Centre of Digital Ecosystems (CODE)

CODE teams commit to designing complex simulations and precision interactions in the service of natural, cultural and social ecosystems.

CODE is made up of several project teams working with partners across industry, community, and policy. Projects have varying objectives and are determined to make radical change in how we participate in, challenge, subvert and contribute to the ecosystems in which we work, play and live in.

Research areas

System complexities

Working in the mess of complex systems to find ways to reduce harm and improve circularity

Dynamic interfaces

How we visualise ecosystem dynamics and provide ways to explore the consequences of intervention

Hybrid environments

Innovation in digital infrastructures and experiences across physical and digital spaces

Cultural practices

Diverse collaborations to encourage emergent practices across creative, scientific, and technological disciplines

Emerging economies

As always, inventions with digital technologies can lead to surprising social behaviours, new economic models, and urgent regulatory attention

Custom methods

All experimental and rigorous research requires and develops precise models and tools to refine our methods and metrics of practice and impact

Keep up and join in

Connect with us for announcements, events, and opportunities

Connect with us for latest project updates, team activities, and what inspires us

Demo Day at CODE Studio - Researchers and Students shared recent WIPs and WINs

CODE studio labs

CODE Studio is located in the heart of Melbourne city and on RMIT Campus grounds.

Designing Hybrid Futures

The Hybrid Futures group bring together design-led transdisciplinary researchers who deploy a critical lens to designing for hybrid conditions: material and immaterial experiences; analogue and digital systems; physical place and networked interaction; human and non-human environments. The aim is to explore, prototype and pilot alternate futures for hybrid services and systems and plot viable pathways for their implementation.

Prof Deb Polson

Visit Designing Hybrid Futures

Games of Consequence Lab

The Games of Consequence Lab is a group of researchers adopting game technologies and methodologies in order to subvert the associated practices and behaviours and to discover alternate applications in non-game sectors.

A number of teams are applying game design theories and models to uncover the logic of diverse complex systems and improve how all the various players in that system have a better chance of 'winning' in terms of efficiencies, vibrancy, sustainability and viability.

ACMI + RMIT Audience Lab

The Audience Lab is an opportunity for designers, developers and researchers across both the academic and industry communities to test WIPs (works in progress) with the support of public and expert feedback.

A skills workshop delivered in partnership with CODE is provided for all participants to develop methods and share tools for getting the most out of the feedback they receive about their projects.

Visit ACMI

CODE member labs

CODE is affiliated with these labs established by CODE Members and our favourite collaborators.

Imaging Futures Lab

The Imaging Futures Lab explores the creative and discursive potential of emerging systems of computational image-making and their application to expanded photographic practices. The lab includes academics, artists, photographers and industry-based researchers motivated by questions of ethics, politics and representation.

Dr Alison Bennet

Visit Imaging Futures Lab

VXLab

The Virtual Experiences Laboratory (VXLab) is a multi-disciplinary virtual laboratory connecting visualisation and automation facilities in RMIT and industry. We provide a space for students and industry to access advanced technology and expertise. The VXLab supports simulated components in the cloud, virtualisation and telepresence. Users explore collaborative experimental design, operation and testing of global cyberphysical systems.

Professor James Harland

Visit VXLab

CiART

CiART researchers aim to forge new ground in design research and creative practice with a particular focus on rehabilitation, aged-care, mental health, complementary care, healthy living and wellbeing.

CiART brings together leading academics, media artists, technologists, and designers with experts in psychology, neuroscience, motor learning, therapy and allied health practice to invent, develop and design the next generation of therapeutic interventions.

Assoc Prof Johnathon Duckworth

Visit CiART

HAFP

The HAFP (Hearty Adventures in Food and Play) Research Lab was born in 2020 to offer a glimpse of a possible ubiquitous future where food and technology could converge, leading to new possibilities of interacting with food.

Dr Rohit Ashok Khot

Visit HAFP

Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.

More information

Acknowledgement of Country

More information

Centre of Digital Ecosystems (CODE)