Ian McArthur is a hybrid practitioner working in the domains of experimental and speculative multidisciplinary practice, transcultural collaboration, metadesign and education change. Ian has over 30 years professional experience as artist, designer and multimedia producer, sound artist and design educationalist. His collaborations with artist and design academic Brad Miller have involved developing techniques that utilise granular and generative synthesis, mobile technologies, and open source platforms together with protocols including PureData (PD) and OpenSoundControl (OSC). These works manifest as experimental sonifications for responsive interactive media environments presented as public art and exhibitions.

McArthur has held leadership roles in vocational and higher education in Australia, China and South East Asia. From 2001 to 2003, McArthur was Program Director of Graphic Design, La Salle DHU International Design College (now Raffles Design Institute) at Donghua University, Shanghai, China. In 2003, he initiated the Collabor8 Project (C8) with Annie Morrad (University of Lincoln) to foster online collaboration between design education programs in China, Australia and the UK. This initiative has led to a decade of developing culturally adaptive pedagogies using online, social and responsive technologies to create collaborative experimental spaces where shared visions for as yet unimagined futures can be created. The most recent iteration of C8 have been PorosityC8 e-Scape—a blended studio-based collaboration with Porosity Studio and Donghua University, Shanghai—and Rare Earth: Hacking the City, a collaboration with Brad Miller and Professor Richard Goodwin at Bridge 8, Shanghai 2011.

Previously McArthur was Head Teacher of Design at Hunter Institute of Technology, Newcastle, Australia. In 2000 he received the NSW Education Minister's Award for Excellence in Teaching. He holds a Master of Design (Middlesex University, UK) and two education degrees (UTS, Sydney). Between 2003-2006 he was Head of Arts & Media at Kingscliff and Murwillumbah campuses of North Coast Institute of TAFE.