Category: our news

In 2018, Digital Transformations established the Digital Society Bursary to support any and all creative endeavours that seek a deeper understanding of the digitised society. This year’s bursary was aimed at graduating students in Ireland who are exploring the digital society within their practice. The digital society is throwing arts, policy, education, culture and business together in ways that only an artistic sensibility can really fathom.

The 2020 award was open to students in any creative discipline (visual, performing, musical, media, technology, literature). The submissions represented all these disciplines, and each had a revealing response to a society built on digital technology.

The 2020 winners

• Nadia Armstrong (NCAD), for her video “Digital Native”.
• Ellen Holmes Kelly (NCAD), for her virtual reality photography exhibition.
• Diarmuid Farrell (NCAD), for his app prototype “Woven Chats”.
• Katie Whyte (NCAD), for her glitch art installation “Inception/Generation/Degradation”.
• Ellie Shortall (NCAD), for her video “Confessions from the Future”.
• Luke Toomey (TU Dublin), for his podcast documentary “A Terrible Beauty”.
• Tara Jay Burke (GMIT), for her interactive story “Genre Rework”
• Aoife Donnellan (TCD), for her digital interpretation of the Táin “On Material Augmentation”.
• Mingmei Hao (TCD), for her film project “Is it Apocalypse”.
• Donal Kearns (TCD), for his interactive fiction story “Mental Quest”.

Each student will receive €1000 and will have their work exhibited in the first Digital Transformations group show, the details of which will be announced shortly.

In announcing the awards, founder Scott Coombs said “while all the projects are very different, some challenging, some entertaining, all of them demonstrate how deeply these students are thinking about digitisation and its impact on human identity, the human mind and voice.” Having planned these projects long before Covid, many of the students found ways to adapt to the new circumstances that revealed new insights into what it means to collaborate, and with whom we must collaborate.

Coombs said “I’m really looking forward to showing these works to as wide an audience as possible, and letting them hear these new voices and engaging with their ideas.”

For further details and upcoming exhibition dates, see http://digitaltransformations.org/investment/digital-society-award

In 2018, Digital Transformations established the Digital Society Bursary to support any and all creative endeavours that seek a deeper understanding of the digitised society. We are delighted to be able to announce a second award in 2020.

This year’s award supports students who are exploring the digital society within their practice. The digital society is throwing arts, policy, education, culture and business together in ways that only an artistic sensibility can really fathom. Successful applications will reflect the themes of Digital Transformations within their work: Digital Human, Networked Personality, Art for What’s Sake, and Manifesto.

Who can apply

This award is open to students in the Irish higher education system who are due to graduate in 2020, at either undergraduate or postgraduate level, in any creative discipline (visual, performing, musical, media, technology, literature). The award will be made for work that satisfies the award year course work requirements for graduating students.

We are accepting applications from Tuesday 27th April to Friday 29th May 2020.

In Mayo this Autumn , the Ballina Arts Centre hosts one artist’s response to technological change

A €10,000 “digital society” bursary has been awarded by Digital Transformations to multimedia and performance artist Leah Hilliard. Acknowledging the award, she said “having been at the first Digital Transformations conference in Ballina earlier this year, I was inspired to think about knowledge as a river and how we try to capture and hold onto knowledge.” With the River Moy as a central part of her project Leah said “In the Arts Centre you can watch the anglers standing for hours in Ridge Pool. I wonder who we are in the information flow, fish or fisherman?”

Leah has a 20-year history of work in visual art and technology. She studied Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, specialising in video installation and performance, and earned an MSc in multimedia systems from Trinity College. Her work has been shown at the Liverpool Bienniale and Dublin Fringe, and she has been involved in Art House, the Dublin Art and Technology Association.

This bursary provides a significant opportunity for practitioners of any discipline (visual, performing, musical, literature, media, technology) to deliver a project responding to the emerging digital society. The bursary will be open to individuals and groups in Ireland and abroad and the recipient will be launched at the Digital Transformations conference in Ballina on the 19th of May.

An information session for potential applicants will form part of the conference programme.

The purpose of the bursary is increase awareness of the digital society and to make artistic responses to the digital society a more central part of the debate around the digital society.

The winner of the bursary will be required to consider the themes of the digital transformations conference in developing their work: Digital Human, Networked Personality, Art for What’s Sake, and Manifesto. Studio, rehearsal and accommodation space at the Ballina Arts Centre in Mayo will be made available and the recipient will be required to provide some educational outreach and workshops at the centre.

“I’m thrilled to be offering this bursary as a way of supporting people who want to explore the digital society in their work, and to put that response centre stage in the debates happening today about what kind of society is emerging via digital technologies,” said conference director Scott Coombs. “Enriching human contact and the human voice is essential for this transformation to be beneficial,” he said “and this artistic response needs to be heard not just on the street, but in classrooms and boardrooms as well. The digital society is throwing arts, policy, education, culture, media, technology and business together in ways that only an artistic sensibility can really fathom.”

See http://digitaltransformations.org/bursary for full details.