Over 25 years since the World Wide Web phenomenon began, computer scientists, social psychologists, writers, and artists are now questioning how digital technologies are impacting our daily lives.

The personal computer, touch screen devices, and always-on wearables now form the very fabric of how we engage and connect globally. Our prolific participation in social media, taking selfies, live streaming and constant sharing of personal information gives rise to big data profiling. Willingly or unwillingly, our output in this global digital community demands a representation of the self. This ‘self’ is often fractured between text, sound, visuals, or data, filtered across different platforms as a multiple of identities.

Linking new studies of the digital self to the critical concerns and creative tools of artists, this diverse public programme explores questions of identity, authenticity, narcissism, disembodiment, and parody. Through photography, video and web artworks, digital interventions, talks, workshops and selected reading, digitial_self explores how the self is performed, promoted and exposed by a digital generation now accustomed to mediating their private and public lives online.

From the landmark performances of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) in the late 60s to more recent web based projects and performances we trace the integration of art, technology and internet processes over time through a selections of projects by Irish and international artist. Participants include Johann Arens, Julie Martin & Billy Klüver (E.A.T), Jonathan Mayhew, Eilis McDonald, Jayson Musson, Theresa Nanigian, Molly Soda, Amalia Ulman. The informal setting of IMMA Project Spaces offers visitors a moment for pause and reflection on the ways the web is changing us, its potential to transform how we engage with art, and what this means for our sense of self, on and off line.

Concurrent exhibitions at IMMA by Rodney Graham and Lucian Freud whose self-portraitures play with the perceived persona of the artist offers the departure to revisit how portraiture has acquired new meaning in this digital era.

Participating Artists

Amalia Ulman | Molly Soda | Theresa Nanigian | Jayson Musson | Eilis McDonald | Jonathan Mayhew | E.A.T: Julie Martin & Billy Klüver | Johann Arens

Talks & Events

A Public Programme of talks, events and online projects invites all ages to explore the ways new technologies are transforming how the self is voiced, shaped and understood in various digital realms.

Artists’ Moving Image Works, Project Spaces

1 Dec – 7 Jan 2018 | Johann Arens, Marte e Venere – A Handheld Monument, 2013, video, colour, sound.
9 Jan – 4 Feb 2018 | Jonathan Mayhew, Different Thoughts Various Evenings, 2017, video, colour, sound.
6 Feb – 25 Feb 2018 | Eilis McDonald, In my dream i called myself, 2017/18, web based project, video, colour, sound.

Saturday 9 December 2017 / 1pm / Lecture Room / Free / Booking Advised
The History of E.A.T / A Conversation with legendary Julie Martin, director of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) New York. Programmed in collaboration with O.M.G. CONNECT, TCD. Further details and booking

Saturday 20 January 2018 / 1pm / Project Spaces / Free / Booking Advised
not sorry / Artist Talk by Theresa Nanigian.
Theresa Nanigian discusses her work not sorry (2014) which presents an intimate portrait of the Irish teenager and young adult, at a time when almost everything is on virtual display. not sorry literally goes behind closed doors into the private territory of the bedroom and seeks to expose the genuine individual beneath the public persona. Learn more

Tuesday 30 January 2018 / 6pm / Lecture Room / Free / Booking Advised
To be a Machine / IMMA & IADT: ARC Talk by author, blogger Mark O’Connell.
Author Mark O’Connell draws on his acclaimed publication, To be a Machine (2016) to discuss our desires, delusions and use of technology to alter the human condition to escape mortality and our biological lives. Learn more

Thursday 1 February 2018 / 1pm / Project Spaces / Free / Booking Advised
Actors, Performing Bodies and the Matter of Storage / IMMA & IADT: ARC Lecture by Dr Maeve Connolly
Explores artworks that suggest material manifestations of acting or performing bodies to propose new understandings of the human body as a medium of storage.

Thursday 1 February 2018 / Live Online
@n-_at3mpt_2_v1ew-s0urce.txt / Jonathan Mayhew
A performed version of Georges Perec’s An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, 1974, uses IMMA’s social media platforms, from an undisclosed location, to blur distinctions between seen and unseen data.

Thursday 15 February 2018 / 1pm / Project Spaces / Free / Booking Advised
Authenticity and the theatre of Self / IMMA & IADT: ARC Lecture by Dr Sinead Hogan
Focusing on notions of authenticity and ‘the fake’, this lecture looks at how differing senses of self and subjectivity effect how we might think and engage with the world.

Dec – Feb 2018 / Lunchtime Weekly Screenings / Lecture Room / Drop In
9 Evenings films 1966 – 2017 / Produced Billy Klüver and Julie Martin for Experiments in Art and Technology

Grass Field by Alex Hay & Performance Engineer Bob Kieronski.
Physical Things by Steve Paxton & Performance Engineer Dick Wolff.
Carriage Discreteness by Yvonne Rainer & Performance Engineer Per Born.
Solo by Deborah Hay & Performance Engineer Larry Heilos.
Vehicle by Lucinda Childs & Performance Engineer Peter Hirsch.
Two Holes of Water – 3 by Robert Whitman & Performance Engineer Robby Robinson.
Variations VII by John Cage & Performance Engineer Cecil Coker.
Open Score by Robert Rauschenberg & Performance Engineer Jim McGee.
Bandoneon ! (a combine) by David Tudor & Performance Engineer Fred Waldhauer.
Kisses Sweeter than Wine by Öyvind Fahlström & Performance Engineer Harold Hodges.

All events are free of charge. For a full programme of talks, events and a screening schedule, visit the Talks & Events. All past talks are available on the IMMA Soundcloud Channel.