Nadia J. Armstrong
ORATORY ECHOES
THE WORD
CARCASS/REFORMED
For Altered Terrain, Armstrong looks to the digital beings that inhabit her work and traces the emotional resonances and interpersonal signifiers they produce back to the ancient origins of communication. This three part video experience seeks to bring the origins of public voice into the virtual social sphere - through means of 3D composition and augmented reality technology. Placing the QR code within a physical social space, that holds the histories of human communication within its infrastructural fibres, activates the network of actors Armstrong harnesses to speak out to a public, anonymous audience. These digital interventions into physical space explore how landscapes of social exchange have found new forums that do not rely on the planes of reality, highlighting how the dynamic reformation of these spaces remains ever-constant. The shifting public and private natures of the forum define the parameters of human exchange and influence social values accordingly - Armstrong asks, how can we regain agency as we navigate these spaces, how can we harness the physical liveness of communication within these now predominantly virtually-driven environments?
Location: Dun Laoghaire harbour, east pier bandstand
about Nadia:
Nadia J. Armstrong is a visual artist working with performance, 3D composition, AI and expanded video installation. Her practice is concerned with the commodification of human emotions and our relationship to the machines we create. Her work arises out of the symbiosis between human and machine, device and individual. She treats machine learning processes, data accumulation methods and computational systems as creative and cultural material with which to explore the conditions of our existence.
In 2020, Nadia received a Digital Society Bursary Award, the RDS Mason Hayes & Curran Centre Culturel Irlandais Residency Award and the Fire Station Artists Studios Digital Media Graduate Award. In 2021 she was one of 13 European artists under 30, who received a Goethe-Institut A.I. Residency Award. She was also a recipient of a 2021 Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council Emerging Artist Grant. In 2022 Nadia was awarded the inaugural Accenture Digital Innovation in Art Bursary at the 2022 Business to Arts Awards. She also received a 2022 Visual Art Bursary from the Irish Arts Council to support the production of new work. In 2023, Armstrong completed Galway Culture Company’s Cybernate Residency Programme, a digital arts in public space research residency, produced by Culture Works in partnership with Pôle PIXEL, HACNUM Network, CREW, the French Embassy in Ireland and ATU and funded by The Arts Council. In 2023 Nadia also began delivering lectures in Visual Culture with the CFA academy at NCAD, Dublin.
Exhibitions during 2022/23 include the Mart Studios Members Exhibition at the Mart Gallery in Rathmines, Dublin, the 192nd RHA Annual Exhibition at the RHA Gallery at Ely Place, Dublin, “Performing Research: four directions of artistic inquiry” at Solstice, Navan and “You breathe differently down here” curated by Amanda Coogan at Draíocht, Blanchardstown, Dublin.
Images:
1 and 4. THE WORD (2023), 00:26 secs duration, video with audio, avatar performance piece using AI altered 3D models, generated using selfie images of the artist herself.
2. CARCASS/REFORMED (2023), 00:54 secs duration, video with audio, 2D animation and video compositing.
3. ORATORY ECHOES (2023), 00:40 secs duration, video with audio, incorporating 3D composition with text and AI voice models.