing data and AI to render sound.

Similarly, Ray Interactive’s IMP allows people to use an app that transforms smartphones into musical instruments, allowing them to control sound and create music via movement.

My Kind of Book, developed by Ailie Finlay, uses data and material science to create different sensory motifs so children with disabilities can experience stories in an accessible way.

The culmination of art and science was multifaceted, leading to new education tools, accessibility games, and better communication of data.

“We want creatives to not be afraid to use data in their work,” Osborne said.

“Data can be a playful, fun, interesting, beautiful, and critical thing,” she said. “If we use bring creativity, data and tech together from the start, then we can create really interesting new concepts and products.”

To catch some more from Creative Informatics, you can visit Summerhall on Friday 12 April at 7pm for a Let’s Play event, featuring AI-generated beats, interactive experiences, tech demonstrations and quick-fire presentations.