The 'Digital Collage' project aims to go beyond the idea that 'collage' is a technique, defined simply as the combination of images from different sources. It stresses that 'collage' is a semantic process whereby distinct types of image (or other object) are placed in relationship to each other in order to generate new meanings.

When we bring a computer into this process we are able to go beyond traditional approaches to collage. The convergence of media that digitisation has made possible means that the process of collage can even take place across different media (i.e. a sound can be combined with an image, etc.)

From a software perspective, 'digital collage' questions the principle of class hierarchies which is central to programming styles such as object-oriented programming. In collage, as in so many forms of creative output, objects are ambiguous and refuse to lie down neatly into one class or another. This is not a new problem for software - integers and real numbers have never been easy bedfellows, requiring routines for rounding and truncation. These processes of coercion, whereby an object is forced from one type to another, might be very creative. I look forward to a style of object disoriented programming in which objects fulfil both literal and metaphorical roles.