Conference Format

AUDITORIUM

MUSIC of the ENGINEERS

 Ronan Laffan

The digital society needs technical people naturally, but the obsession with the mechanics of technology and the co-opting of the language of the creative process risks suppressing real creativity and crippling innovation. Ronan argues for a renaissance of the arts in the tech industry.

DANCE STUDIO

AGE of LONELINESS

Leah Hilliard

Leah delivers a spoken word performance about women, social media and the importance of the electric kettle as a tool for mindfulness in the modern age. In her performance she reflects on the changes within society and community. This work builds on series of her recent performance lectures looking at women and technology in the home, the notion of the smart phone as a form of home and most recently how the way in which we listen has changed.

AUDITORIUM

CLITCH ART

Ian Keaveny

A brief survey, with examples of the rise of Glitch art with reference to its influence, issues of copyright, in relation to traditional art forms and
practices, its aesthetics, Dirty new media and porn, its bypassing of traditional art criticism and gallery curation and its celebration of the broken as a response to an increasingly intrusive surveillance culture. If technology normally tries to trap and “handle” error – Glitch Art celebrates error. Ian will provide us with a brief survey, with examples of the rise of Glitch art with reference to its influence, issues of copyright, in relation to traditional art forms and practices, and its aesthetics.

DANCE STUDIO

STREAMING AND DREAMING

Paula Kehoe

As technology evolves and changes, is it just the big companies and Silicon Valley labs that are in control of these new mediums, or can we have access to it at a local level?  Paula also explores where tradition and technology collide and the dissolution of geography in the VR realm.

AUDITORIUM

ENTANGLED

Sineád McDonald

Sinead explores the use of the maker model in the arts, and the increasing entanglement of tech in philosophy and practice. She will survey new anti-disciplinary approaches and emerging  models of good practice in building collaborations across traditionally siloed modes of making.

DANCE STUDIO

THE EMPATHY MACHINE

Joanna Hopkins

The Empathy Machine is an interactive video booth. It works via a pre-programmed Raspberry Pi, it reads facial and voice detection, which then triggers a series of pre-recorded prompts and questions. The Empathy Machine invokes the idea that even though our daily interactions are becoming more computer based, an on-screen persona may never replicate the empathetic nature of a real live human being. Online doctors and medication is a rapidly growing area. If,  without touch, and physical awareness or assessment, can diagnosis be wrong or not  helpful at all?

The Empathy Machine examines how our daily interactions with others are increasingly occurring via online or digital sources. Are we becoming less intuitive to the basic sense of touch, and how will this affect our other senses, our brains, and our connectedness with other objects and humans into the future?

AUDITORIUM

SOUSVEILLANCE: PERSONAL DATA

plan b performance

Sophia New and Daniel Belasco Rogers will give an illustrated talk, explaining our practice of data collection, which we consider “sousveillance” rather than surveillance but has directly led us into a more critical and politicised understanding of personal data and its historically unprecedented current levels of capture. They will talk about their own experiences of making art from digital sources, using open source operating systems and software. Their research currently explores how to represent digitally collected information in analogue, crafted material, such as representing our GPS data in tapestry.

DANCE STUDIO

DON’T TURN OFF YOUR SMARTPHONES

Cate Field

Using smart phones, tablets and iPads, Cate’s work demonstrates how digital technology can make the creation of art accessible to those who find themselves on society’s edge. Cate combines visuals and sound with an interactive lecture during which she will encourage gentle audience participation and question the current theory that our attention spans are becoming shorter due to increasing exposure to technology, and demonstrate how this exposure can positively help us to evaluate and make sense of our
environment.

AUDITORIUM

INDIVIDUAL PRIVACY

AND SOCIETAL MEMORY

Leah Benson

The concepts of human rights and democracy go hand in hand and for some time privacy has been recognised as a human right.  Individuals have expectations as to how their private information is managed in a democratic society. Leah will draw on her work in the National Gallery of Ireland to tackle the key issues surrounding the conflict between a society’s right to retain and disclose personal information to facilitate historic research and the rights of the individual to privacy, how these conflicting concepts are viewed, and what is required to provide an adequate balance between them.  In a time when the custodians of collections are under increasing pressure to digitize and disseminate collections are we thinking enough about how this impacts on privacy?

DANCE STUDIO

GAMING THE SYSTEM

Siobhán Clancy

Siobhán will talk about gamification of the hospital environment for patients and how the metaphors of games (challenge, surprise, risk, achievement) can help long-term patients make the transition out of hospital, but also how art is an integral part of gamification
and design-thinking.

AUDITORIUM

FROM BARDS to IPADS

Steve Woodall

Steve traces this history of story-telling, and of creative expression generally, from the oral tradition to Facebook. He asks who are the agents and users, tools and media of the digital society. He highlights the challenge of archiving digital artefacts, and explains how digital platforms can be as much a barrier to innovation as an enabler.

DANCE STUDIO

THE MYTH of the WILDERNESS

Liing Heaney

Liing delves into the isolating affects of digital technologies in physically remote and rural regions. She explores the links and tensions between geological time/pre-history and the “Information Age”. Liing reveals “the myth of the wilderness” in a digitised world and the physical components & limitations of digital infrastructure.

AUDITORIUM

THE BODY RECOVERY UNIT

Alexandra Jonsson and Loes Bogers

Bogers and Jonsson’s show and talk about their project ‘Computational Touch’, which uses art to explore how we experience ‘being touched’ by digital technologies. Working with midwives, expecting mother and the public they are currently developing a series of textual ‘body maps’ that facilitates the experience of ‘digital touch’, and enable us to ask: what are the boundaries that digital technologies draw through the body, and who and what do they benefit? How can we begin to reclaim practices of ‘consent’ around a body, which has already been claimed the normalised ‘opt-out’ culture of the ‘smart world’?

DANCE STUDIO

PRACTICE WHAT WE PREACH

Paul O’Neill

Tactical media is both an artistic and critical
response to our contemporary post-industrial society. New media artists engaging with tactical media share and promote their work and the underlying technical processes that enable them through accompanying manifestos, workshops, talks and various open–source platforms. It is through this sharing process that these practices extend beyond cultural engagement and move into a form of political activism. As a result of this dissemination process, tactical media practitioners are offering technical skills and tools that can be used within this contemporary mobilisation of resistance and as such are worthy of analysis.

AUDITORIUM

The evening panel will draw together all the themes of the conference through a stimulating conversation with leading figures in the literature, technology, the arts and public policy.

AUDITORIUM

EVENING PERFORMANCE
Edit “Evening Performance” Kieran Quinn (keyboard) and Seamie O’Dowd (guitar, vocals) have been carefully crafting their own sound for over two years now. Best described as trad fusion, it also incorporates elements of jazz, blues and folk music. Two skilled musicians in their own right, neither of whom are in any way daunted by crossing musical genres at a moment’s notice, they have combined to produce a new and powerful musical force. Joined on this gig by expert bodhran player Joe Kelly, this unique trio will play largely original music, peppered with their own eclectic musical taste.