News & Events

Thursday Mar 14th 2019 :  Huston Main Room   3pm

Conor McGarrigle on Data Art

We are, according to Shoshana Zuboff, in the age of Surveillance Capitalism – "a new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction and sales"  Today almost every aspect of everyday life produces data in unimaginable quantities to be captured and processed by neural networks to power ever-more sophisticated and totalising models of human behaviour. As the complexity of these systems grows the ability to understand and critique their workings diminishes, even as it becomes more urgent and necessary. Against this backdrop, this talk will discuss critical data art. How can artists engage with big data and artificial intelligence to provide a critical voice to current debates on surveillance capitalism.

Conor McGarrigle is an artist, researcher and lecturer in Fine Art New Media. His practice is characterised by urban interventions mediated through digital technologies, and data-driven explorations of networked social practices. Projects include durational walking performances, large scale outdoor projections, smartphone apps and generative video installations.