News:::


Techné logos and the (Neg) anthropocene

Techné logos and the (Neg) anthropocene proceedings of the first annual conference of the European Culture and Technology Laboratory

I co-edited Techné logos and the (Neg) anthropocene: proceedings of the first annual conference of the European Culture and Technology Laboratory with Noel Fitzpatrick. The book is available open access from the EUT Academic Press,




In conversation with James Bridle

Ways of Being; in conversation with James Bridle for IMMA Nights

As part of IMMA Nights, I was in conversation with writer, artist and technologist James Bridle, discussing key tenets of their new book, Ways of Being, looking at the entangled relationship of technology, ecology, and more-than-human intelligence




Game On Berlin

Electronic Superhighway in Game On Berlin

I'm exhibiting in the Green on Red Gallery curated Game On in the Transmediale Studio Berlin June 2-26. The exhibition includes Latent Space, Rise and Grind and a new work Electronic Superhighway




Digital Art In Ireland

Digital Art in Ireland Exhibition

I curated an exhibition for Sample Studios and the Digital Art in Ireland symposium at UCC with EL Putnam, Joanna Walsh and Garrett Lynch IRL. The exhibition in the Lord Mayor's Pavilion, Fitzgerald Park Cork opens June 2 and continues until the 25th.




Data Narratives Chapter

Data Narratives Book Chapter

I wrote a chapter for the 3rd Edition of in Augmented Reality Art
The chapter discusses Data Narratives, a commissioned augmented reality artwork resulting from a period as artist in residence with Dublin City Dashboard. Data Narratives focused on working with city data to create hybrid artistic representations of Dublin’s ongoing housing affordability crisis, acting both as activist artistic engagement with the socio-political-economic space of the city and aesthetic activation of urban space through augmented reality.

A draft version is available on TU Dublin's Arrow repository




Media-N Paper

Handouts Don't Exist in Media-N journal

I'm very pleased to announce the publication of 'Handouts don’t exist. Hustle or you don’t eat' in Re@ct: Social Change Art Technology special issue of Media-N, co-edited by Sarah Cook, Joseph DeLappe, and Laura Leuzzi, which gathers essays, artists' statements, and experimental writing projects from selected participants in Re@ct: Social Change Art Technology, a three-day symposium held in Dundee, Scotland in 2019, in partnership with the NEoN Digital Arts Festival.




Flesh and Circuit

cover of flesh and circuit, affiliated issue of the international journal of performance art and digital media

I'm very happy to announce the publication of 'Flesh and Circuit: rethinking performance and technology' an affiliated issue for the International Journal of Performance Art and Digital Media I co-edited with EL Putnam which originated in our 2020 CAA panel.

The issue features articles by Jen Kennedy, Kieran Nolan, Katerine Nolan, Minka Stoyanova, Adelheid Mers, and xtine burrough in addition to our own introduction.




Digital Art in Ireland

Digital Art in Ireland book cover

I have a chapter in a new edited volume Digital Art in Ireland edited by James O'Sullivan. My chapter "Art in the Data-City: Critical Data Art in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism" explores critical data art practices, an emerging area of digital art that engages and critiques the pervasive computational systems of everyday life. In particular I focus on what I term the data-city, that is a theorisation of this contemporary urban condition so infused with opaque data systems that almost every action is described by and enacted through data. Where the ubiquitous deployment and action of black-boxed data assemblages in urban space are changing the nature of the city itself in ways that are not readily apparent. Critical data art practices, I suggest, provide a method to highlight and critique these developments and point a way towards counter practices of resistance.

The book cover features an image from my 2014 project The Prairie Picture Show
A preprint of the chapter is available fromTU Dublin's Arrow repository




New Work: Latent Space

Latent Space AI artwork

Latent Space is a journey through the landscape of lockdown, hallucinated by a deep neural network. The project trained an artificial intelligence, a deep neural network, on all the landscape photographs I took during six months of pandemic lockdown.

While AI, or more specifically GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks), are noted for their ability to generate photo-realistic images, these photographs documenting my walks within the limited range of lockdown regulations, were too few in number and diverse in content to achieve perfect renditions of landscapes that never existed. Instead, the trained AI works within the gaps and omissions to produce evocative, abstract and painterly approximations; landscapes that emerge from deep within the latent space of the neural network. This is the deep dream of the lockdown landscape: a series of videos and images generated by the neural network, where a process of machinic abstraction hallucinates the constrained and incomplete experience of lockdown.

The project was supported by an Arts Council COVID-19 Crisis Response Award




Artificial Creativity Conference

Artificial Creativity Virtual Conference

I gave a paper, Artwashing Machine Learning for Artificial Creativity Virtual Conference, at Malmö University.

The paper questioned why ideas of artificial creativity still retain currency even as claims for general artificial intelligence retreat in the face of actually existing machine learning, unravelling these interconnections in the entangled relationship between machine creativity, general artificial intelligence and actually existing machine learning.

The video of my talk will be available from the conference site with the full paper to be published next year




Drifting Bodies / Fluent Spaces

Interview with District Magazine

I gave a paper, Walking West: a dérive along the "longest, wickedest street in America" for Drifting Bodies / Fluent Spaces, International Conference on Walking Arts, City of Guimarães, Portugal. The paper discussed my 2014 work Walking West a derive along Denver's Colfax Avenue and associated artworks.

The audio of my talk and the full paper are available from the conference site




Interview with District Magazine

Interview with District Magazine

I did an interview with District Magazine District Magazine talking about Vine, Bittorrent and my Screen Walk with the Photographers Gallery/FotoMuseum Winterthur for PhotoIreland Festival 2020.




Screen Walk for Photographers Gallery

Screen Walk for PhotoIreland Festival 2020

I am very please to announce that I will be giving a Screen Walk for the Photographers gallery and Fotomuseum Winterthur as part of PhotoIreland Festival 2020.

The Screen Walk will look at the relationships between algorithms, data and images through the lens of two of his internet projects separated by a decade, the 'BitTorrent Trilogy' and '24hour Social'. BitTorrent at its peak around 2009 consumed 60-80% of the bandwidth of the internet globally. It was the largest decentralised network of image circulation the world has ever seen dwarfing even Netflix, and most of it was illegal. McGarrigle will expose how internet protocols and video codecs came together in the 'BitTorrent Trilogy' to visualise the hidden sociality of file sharing swarms with aleatory images of often striking beauty. Ten years later, for '24hour Social', the artist downloaded a full day of videos, with one video for every second, from the now defunct Vine video sharing social platform. At one level a celebration of individual creativity, shared memes and the weird internet, the project shows how data underpins everything, as social media platforms use the generation and circulation of images to surveil and track their users.

The event is free but Booking required to join the Screen Walk which will be simultaneously streamed on Facebook and Twitch




Webinar at Moore Institute NUIG

Art and Digital Technology in a Time of Crisis webinar at NUIG flyer

I spoke on Art and Digital Technology in a Time of Crisis webinar at the Moore Institute NUIG as part of their Covid-19 Response series of talks.




Resistance Keynote cancelled

Resistance conference cancelled

Unfortunately my keynote talk at Resistance, a conference of digital literature, culture, and art at the Moore Institute, National University Ireland Galway, was cancelled due to COVID-19.




CAA Flesh and Circuit Panel

CAA 2020 Flesh and Circuit: Rethinking Performance and Technology panel

I co-chaired a panel, with EL Putnam of The Huston School NUIG, for CAA 2020 Chicago. The panel Flesh and Circuit: Rethinking Performance and Technology examined the relationship between performance and technology which has received increased attention since the end of the 20th century as the live, embodied, material, and interactive qualities of performance have made it a notable means of exploring the creative potential of technological engagement acting as a critical vector for revealing and resisting the technological colonization of everyday life.

The panel included papers from:
Joo Yun Lee:Japanese Artist Collective Dumb Type’s Living Legacy,
Xtine Burrough: Syntonic Refuge: Co-regulation as a tactic of refuge,
Katherine Nolan:Fear of Missing Out: Performance Art through the Lens of Participatory Digital Culture,
Liss LaFleur: #Metoo: embodiment, activism, and archives




ENMI 2019 Pompidou Paris

ENMI 2019 Presentation

I spoke on a panel with Richard Sennett for Les Entretiens du Nouveau Monde Industriel 2019, in response to Antonio Guterres and Greta Thunberg in the Centre Pompidou Paris. My paper Hyperlocality in Surveillance Capitalism, discussed the role of localities in surveillance capitalism with reference to Google's Sidewalk Labs Quayside Toronto proposal, drawing on my research for Real Smart Cities, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie RISE (Research and Innovation Staff Exchange) Action Programme




NEON Dundee

NEON Dundee Presentation

I gave a paper on Creativity and Artificial Intelligence NEON, North East of North, Digital Arts Festival. The festival theme, REACT, asked What role digital art can play in our political systems? How can digital arts activism engage people in socio-political issues? How do we protest differently in a digital age?




Politics of the Algorithm

Emerging technologies, social media and the politics of the algorithm

I gave a paper, Handouts Don't Exist Hustle or You Don't Eat, discussing the politics of bias in machine learning, at Emerging technologies, social media and the politics of the algorithm conference at TU Dublin City Campus, Aungier St, October 18-19 2019.

The conference, organised by the Centre for Critical media Literacy, asked what are the implications of technological change for using systems for communication and social media? What do these complex systems of computation mean, in particular, for those who have been using social media to organise networks and disseminate information? Our interdisciplinary approach puts human equality, inclusion and social change – rather than commercially driven techno-enthusiasm or, conversely, dystopian fears of popular engagement – at the centre of discussion. As Vaidhyanathan quips, there are just two things wrong with social media, 'how it works and how people use it'. The conference offers challenging, non-reductive explorations of both these 'hows'.




Futures Thinking Oxford

Futures Thinking Oxford

I gave a paper on Machine Learning, data, bias, and creativity at the Futures Thinking conference at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. October 1-3 2019. The paper was on the Quantified Self as the Measure of All Things panel with TU Dublin colleagues Noel Fitpatrick and John Kelleher, the panel was chaired by El Putnam of NUIG's Huston School.




DRHA 2019: Radical Immersions

SIGGRAPH Art Papers

I gave a paper #RiseandGrind: lessons learned from a biased AI at DRHA 2019: Radical Immersions in Waterman's Art Centre, London. The paper discussed the creation of a biased AI using recurrent neural networks trained on Twitter hashtag data for #RiseandGrind and its exhibition in the Science Gallery Lab Detroit, Tulca Festival of Visual Art Galway, and Green on Red Gallery Dublin




SIGGRAPH Art Papers

SIGGRAPH Art Papers

I was honoured to serve as juror for the 2019 SIGGRAPH Art Papers. The successful papers are published in a special edition of Leonardo Journal




NCAD Ascend Data Workshop

Ascend Data Workshop

I took place in the Ascend: Artistic Strategies for Engagement with Data, organised by Rachel O'Dywer at NCAD. The two day workshop brought together artists and designers to explore the methodologies they are using in their research and practice to engage with complex sociotechnical systems (with a particular focus on algorithms, machine learning and their physical layer infrastructures).

The Particiapnts were Jessica Foley, Ben Grosser, Vladan Joler, Fiona McDermott, Conor McGarrigle, Joana Moll, Tom O’Dea, Rachel O’Dwyer, Paul O’Neill, Rob Collins, Alison Powell, WinnieSoon, Pip Thornton




Signs of the Times: Skibbereen

Signs of the Times: Skibbereen

I'm very happy to announce a billboard commission for Signs of the Times, Skibbereen Arts Festival, July 26-August 4 2019.

The work Undersea is a glitched photograph that addresses the site of landfall of the Hibernia Express, a 4,600km transatlantic fibre optic cable and Ireland’s fastest connection to the world, on Garretstown beach in 2015 and its connection to Skibbereen's digital town. The billboard will remain in place until September 2019.




Real Smart Cities Conference in Guayaquil, Ecuador

Guayaquil Conference

I gave a paper on Sidewalks Labs: hyperlocality in surveillance capitalism at the Guayaquil Archipelago conference begins at Museo Antropologico y de Arte Contemporaneo (MAAC) Guayaquil, Ecuador. The conference was part of the European Commission H2020 Marie Sklodowska Curie (MSCA) Project: Real Smart Cities.




After Surveillance Capitalism

After Surveillance Capitalism

After Surveillance Capitalism Moore Auditorium O'Brien Centre for Science UCD, Monday May 20 11-4.

I'm convening a public forum After Surveillance Capitalism in collaboration with UCD's Parity Studios Artist in Residence Programme, Insight Centre for Data Analytics and GradCAM.

According to Shoshana Zuboff we are living in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism a new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction and sales This forum bring together experts from the arts, industry, academia and journalism in an open forum to discuss these issues and present a view of what comes after Surveillance Capitalism

Speakers include:
Hannah Redler Hawes, co-director of the Data as Culture art programme at the Open Data Institute London
Rose Regina Lawrence, digital security educator with Tactical Technology Collective Berlin
Karlin Lillington, Irish Times columnist
Johnny Ryan, Chief Policy & Industry Relations Officer at Brave.
Martin McCabe, GradCAM TU Dublin

Admission is free but booking is required




Screentime at Green on Red Gallery Dublin

Screentime

I will be exhibiting #RiseandGrind and 24hour Social in Screentime at Green on Red Gallery with Paper Rad/Cory Arcangel, Alan Butler, Ben Jones, Conor McGarrigle, David O’Reilly and They Are Here.

The Launch Reception is Thursday 11 April 6pm and the show continues until May 18.

I will be giving an artist talk during the exhibition, more information as it becomes available.




Tulca Syntonic State

Tulca Syntonic State

I will be exhibiting in Tulca Festival of Visual Arts 2018 curated by Linda Shevlin taking place in various venues in Galway from Nov 2-18

I will be showing an updated version of #RiseandGrind which retrains a neural network with an updated data-set captured from twitter.

The Launch Reception is Friday November 2nd 8pm in the TULCA Festival Gallery, Fairgreen House.

I will also be giving an artist's talk on November 19 2pm in the Centre for Creative Arts & Media, GMIT. All welcome.

More information from TulcaFestival.com




UCD Parity Studios Residency

UCD Parity StudiosUCD Parity Studios

I am very pleased to announce that I was awarded the UCD Parity Studios residency 2018. For the residency I will be resident in the Insight Centre for Data Analytics working on new data-driven projects.




Global Control Riga

Global Control Riga

I gave a paper on the Data Pharmakon for Global Control RIXC Art Science Conference in the National Library of Latvia, Riga. The conference which was part of the celebrations of 100 years of Latvian independence investigated issues from three main perspectives. The first, “hybrid war”, particularly relevant in the context of the Baltic states independence celebration year, when continuous “post-truth” propaganda in media and tensions around military training in this region are on the rise. The issue of “fake news”, its consequences on global politics, and its impacts on individual nations, “surveillance and immersion”; as we all are under surveillance, we need to become aware of both the enormous scale of “watching”, as well as the potential “depth” of watching due to the development of immersive technologies. The third, concerns “the next big privacy” issue, discussed from a “data politics” perspective – What is the future of our social media? How can we feel safe about our data we publish on the internet today?, and How to maintain trust with the next generation?




New Website

I am very pleased to launch my new responsive website design with updated content from current work to my first net art projects.

More significantly, it represents a major privacy upgrade, I have removed all cookies and trackers in an attempt to make it more respective of my visitors' privacy. I have opted out of the Google analytics botnet and make no attempt to track visitors.
It still, however, has some issues. I use google open fonts, but have installed them on my own server with no connections to any google server. The site employs the bootstrap framework and uses their remote content distribution network (CDN)to host code, this improves the speed of the site but does connect directly to bootstrap's CDN, at the moment this is not thought to persistently track users but I will keep it under review. I do embed videos from youtube and vimeo, with youtube I use their no-cookie domain which claims to not set cookies and my tests seem to confirm this, but vimeo does set cookies. This is not ideal but serves a practical purpose. To preserve your privacy from these cookies I recommend using a blocker such as the EFF's Privacy Badger.




Building City Dashboards

Data Narratives

Data Narratives my new augmented reality work was launched at the Building City Dashboards at Maynooth University. The work is a cross browser AR experience that makes visible Dublin city data, telling the stories of the city through its data. Working with Dublin Dashboard data this app is an evolving journey that explores our housing crisis through urban data. Combining expert testimony and city data we invite the user to explore the housing crisis through engaging with a curated data set that overlays the space of the city with contextual information and commentary that raise key questions as to the nature of the crisis, its origins and solutions.




Visibility Matrix

Visibility Matrix

I am very happy to have contributed a video to Visibility Matrix an exhibition by Sven Anderson and Gerard Byrne, at the Douglas Hyde Gallery June-August 2018 touring to Toulouse and Derry.




Visual Resources

Visual Resources: Art in the Age of Financial Crisis

I am pleased to announce the launch of a special edition of the journal Visual Resources on Art in the Age of Financial Crisis that I co-edited with Marisa Lerer of Manhattan College, New York. The edition, which originated in a panel for the 2017 College Art Association Conference in New York City, addresses the long financial crisis of 2008 and the nature and diversity of artistic responses to it. This financial crisis is understood as a globalized result of late capitalism that nonetheless is experienced differently at local, regional, and national levels. It is multi-faceted in nature, a phenomenon that has historical roots and precedents that inform contemporary responses. Artists are not restricted to engage with the economy through one specific vehicle of inquiry or one type of medium and message. Therefore, the central question that this issue poses is: what is the artist’s role in finance, crisis, and the economy? Should artists: fix the economy; explain it; attempt to alter it; reject it; participate in it; or none of the above? The articles, artists’ projects and interviews presented here attend to these questions through a wide-ranging lens including: studies of historical precedents such as the Great Depression of 1929 and currency crises in Latin America in the 1970s; artistic direct interventions within financial systems that reveal and challenge their opaque processes and value systems; alternative currencies highlighting the neo-colonialism of global financial markets; and blockchain-based rethinking of art market ownership models. These multi-faceted projects spanning different time periods and geographies offer crucial and distinct theoretical positions. This issue, which saw its origins in a panel for the 2017 College Art Association Conference in New York City, adds to scholarship on these pressing topics and seeks to foster a continued discourse on the intersections of art and financial crisis.

The edition includes articles by Elena Shtromberg, University of Utah; Amy Whitaker, NYU Steinhardt School; Jennifer Gradecki, Northeastern University; Derek Curry, Northeastern University; Jillian Russo, curator at the Art Students League of New York; and El Putnam of the Dublin School of Creative Arts. The edition includes Art Projects by LigoranoReese and Kennedy Browne (Sarah Browne and Gareth Kennedy) as well as interviews with the artists Mansour Ciss Kanakassy, Miguel Luciano, Fran Ilich and Gabriela Ceja, and Paolo Cirio.

Visual Resources Art in the Age of Financial Crisis




New Work #RiseandGrind

#RiseandGrind installation images

I am pleased to announce the launch of a new work #Riseandgrind commissioned for Hustle at the Science gallery Lab Detroit. The work trains a neural network on tweets from the hashtags #Riseandgrind and #Hustle to generate tweets reflecting the spirit of the hustle & grind of 24/7 platform capitalism. The installation incorporates a custom neon piece and a real-time visualisation of the AI training process.




New Work Data Narratives

Data Narratives Image

I am pleased to announce the launch of a new augmented reality work Data Narratives commissioned for Dublin Dashboard's Building City Dashboards initative at Maynooth University. The work is a cross browser AR experience that makes visible Dublin city data, telling the stories of the city through its data. Working with Dublin Dashboard data this app is an evolving journey that explores our housing crisis through urban data. Combining expert testimony and city data we invite the user to explore the housing crisis through engaging with a curated data set that overlays the space of the city with contextual information and commentary that raise key questions as to the nature of the crisis, its origins and solutions.

Click here for more information and downloads. The app is currently in beta release and will be shortly in the Appstore and Play Store.




Acoustic Space: Renewable Futures

Renewable Futures

I am pleased to have a paper published in Acoustic Space Journal, Volume 16 Renewable Futures.

The paper, Walking Code, describes an early stage research project that seeks to apply Situationist concepts of psychogeography to urban walking as artistic and activist practice. The project seeks to ultimately create a syntax that can be used to describe and codify the subjective spatial practice of walking in the city. This process is a conceptual and discursive exercise to generate new knowledge about urban space as embodied data space that seeks to create a practical open framework that can be deployed to algorithmically generate walking experiences tailored toward specific desires and activities.

The paper had its origins in the Renewable Futures Conference in RIXC Center for New Media Culture in Riga, Latvia in 2015.




Economia Festival, Eindhoven

Economia Festival

I gave a paper on Detourning Data at the Economia Festival, a festival on economy without the economists, in NatLab Eindhoven. The festival took place from 28-30 April 2017 in Natlab, the former Philips research lab in Eindhoven.




Augmented Reality book chapter

Augmented Reality

I have a chapter in Augmented Reality: Innovative Perspectives across Art, Industry, and Academia a new book edited by Sean Morey and John Tinnell and published by Parlor Press.

The chapter discusses four of my augmented reality works, NAMAland (2010-2012), Walking Stories (2011), Vineland (2013), andWhere's Franco (2011).)




CAA Art in the Age of Financial Crisis

CAA 2017

I co-chaired a panel on "Art in the Age of Financial Crisis" with Marisa Lerer of Manhattan College for the College Arts Association annual conference in New York City on February 15.

Art in the Age of Financial Crisis The release of the Panama Papers revelation is just one in many that highlight the link between art and ethically (if not legally) corrupt financial markets. The relationship between financial speculators and emerging artists is another example of the complicated and compromised control that finance holds on the art market. In addition, historically and recently artist activists have been calling attention to and transforming the relationship of corporate patronage within art institutions. This session aims to explore patronage, collaboration, and alternative systems in art and finance. This panel examines specific aspects of the financial crisis and projects that critique existing models and present alternatives to financial infrastructures and calls for divestment. Can there be a system of ethics surrounding art's role within the exchanges of capital? How have artists working in public art in the expanded field translated, shifted and reframed financial structures? What is the arts and art institutions' role in visualizing the complex networks of successive financial crises and presenting alternatives that may rebuild systems of trusts between the public and global financial markets?


The panel saw papers by:
Artist as Owner not Guarantor: Amy Whitaker, New York University
Normalizing Deviance and the Construction of THE MARKET:Mark Curran, Institute of Art, Design & Technology
Currency, Art, and Economic Crisis: Elena Shtromberg, University of Utah
Artistic Interventions in Finance: Derek Curry, State University of New York Buffalo; Jennifer Gradecki, Michigan State University





NCAD Fine Art Faculty Lecture

I was honoured to give the Fine Art Faculty lecture in NCAD on Thursday January 26. My Talk, "Walking in the Data-City" asked whether we can reinterpret the avant-garde practice of psychogeography in the contemporary city where every action is described and recorded as data, and if so, what is at stake in such reinterpretations.

The talk was followed by a workshop on mapping and data with Fine Art students.




Impact16: Pact Zollverein Essen

I was very happy to be invited as a participant in the Impact 16 Transdisciplinary symposium at Pact Zollverein. The symposium was led by three interdisciplinary collectives, HOOD, RYBN.ORG und FORMATIONS, whose diversified forms of cooperation and flexible working practices transcend disciplinary boundaries.

The event asked how and where do alternative realities come about both in and between different fields of knowledge? How can we productively uncover contradictory >rift zones< in today’s world? What kind of frameworks for action can we cultivate? Informed by multiple perspectives and practices in the arts, politics, technology, sociology, economics and science, the contributing collectives' inquiries and strategies circumvent disciplinary limits and constraints and open up new spaces for thought and action.

The transdisciplinary symposium offered 30 participants from broad backgrounds in the arts and science, time and space for in-depth exchanges and interventions as well as experiments in both practice and thought.




Digital Art and Education in the Anthropocene
Et si on s’était trompé?

I will be speaking about Data Driven Art for Digital Art and Education in the Anthropocene discussion platform in association with National Digital Week (10 to 12 November 2016) and Ludgate Hub, Skibbereen and the West Cork Arts Centre on Saturday 12 November at 12 at The West Cork Arts Centre.

The Anthropocene defines Earth's most recent geologic time period as being human-influenced. The word combines the root "anthropo", meaning "human" with the root "-cene", the standard suffix for "epoch" in geologic time. The Anthropocene is distinguished as a new period either after or within the Holocene, the current epoch, which began approximately 10,000 years ago (about 8000 BC) with the end of the last glacial period. The 'Anthropocene' encompasses questions about the relationship between ecology, technology and sustainable human futures. Four speakers, looking at three themes, Data Driven Art (digital artist, researcher and lecturer Dr. Conor McGarrigle); Contributive Economies and the Digital (Dr. Noel Fitzpatrick, Dean of Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media), and Education, Access and Second Life (Dr. Glenn Loughran, Programme Chair of the BA Visual Art Degree Programme, Sherkin Island and John O'Connor, Dean of the College of Arts and Tourism, DIT).

The discussion panel is part of the program for Et si on s'était trompé / What If We Got It Wrong? A Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, touring exhibition




Computer Art Congress 5
CAC.5

I will be exhibiting a 3 channel version of 24 hour Social at the Computer Art Congress (CAC.5) 26-28 October at MSH Paris Nord

I will also be giving a paper on preserving born digital art at the conference on Thursday 27th




CAA 2017 Call for Proposals

I'm co-chairing a panel for CAA 2017 which takes place in New York City, February 15-18, 2017. The call for porposals is below, deadline is August 30th.

Art in the Age of Financial Crisis

Chair(s): Marisa Lerer, Manhattan College; Conor McGarrigle, Dublin Institute of Technology

 

Submission Deadline: August 30, 2016 CAA 2017 (New York, February 15-18, 2017)

More Information




Oslo Flaneur Festival

I took part in the Oslo Flaneur Festival, June 23-25, with a new walk Directions, a paper on the Flaneur in the Smart City and a Walking West video in the exhibition.

The Flaneur Festival is a three day celebration of the flaneur - the stroller, the explorer, the passionate wanderer, the timeless image of the human on the move, the nomad, the urban explorer, the wanderer, the new pilot of humanity in a world in rapid change. O.F.F. transforms the flaneur's walk into action based urbanism. Together we explore not just the city, but also human wanderlust, nature and culture.




Visio Festival Helsinki

I will be exhibiting 24 Hour Social as part of the Visio Festival Art Program in Helsinki, 1-2 July.




Preserving Born Digital Art Paper

My article Preserving Born Digital Art: Lessons From Artists' Practice on the challenges of preserving born digital art through the lens of a case study of my netart project Spook... was published in the Routledge journal New Review of Information Networking special Issue: Shaping our Legacy: Preserving the Social and Cultural Record

 

The paper examines the complex nature of developing effective and appropriate strategies for the preservation of born digital art, in particular networked art. These issues are approached from the perspective of artist practitioners as it is suggested that any preservation strategy begins with artists, with the conservation practices that are inculcated into the very act of creation. This article proposes that this necessitates institutional digital art conservation initiatives originating from a pre-existing culture of preservation within digital art communities.

The paper came from one I gave at the Digital Preservation for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities conference in Dublin in June.




The Geographical Turn

Walking West

On Saturday November 7 I'll be leading a psychogeographic walking tour of Dublin city centre and giving a lecture on locative media art as part of the Geographic Turn interdisciplinary research symposium at the Gallery of Photography. The Geographical Turn asks how geographers and artists might learn from their separate exploration of the common themes of space, place, and environment. These are the key themes of Geography. They also resonate with the central political concerns of our time, the geographical dilemmas of modernity. The project, based at NUI Maynooth, is funded by the Irish Research Council as part of its New Foundations: Enhancing Knowledge Exchange, a set of initiatives to encourage knowledge transfer between academic and applied contexts.

More information from https://geographicalturn.wordpress.com/events/




Glucksman Perpectives Lecture

Boolean Expressions

I'll be giving the lunchtime Perpectives Lecture at the Glucksman gallery October 29 as part of the Boolean Expressions exhibition. Admission is free and all are welcome.

Perspectives: Art and Technology Can computers create works of art? How do mathematical ideas guide artistic practice? What kind of technologies are artists using today? And how does our new digital world influence and change human behavior? You can explore these ideas and more in our art and technology focused Perspectives talks. Perspectives is a series of talks exploring themes and ideas from the current exhibitions. Addressing contemporary artistic, curatorial and critical practices, we welcome you to discover and learn about the key issues of contemporary art today.




DAH Institute 2015

DAH 2015

I gave a lecture on Networks of Art & Technology as part of the Digital Art and Humanities Institute 2015: Networks: collaborations, connection, the future at the Royal Irish Academy October 23.

http://dahphd.ie/programme/dah-institute-2015/




Renewable Futures

rixc

I gave a paper on Walking Art & Code at the international Renewable Futures conference organised by the RIXC Media Art centre in Riga, Latvia October 7-10.

 

The Renewable Futures is a new conference series in the Baltic Sea and North European region that aims to invent new avenues for more sustainable and imaginative future developments. It will shape new contact zones between traditionally separated domains – art and science, academic research and independent creative practices, sustainable businesses and social engagement in the 21st century.




DIT

Grangegorman

I'm very happy to announce that after three years in Denver Colorado working as a professor at the University of Denver I have taken up a new position lecturing in Fine Art in the Dublin School of Creative Arts at the Dublin Institute of Technology's new Grangegorman Campus.




DRHA 2015

DRHA2015

I gave a paper on walking art, psychogeography and code for DRHA 2015 at DCU Dublin Sept 2nd.




Newman Festival, Druskininkai Lithuania

Newman Festival Lithuania

I'm very happy to be exhibiting 24h Social for the Newman Festival July 3-6 in Druskininkai Lithuania, I'll also be giving a talk about my practice at the festival.




GradCAM Research Pavilion Venice

Gradcam Research Pavilion

I will be giving a talk on practice based research for the First GradCAM Research Pavilion: Experimentality June 28th in Venice.

The first Research Pavilion is organized by University of the Arts Helsinki, in collaboration with EARN (European Artistic Research Network), Valand Academy of the Arts (Gothenburg University), MaHKU Fine Art (HKU University of the Arts Utrecht), Universita Iuav di Venezia, JAR (Journal for Artistic Research), GradCAM (Dublin), and Frame Visual Art Finland.




DPASSH 2015

DPASSH 2015

I gave a paper on the Preservation of born digital art at Digital Preservation for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities in Dublin

The DPASSH conference is a response to the ever increasing problem of digital preservation within the arts and social science subject domain. It seeks to address the complexities of long-term digital preservation in the social and cultural realms and provide a platform for early career researchers, academics, scholars, cultural heritage and research institutions as well as libraries, archives and industry to engage and discuss the problem domain and exchange ideas on the solution.




Playgrounds @ Redline Gallery Denver

Walking West @ Redline

I am exhibiting in Redline's Playgrounds exhibition from June 13th to August 16th. For the exhibition I will be exhibiting the commissioned satellite photograph from Walking West as a large scale print measuring 100' x 5'. The image documents my Walking West performance and encompasses the entire length of Colfax Avenue, the exhibition also includes a video of the entire performance.




Routledge Companion to Remix Studies

Companion to Remix Studies

My chapter on Locative Media as Remix has been published in the "Routledge Companion to Remix Studies" edited by Eduardo Navas, Owen Gallagher and xtine burrough.

The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies comprises contemporary texts by key authors and artists who are active in the emerging field of remix studies. As an organic international movement, remix culture originated in the popular music culture of the 1970s, and has since grown into a rich cultural activity encompassing numerous forms of media. The act of recombining pre-existing material brings up pressing questions of authenticity, reception, authorship, copyright, and the techno-politics of media activism. This book approaches remix studies from various angles, including sections on history, aesthetics, ethics, politics, and practice, and presents theoretical chapters alongside case studies of remix projects. The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies is a valuable resource for both researchers and remix practitioners, as well as a teaching tool for instructors using remix practices in the classroom.




Leonardo Award for Excellence 2014

Leonardo

I am very honoured to the recipient of the 2014 Leonardo Award for Excellence for my article "Augmented Resistance: The Possibilities for AR and Data Driven Art," published in Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) Vol. 19, No. 1, 2013.

The Leonardo Award for Excellence recognizes excellence in articles published in Leonardo publications. Previous winners include Rudolf Arnheim, Otto Piene, Charles Ames, Frieda Stahl, Donna Cox, Janet Saad-Cook, George Gessert, Alvin Curran, Karen O'Rourke, Eduardo Kac, Hubert Duprat with Christian Besson, José Carlos Casado with Harkaitz Cano, Bill Seaman, Arthur Elsenaar with Remko Scha and Steve Mann.

Leonardo journal and book series editors, staff editors and project heads reviewed all articles published in Leonardo, Leonardo Music Journal and Leonardo Electronic Almanac in 2013 to select this year's winner.




TULCA 2014

Tulca

I am very pleased to announce that I will be exhibiting in TULCA 2014: Neutral.

TULCA, which is curated by Aisling Prior, takes place in Galway from November 7-23 and features work by 30 Irish and International artists. Participating artists: Mark Wallinger, Bedwyr Williams, YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, Kay Arne Kirkebø, The Domestic Godless, Mark Garry, Jeanette Doyle, Oisin Byrne, Brendan Earley, Katharine Lamb, Steven Maybury, Saoirse Wall, Fergus Martin, Marielle MacLeman, Jennie Guy, Elaine Leader, Keef Winter, Stephen Gunning, Conor McGarrigle, Anita Groener, Cecilia Danell, The Project Twins, Katie Watchorn, Lucy Andrews, Aileen Conroy, Pádraic E. Moore, Laura Angell, Sophie Loscher, Juliette de la Mer, BRANCH & ITSA Collective, Mobile Art School.




DRHA 2014

DRHA 2014 Logo

I gave a paper on "Vine, Data and Social Performance" and exhibited 24h Social at DRHA 2014 at the University of Greenwich London August 31- September 3.




Augmented Reality Art Book

Ar Art

I have a chapter entitled "Augmented Interventions: re-defining urban interventions with AR and open data" in Augmented reality Art: From an Emerging Technology to a Novel Creative Medium edited by Vladimir Geroimenko and published by Springer.

"This is the first ever book on augmented reality art. It is written by a team of world-leading artists, researchers and practitioners, pioneering in the use of augmented reality technology as a novel artistic medium. The book explores a wide range of major aspects of augmented reality art and its enabling technology. It is intended to be a starting point and essential reading not only for artists, researchers and technology developers, but also for students (both graduates and undergraduates) and everyone who is interested in emerging augmented reality technology and its current and future applications in art."

More information here




Acoustic Space #12

Acoustic Space #12 Techno Ecologies

My paper "Locative Histories: exploring the continued influence of early locative media art" was published in Acoustic Space Journal #12 Techno-Ecologies (eds Rasa Smite, Armin Medosch and Raitis Smits). This special issue features a selection of papers from the "Media Art Histories 2013: RENEW, the 5th International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology" in Riga Latvia.

Acoustic Space is available here.




The Prairie Picture Show

prairie  picture show

The Prairie Picture Show was an outdoor screening on a large screen of a film documenting my Walking West performance that took place somewhere on the prairie east of Denver on May 31st 2014.

The screening was an invite only guerilla projection with the exact location only notified to attendees shortly before the event.

Click here for a gallery of images

 

See here for more information and WalkingWest.us for Walking West information.




Theorizing the Web 2014

Theorizing the web

I gave a paper entitled "The Data of Vine" at Theorizing the Web in Brooklyn NY, April 25 & 26.

24h Social was also included in the conference exhibition.




Walking West Press

Channel 9 News: DU Professor Walks Colfax for 26 mile image

 

 

>Channel 7 News: DU Professor Painting Line on Colfax Avenue, April 11 2014.

 

Westword on Walking West

Westword: Walking West: Conor McGarrigle draws the line at Colfax Avenue -- all 26.2 miles

 

Walking West, my 26 mile psychogeographic walk along Denver's Colfax Avenue (the longest wickedest street in America according to Playboy magazine) was featured on Channel 7 and Channel 9 TV News. I also did a Five Questions interview for Colorado Public Radio and an interview with Denver's Westword magazine on the project.

Live tweets, images and locations from the walk can be found on the Twitter hashtag #WalkingWest

See WalkingWest.us for more information.

Walking West, Friday April 11

Walking West Colfax Ave

Walking West is a durational walking art performance involving walking the entire 26.2 miles of Denver's Colfax Avenue (once dubbed the longest wickedest street in America). All are invited to join me on the walk.

See WalkingWest.us for more information.

 

Follow the walk and find out current location on the day with #WalkingWest




Breaking Bad BitTorrent Edition in Wired Italy
24h Social @ Counterpath Gallery

24h Social

I will be exhibiting 24h Social a new 24 hour projection piece with the BitTorrent Trilogy in a solo exhibition at Denver's Counterpath Gallery from February 7-21. The exhibition opens at 7pm. Click for More Information.

The exhibition is also previewed by Cory Casciato in Westword.




Slingshot Athens 2014

Slingshot festival

I exhibited the BitTorrent Trilogy at Slingshot Athens March 26-28 in Athens GA.




ISEA 2013 Sydney Proceedings

ISEA logo

My paper "Forget the Forget the Flâneur" has been published in the Proceedings of the 19th International Symposium on Electronic Art, ISEA2013, Sydney and is available from the University of Sydney eScholarship repository.




Media Art Histories 2013: RENEW

Renew 2013

I gave a paper "Locative Histories: exploring the continued influence of early Locative Media art" at RENEW 2013, the 5th International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology in Riga as part of the Techno Ecologies panel, October 11th 2013.

More information is available here, slides are posted here and the full paper will be published in the proceeedings early 2014.




LEA Not Here Not There, Vol 19 Issue 1

Leonardo Electronic Almanac

My paper "Augmented Resistance: The Possibilities for AR and Data Driven Art" and an interview with me are included in the Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Not Here Not There, special issue on Augmented Reality

The issue is available online here with direct link to the article as a PDF download here.




WalkSpace App withdrawn from the Appstore

WalksSpace

After almost three years WalkSpace was in need of a major updating and was increasingly bug prone with recent IOS updates. The app has been withdrawn and a major update with a new version built from the ground up is under development. If you have WalkSpace it still substantially works on recent versions of IOS but may give intermittent problems.

 

WalkSpace App site




MEDIAcities 4 Conference, May3-5 2013

Mediacities4

I gave a paper entitled 'Counter Narratives in a Time of Crisis' which discussed a series of interconnected artistic, academic and activist projects which addressed the Irish financial crisis at the fourth MediaCities Conference at the University at Buffalo New York.

 

The fourth MediaCity reflects on pluralities and globalities, on MEDIACITIES everywhere What new lines of inquiry and emergent relations between urbanity and digital media are found in non Western cities, in post-Capitalist cities, in cities hosting civic turbulence or crossing international boundaries? What urban-medial relations are taking shape differently in urban milieux that may have been heretofore overlooked? These cities are deserving of more attention than ever before, as sites of population growth, of new cultural and social formations, of new entanglements between urban life and contemporary media, communications and information technologies, and more. MEDIACITIES promises to expand our understanding of both media and the city today, and to articulate new sites of practice and working methods for an expanding field.

 

More Information

 

The Art of Walking: A Field Guide

Book cover

I'm pleased to announce that my project WalkSpace:Beirut-Venice is included in the new book 'The Art of Walking: a field guide' edited by David Evans and published by Black Dog.

 

The Art of Walking: a field guide is the first extensive survey of walking in contemporary art. Combining short texts on the subject with a variety of artists work, The Art of Walking provides a new way of looking at this everyday subject. The introduction relates peripatetic art now to a wide range of historic precedents, and is followed by a series of visually led ‘Walks’ dealing with seven overlapping themes: footprints and lines; writers and philosophers; marches and processions; aliens, dandies and drifters; slapstick; studios, museums and biennales; and dog walkers.

 

The guide includes newly commissioned art and writing, and many artists have been actively involved in the design of their respective pages. Contributors include Marina Abramović and Ulay, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Francis Alÿs, And While London Burns, Keith Arnatt, Franko B, David Bate, Dara Birnbaum, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Janet Cardiff, Marcus Coates, Jeremy Deller, Tim Edgar, Christian Edwardes, Jan Estep, Simon Faithfull, Alec Finlay, Hamish Fulton, Regina José Galindo, Al Gebra, Mona Hatoum, Akira Kanayama, Oleg Kulik, Peter Liversidge, Long March Project, Richard Long, Melanie Manchot, Conor McGarrigle, Bruce Nauman, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Ingrid Pollard, Simon Pope, Chloé Regan, Sophy Rickett, Fiona Robinson, Matthias Sperling and Siobhan Davies Studios, Susan Stockwell, Krzysztof Wodiczko and Catherine Yass.

 

David Evans is a writer and picture editor, based in Bournemouth, England. Recent works include Appropriation (The Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press, 2009), László Moholy-Nagy: 60 Fotos (Errata Editions, 2011) and Critical Dictionary (Black Dog Publishing, 2011).

More Information

Athens Slingshot: March 21-24 Athens GA

Slingshot

As part of the Athens Slingshot Festival I created and led the Athens Austerity Locative Media walk which led particiapants on a tour of the sites of anti-austerity protests in Athens, Greece to Athens, Georgia led by the WalkSpace walking art iPhone app.

I also spoke on a panel on locative media and its capacity to influence society with Chris Eaket (Chair), Genevieve Hoffman and Brinkley Warren. Hosted by Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE), an interdisciplinary initiative for advanced research in the arts at the University of Georgia.

Myhren Gallery Exhibition

Exhibition invite

I've an exhibition opening at the Victoria H. Myhren Gallery at the University of Denver. Opening reception is on November 1st and the exhibition continues through December 9th.

University of Denver

Du

I'm pleased to announce that I have accepted a position as Assistant Professor in Emergent Digital Practices at the University of Denver. I'll be moving to Denver on September 1st and am very excited to join the impressive faculty in EDP.

PhD-ed

I successfully defended my PhD (without corrections) on August 24th. Many thanks are due to my extern examiner, Dr Richard Coyne, my intern examiner Dr Ronan McCrea and the comittee Chair Dr Mary McNamara for making the Viva such a memorable experience.

It's been an eventful and enjoyable journey over the last four years as part of GradCAM/DIT. I'd like to thank my supervisors Brian O'Neill, James Carswell and Martin McCabe, my family and friends and colleagues for all their advice, support and forebearance.



Older News >>

 

Conor McGarrigle 2018   Link to my Twitter account