Art and Design Commons^™

Exhibition Interpretation And The Visitor Experience, Theresa Ryan

Case Studies

This case study explores the techniques used to interpret a commemorative exhibition staged in Dublin city library between the 14th of August and the 31^st of October, 2019. The case discusses the way in which multiple media were employed to communicate the exhibition narrative to visitors, and how this resulted in very emotive, personal and meaningful visitor experiences. Through the use of a range of audio-visuals, original images, text, memorabilia and guided tours, the exhibition provided a multi-sensory experience, that engaged different cohorts of visitors with the collections, information and ideas on display. They provided a powerful means of …

Data Narratives: Aesthetic Activation Of Urban Space Through Augmented Reality, Conor Mcgarrigle Dr., John Buckley

Books/Book Chapters

This 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. As data describes and defines so much of our digital every day, the project and residency programme asked how it could be leveraged as a medium for artistic creation and how could art supply new insights …

Art In The Data-City: Critical Data Art In The Age Of Surveillance Capitalism, Conor Mcgarrigle

Books/Book Chapters

This chapter considers the role of digital art practice, with an emphasis on the Irish context, in what is described as the data-city, that is a theorisation of this contemporary urban condition so infused with opaque data-driven systems that almost every action is described by and enacted through data. The ubiquitous deployment and action of data assemblages – the networks of hardware and software that enable data-capture regimes – in urban space are changing the nature of the city itself in ways that are not readily apparent. Critical data art practices it is suggested, provide a method to highlight and …

Enacting The Glastonbury Pilgrimage Through Communitas And Aural/Visual Culture, Kathryn R. Barush

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

The sacred sites of Glastonbury in Somerset, England have long been places of pilgrimage, connected to the legend of the journey of Joseph of Arimathea to the British Isles, and have fired the imagination from the Middle Ages to today - inspiring the Arthurian legends, folk-stories and song, and visual representations. In response to the question ‘What is Pilgrimage,’ this essay seeks to explore the conjunction of artistic representations and geographic journeys to and among the ancient topography and mysterious structures of Glastonbury, with a particular focus on how sacred travel, and especially an experience of communitas, can be engendered …

Laboratoire DéBerlinisation: Art, Finance, And The Legacies Of Colonialism In Contemporary African Art: An Interview With Mansour Ciss Kanakassy, Conor Mcgarrigle, Marisa Lerer

Articles

Mansour Ciss Kanakassy (b. 1957) is a Berlin-based Senegalese artist whose practice addresses the legacy of colonialism in contemporary Africa, in particular as it is expressed in the financial systems of the former Francophone colonies of West Africa, where the currency, the CFA franc, historically tied to the French franc, is now pegged to the euro. The acronym CFA originally stood for Colonies Françaises d’Afrique – French Colonies of Africa – and now Communauté Financière Africaine – African Financial Community. In 2001, Ciss Kanakassy created the Laboratoire Déberlinisation (Déberlinisation Laboratory), a multifaceted project that traces contemporary African issues to the …

Art Interventions And Disruptions In Financial Systems: An Interview With Paolo Cirio, Marisa Lerer, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

Prior to the release of the 2016 Panama Papers and 2017 Paradise Papers – leaked documents that uncovered the movement of funds through offshore tax havens – conceptual artist Paolo Cirio’s (b. 1979) project Loophole for All (2013) revealed and documented the mechanics behind offshore financial centers. In this interview, Cirio expounds upon his investigations of offshore banking practices, describes his projects for instituting alternative financial models, and explains his hacktivist (i.e. Internet activist) strategies that engage with legal and economic systems. Defining the foundational movements that inform his work, Cirio in turn illuminates his methods of direct provocation and …

The Us’S Economic Promises Are Over: An Interview With Miguel Luciano, Marisa Lerer, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in September 2017. The island was left without electricity and clean water for months. However, the natural disaster was not the only cause of this lasting devastation. The financial fall-out from predatory loans, which led to Puerto Rico’s inability to invest funds in its own infrastructure, caused an enduring humanitarian disaster. Artist Miguel Luciano (b. 1972) in this interview discusses his work in relation to the 2017 Puerto Rican debt crisis and the legacy of the over 100-year span of Puerto Rico’s colonial status as a US territory, which gives the US disproportionate control over …

Insurgent Finances: An Interview With Gabriela Ceja And Fran Ilich, Marisa Lerer, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

When the financial crisis of 2008 exposed the opaque workings of global financial markets, it led to calls for alternate economic models to replace the excesses of contemporary capitalism. A decade on, it can seem that those calls went unheeded. However, in the collaborative social practice of Fran Ilich and Gabriela Ceja, sustainable alternatives modeled on ancient modes of exchange are being developed with projects that are deeply embedded in economic practice; whether that is running a functioning microbank complete with complex financial instruments in Spacebank or serving Zapatista coffee from Chiapas, Mexico in the Diego de la Vega Coffee …

Augmented Interventions: Re-Defining Urban Interventions With Ar And Open Data, Conor Mcgarrigle

Books/Book Chapters

This chapter proposes that augmented reality art and open data offer the potential for a redefinition of urban interventionist art practices.

Data has emerged as a significant force in contemporary networked culture from the commercial commodification of online presence as practised by internet giants Facebook and Google to the 2013 revelations of the unprecedented scale of the US Government’s data collection regime carried out by the NSA (Gellman and Piotras, U.S., British intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program, http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us- internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845- d970ccb04497_story.html, 2013). Big data and its effective deployment is seen as essential to the …

Iot Based Recipes For Enabling Senior Citizens: Stakeholders Views On How Integration Of Iot And Web Services Can Enhance Well-Being And Inclusion Of Older People, Matteo Zallio, Damon Berry, John Mcgrory

Conference papers

The main body of research clearly highlights the world’s population is rapidly expanding. When this fact is combined with the increase in life longevity due to medical and social advances it alters the demographic balance in relation to age. Hence, the number of people aged 65 and over is constantly increasing. The potential of Smart Technologies and IoT-based devices to improve health has increased rapidly in the last few years and users are now in a position to contribute to the development of the interaction process and need to be properly trained on benefits of using new technologies. IFTTT (If …

Walking Code, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

This paper 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.

This will be achieved through the development of algorithmic …

Impact16 Transdisciplinary Symposium, Pact Zollverein, Essen Germany, Conor Mcgarrigle

Other resources

IMPACT16 is an encounter with HOOD, RYBN.ORG und FORMATIONS, three expert collectives whose diversified forms of cooperation and flexible working practices transcend disciplinary boundaries.

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 offers 30 …

A Site Of Change: The Masterplan, Brian Fay

Exhibition Catalogues

Essay on the community based art project The Master Plan curated by Jennie Guy with artists Ella de Burca and John Beattie.

Preserving Born Digital Art : Lessons From Artists' Practice, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

This paper looks at 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, focusing on a case study of the preservation of a net art project by the author. It is suggested that any preservation strategy begins with artists and the conservation practices that are inculcated into the very act of creation. The paper proposes that for institutional digital art conservation initiatives to be successful they must originate from a pre-existing culture of preservation within digital art communities

Locative Media As Remix, Conor Mcgarrigle

Books/Book Chapters

While data-driven art is not new, recent developments in technical, artistic, and social spheres have coalesced to produce new opportunities for artists and activists who remix data with space and place to form locationally specific political critiques of great power and flexibility.

Locative Histories: Exploring The Continued Influence Of Early Locative Media Art, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

This paper, which draws on aspects of my doctoral research, traces the influence of early Locative Media Art on the current form and application of location-aware technologies. The mechanisms and impulse for this influence are introduced and analyzed and it is proposed that they point to new approaches in the consideration of the agency of Locative Media art.

I return to the origins of Locative Media at the Karosta workshop and the ambitions of early practitioners to argue that the practice was based on a prescient analysis of the potential for ubiquitous networked location-awareness. From this analysis was developed an …

Forget The FlâNeur, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

This paper discusses the connections between the ‘flâneur’, Baudelaire's symbol of modernity, the anonymous man on the streets of nineteenth century Paris, and his contemporary digital incarnation, the ‘cyberflâneur’. It is argued that, although the flâ- neur could be successfully re-imagined as the cyberflâneur in the early days of the web, this nine- teenth century model of male privilege no longer fits the purpose. It is suggested that it is time to forget the flâneur and search for a new model to consider the peripatetic nature of location-aware networked devices in the digitally augmented city.

Augmented Resistance: The Possibilities For Ar And Data Driven Art, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

This article discusses the possibilities for Augmented Reality (AR) as a driver of data based art. The combination of AR and Open Data (in the broadest post-Wikileaks sense) is seen to provide a powerful tool-set for the artist/activist to augment specific sites with a critical, context-specific data layer. Such situated interventions offer powerful new methods for the political activation of sites which enhance and strengthen traditional non- virtual approaches and should be thought of as complementary to, rather than replacing, physical intervention.

I offer as a case study this author’s “NAMAland” project, a mobile artwork which uses Open Data and …

Temporalities And The Drawn Response To The Conservation And Restoration Of Paintings, Brian Fay

Other resources

This paper will consider the temporal implications for drawing in the light of conservation and restoration treatments to paintings by the Seventeenth Century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer.

Using three critical frameworks: Norman Bryson’s becoming model for drawing and the relationship of liminality to a painting during conservation/restoration, George Didi Huberman’s anti-chronological reading of the detail and the pan in painting, and Walter Benjamin’s definitions of drawing the paper will seek to address some implications for a drawing practice that responds to a pre-existing museum artworks.

The paper will present some findings from my own drawing practice that responds to Vermeer’s …

Articulations Of Irish Language Poetry As Multimodal Texts, Brenda Duggan

Conference Papers

Abstract

In October of last year, visual communication students at Technological University Dublin took part in an exhibition of Irish language literature texts that were imaginatively extended, exploring an array of new literacies. Taking the Irish language texts as a starting point for this project, students creatively explored print, visual, digital and material modes to extend the meaning of the poetry.

This paper explores, from a social semiotic perspective the creative potential this multimodal work offers design pedagogy in how we frame and articulate meaning across both print and digital media design education. With an emphasis on an ensemble of …

Music In Alternative Spaces, Seán Mac Erlaine

Books/Book Chapters

Chapter from Dublin’s Future: New Visions for Ireland’s Capital City, Dr. Lorcan Sirr (ed.), (Dublin: The Liffey Press, 2011).

Dublin’s Future is a collection of essays, which, for the first time, recognises that the future of the island’s largest and most important urban conurbation is about more than the engineering of roads and the colouring of development plans.

Seán Mac Erlaine’s chapter explores the performance of music in Ireland’s capital city, documenting the currently vibrant use of alternative art spaces for niche markets of improvised, experimental and non-mainstream music practice.

Contributors are recognised authorities in their fields. They cross …

How Locative Media Art Set The Agenda For Mobile Location Aware Apps (And Why This Still Matters)., Conor Mcgarrigle

Conference Papers

This paper explores the connection between Locative Media (LM) a set of art practices centred on location aware technologies and current Location Based Services (LBS) and applications. To achieve this LM will be traced to the origins of the term and to the originary ambitions driving this unique mode of engagement with emergent location-aware technologies. This involves returning to the first principles of the Karosta Locative Media workshop, its associated texts and to Ben Russell's "Headmap Manifesto" [1] to locate the intentions and ambitions embedded in the term itself.

From its inception at the locative media workshop in Karosta, Latvia …

The Construction Of Locative Situations: Locative Media And The Situationist International, Recuperation Or Redux?, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

A trend exists within locative media art of invoking the practices of the Situationist International (SI) as an art historical and theoretical background to contemporary practices. It is claimed that locative media seeks to re-enchant urban space though the application of locative technologies to develop novel and experimental methods for navigating, exploring and experiencing the city. To this end, SI concepts such as psychogeography and the techniques of detournement and the de ́rive (drift) have exerted considerable influence on locative media practices, but questions arise as to whether this constitutes a valid contemporary appropriation or a recuperative co-option, serving to …

Clifford’S Fireplace Company Limited Brand Identity Project, Peter Dee

Other resources

Peter Dee - Strategic Design and Marketing Consultant, was responsible for the design and development of the brand identity for the Clifford’s Fireplaces Company which was used on business cards, letterhead, advertisements, promotional material and e-Commerce website. Clifford's Fireplaces Ltd. was established in 1947 and with over 65 years of experience in the fireplace and home heating business it is their goal to ensure that customers obtain the most appropriate products and services to meet their heating requirements. http://www.cliffordfireplaces.com

Movie Web Project Written Report, Peter Dee

Articles

A brief written report about the Movie Web Project 'Something There' to include four headings of control of media, thematic coherence and originality, navigation and use of code. The project involved the design and development of a Flash-based website to promote a new fictitious movie 'Something There' by two new Irish Movie Makers, Alan Fletcher and Salvador Robinson also known as 'Al + Sal'.

Flash Animation Project: Written Report, Peter Dee

Dissertations

A written report about a Flash animation project to include the 3 headings of Animation Techniques, Story Telling and Audio along with a critique and an appendix. The Flash animation project is based upon one of Aesop's fables entitled 'The King's Son & the Painted Lion'.

Short Animation Project Written Report, Peter Dee

Articles

A brief written report about a short animation project to include the four headings of thematic coherence, walking animation, talking animation and title credits.

Macromedia Director Audio Project Research - Written Report, Peter Dee

Articles

A written report about the Director Audio Project: Underground Sound to include the four headings of control of audio, thematic coherence, management of assets and originality of approach / design rationale. The Underground Sound Director Audio Project is about contemporary black music in an urban setting. Images of old and young captured in the environment in which they live.

Design Principles: Attractive Bias Written Report, Peter Dee

Articles

A written report to analyse two objects in relation to the principle of attractiveness bias; one of which supports this design principle and one which does not.