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Ascend: Artistic Strategies for Engagement with Data Workshop

Places available

Ascend: Artistic Strategies for Engagement with Data is a two day workshop that brings 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 with the view to developing a working group and in the future write and distribute a co-authored working paper on the topic. This would be a useful document for artists and researchers who are engaging with algorithmic systems but would also constitute a documented set of practices that universities and research groups can point to and use to justify inclusion and greater funding for artists in STEM activities. Hopefully it would be useful for participants too, as practitioners and researchers who are grappling with issues such as access, credibility, legibility and transparency in these spaces.

Day one of the workshop on August 29th features presentations and discussions by invited participants including Jessica Foley, Benjamin Grosser (remote), Vladan Joler, Fiona McDermott, Conor McGarrigle, Joana Moll, Tom O'Dea, Nora O'Murchu, Paul O'Neill, Winnie Soon and Pip Thornton.

Where & When

Thursday August 29th, 2019

9:30 - 16:30

Harry Clarke Gallery, NCAD, 100 Thomas Street, Dublin 8.

How to Register:

Because of the nature of the discussion we are limiting participants to 20 max. If you're interested in participating please fill out the following google doc form This includes contact details but also a few lines about why you'd like to participate. Deadline for applications midday Tuesday 27th August.

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

Image: Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler, »Anatomy of an AI System«, 2018