ASCEND

Artistic Strategies for Engagement with Data Politics

NCAD, August 29&30 2019


About

is a research project bringing 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 aim is to share and formalise the methods that are developing in the space between art, digital research methods and practice-based research for interrogating these systems. This will form a document for creative practitioners and researchers who are engaging with algorithmic systems but might also constitute a documented set of practices that universities and research groups can point to and use to justify inclusion and greater funding for creative practitioners and practice-based research. 

Participants

Jessica Foley, Ben Grosser, Vladan Joler, Fiona McDermott, Conor McGarrigle, Joana Moll, Tom O’Dea, Rachel O’Dwyer, Paul O’Neill, Alison Powell, Winnie Soon, Pip Thornton, Nora O’Murchu

Funding

Ascend is facilitated by Rachel O’Dwyer, School of Visual Culture, NCAD, Funded by the Irish Research Council and Hosted and Supported by the National College of Art & Design

Documentation: Steve O’Connor

Participant Videos

Rachel O’Dwyer talks about artist strategies for engaging with data politics.
Conor McGarrigle talks about the politics of machine learning

Vladan Joler talks about the anatomy of A.I.
Fiona McDermott talks about the politics of networks and IoT 
Jessica Foley talks about the poetics of algorithms 
Winnie Soon talks about tracing the unerasable image
Tom O’Dea talks about how algorithms force us to engage in complex social systems
Ben Grosser talks about software recomposition as a method

Contact

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Funding

Ascend is facilitated by Rachel O’Dwyer, School of Visual Culture, NCAD, Funded by the Irish Research Council and Hosted and Supported by the National College of Art & Design