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Digital Art in Ireland Panel Discussion

Digital Arts in Ireland Panel
Funded By
sample-studios

Digital Art in Ireland Panel Discussion

April 14
12-1.30pm
Zoom
Funded By
sample-studios
‘Digital Art in Ireland’ is a collection of essays examining how new media technologies are shaping the island’s contemporary artistic practices. As one of the first dedicated culture-specific treatments of Irish digital art, it fills a major gap in the national media archaeology of Ireland, engaging with a range of topics, including electronic literature, video games and the data-city. On the occasion of its launch, Sample-Studios in partnership with University College Cork Department of Digital Humanities, hosted this series of presentations exploring contemporary digital art practice and a panel discussion with invited contributors EL Puttnam, Kieran Nolan and Conor McGarrigle, chaired by Chris Clarke. View the ‘Digital Art in Ireland’ Panel Discussion

Chris Clarke is Senior Curator of the Glucksman, University College Cork, where he has curated numerous exhibitions, including 1,2,3,4: Dance in contemporary artists’ films; Circadian Rhythms: Contemporary art and biological time; and The Parted Veil: Commemoration in photographic practices, amongst others. He has also curated international exhibitions including Innsbruck International 2020 and 2018, various sites, Innsbruck, Austria; Under the Surface: Newfoundland & Labrador at the 55th Venice Biennale, Galleria Ca’Rezzonico, Venice, Italy; and The Second Act at Arts Centre de Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, Netherlands. He has published numerous texts and reviews of contemporary art and is a frequent contributor to art journals and magazines including Art Monthly, Source, VAN and Photography & Culture.

Contributors:

Conor McGarrigle is an artist and researcher working primarily with digital media. His practice is characterised by urban interventions mediated through digital technologies and data-driven explorations of networked social practices. He is a lecturer in Fine Art New Media at the TU Dublin School of Creative Arts and a Research Fellow of the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media. He has exhibited extensively internationally including the Venice Biennale, Fundació Miro Mallorca, the Saint-Étienne Biennale, SITE Santa Fe and the Science Gallery.

Synopsis
Art in the Data-City: Conor McGarrigle’s contribution explores critical data art practices, an emerging area of digital art that engages and critiques the pervasive computational systems of everyday life. In particular, McGarrigle focuses on what he terms 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. Critical data art practices, he suggests, provide a method to highlight and critique these developments and point a way towards counter practices of resistance.

EL Putnam is lecturer in Digital Media at National University Ireland, Galway. She is an artist- philosopher writer working predominantly in performance art and digital technologies. Her work focuses on borders and entanglements of gesture, particularly the interplay of the corporeal with the machinic. Through her artistic practice, she explores hidden histories and emotional experiences, testing the limits of their un-representability. She holds a PhD from the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. Her research focuses on continental aesthetic philosophy, performance studies, digital studies and feminist theory.

Synopsis
In Ireland, women’s bodies are subjected to particular bio-political apparatuses surrounding reproduction, enforced through political legislation, religious ideology, and national culture. These regulations inform constructions of motherhood in Ireland, with images of the maternal being heavily influenced by the Virgin Mary, Kathleen Ni Houlihan, and “Mother Ireland.” Certain artists, including Aideen Barry, Laura O’Connor and EL Putnam, use digital technologies as a means of providing alternatives to existing presentations of the Irish maternal. In these works, the maternal is made strange and uncanny, placing emphasis on the maternal subject as one of interruption provides insight into alternative groundings for subjectivity in terms of digital interruption.

Kieran Nolan is an artist-researcher, indie-game designer, and academic. He is a lecturer in Creative Media at Dundalk Institute of Technology, and Co Director of DkIT’s Creative Arts Research Centre. Kieran’s interdisciplinary research explores the aesthetic, material, and connective properties of arcade video game interfaces, through digital art, design critique, and platform histories. He holds a PhD in Computer Science specialising in Game Studies and Media Art from Trinity College Dublin. His work has been awarded by Leonardo / The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, the Institute of Designers in Ireland, and Imirt / The Irish Game Makers Association and featured at exhibitions and conferences worldwide.

Synopsis
Arcade platforms represent a set of technologies designed for consumer level play but traditionally closed off to non-developers as creative mediums. They are aesthetic interfaces, not just for game play, but also when used as expressive digital materials. Control, Arcade Operator, and VR SuperGun are a trilogy of interactive self-reflexive meta artefacts that combine into an experiential, critically reflective composite overview of the arcade interface. This research aims to contribute to understanding of arcade video games as material and aesthetic forms, and their role as a convergent link across new media art, interface design, gamestudies, and indie-game development.

‘Digital Art in Ireland’ is a collection of essays examining how new media technologies are shaping the island’s contemporary artistic practices. As one of the first dedicated culture-specific treatments of Irish digital art, it fills a major gap in the national media archaeology of Ireland, engaging with a range of topics, including electronic literature, video games and the data-city. On the occasion of its launch, Sample-Studios in partnership with University College Cork Department of Digital Humanities, hosted this series of presentations exploring contemporary digital art practice and a panel discussion with invited contributors EL Puttnam, Kieran Nolan and Conor McGarrigle, chaired by Chris Clarke. View the ‘Digital Art in Ireland’ Panel Discussion

Chris Clarke is Senior Curator of the Glucksman, University College Cork, where he has curated numerous exhibitions, including 1,2,3,4: Dance in contemporary artists’ films; Circadian Rhythms: Contemporary art and biological time; and The Parted Veil: Commemoration in photographic practices, amongst others. He has also curated international exhibitions including Innsbruck International 2020 and 2018, various sites, Innsbruck, Austria; Under the Surface: Newfoundland & Labrador at the 55th Venice Biennale, Galleria Ca’Rezzonico, Venice, Italy; and The Second Act at Arts Centre de Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, Netherlands. He has published numerous texts and reviews of contemporary art and is a frequent contributor to art journals and magazines including Art Monthly, Source, VAN and Photography & Culture.

Contributors:

Conor McGarrigle is an artist and researcher working primarily with digital media. His practice is characterised by urban interventions mediated through digital technologies and data-driven explorations of networked social practices. He is a lecturer in Fine Art New Media at the TU Dublin School of Creative Arts and a Research Fellow of the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media. He has exhibited extensively internationally including the Venice Biennale, Fundació Miro Mallorca, the Saint-Étienne Biennale, SITE Santa Fe and the Science Gallery.

Synopsis
Art in the Data-City: Conor McGarrigle’s contribution explores critical data art practices, an emerging area of digital art that engages and critiques the pervasive computational systems of everyday life. In particular, McGarrigle focuses on what he terms 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. Critical data art practices, he suggests, provide a method to highlight and critique these developments and point a way towards counter practices of resistance.

EL Putnam is lecturer in Digital Media at National University Ireland, Galway. She is an artist- philosopher writer working predominantly in performance art and digital technologies. Her work focuses on borders and entanglements of gesture, particularly the interplay of the corporeal with the machinic. Through her artistic practice, she explores hidden histories and emotional experiences, testing the limits of their un-representability. She holds a PhD from the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. Her research focuses on continental aesthetic philosophy, performance studies, digital studies and feminist theory.

Synopsis
In Ireland, women’s bodies are subjected to particular bio-political apparatuses surrounding reproduction, enforced through political legislation, religious ideology, and national culture. These regulations inform constructions of motherhood in Ireland, with images of the maternal being heavily influenced by the Virgin Mary, Kathleen Ni Houlihan, and “Mother Ireland.” Certain artists, including Aideen Barry, Laura O’Connor and EL Putnam, use digital technologies as a means of providing alternatives to existing presentations of the Irish maternal. In these works, the maternal is made strange and uncanny, placing emphasis on the maternal subject as one of interruption provides insight into alternative groundings for subjectivity in terms of digital interruption.

Kieran Nolan is an artist-researcher, indie-game designer, and academic. He is a lecturer in Creative Media at Dundalk Institute of Technology, and Co Director of DkIT’s Creative Arts Research Centre. Kieran’s interdisciplinary research explores the aesthetic, material, and connective properties of arcade video game interfaces, through digital art, design critique, and platform histories. He holds a PhD in Computer Science specialising in Game Studies and Media Art from Trinity College Dublin. His work has been awarded by Leonardo / The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, the Institute of Designers in Ireland, and Imirt / The Irish Game Makers Association and featured at exhibitions and conferences worldwide.

Synopsis
Arcade platforms represent a set of technologies designed for consumer level play but traditionally closed off to non-developers as creative mediums. They are aesthetic interfaces, not just for game play, but also when used as expressive digital materials. Control, Arcade Operator, and VR SuperGun are a trilogy of interactive self-reflexive meta artefacts that combine into an experiential, critically reflective composite overview of the arcade interface. This research aims to contribute to understanding of arcade video games as material and aesthetic forms, and their role as a convergent link across new media art, interface design, gamestudies, and indie-game development.

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