Future Makers Collective - Creative Digital Media at Institute of Technology Tallaght

Sector/Edu Guest Contributor: Tallaght Future Makers Collective - Creative Digital Media at Institute of Technology, Tallaght

The team includes six Creative Digital Media students; Megan Kelly, Marc Carr, Tomas Ferris-Meldon, Emma Kane, Lou Malone and Andrew Long, along with our valiant leaders Sinead MacDonald and Deirdre Kennedy.

When & Where to find Tallaght​ Future Makers Collective: 

​6^th Tues 7th Weds & 8th Thurs (12:00 - 18:00)
Incubator Two: What is the Future of Interaction? 
Arts Work of the Future Tate Exchange, Tate Modern, London ​

More About Tallaght Future Makers Collective:  

We are a group of educators, students, creative professionals, creative and cultural industries, institutions and organisations, working together to address societal challenges through the nexus of art, technology and creative practice.  We build collaborations and partnerships and break down institutional barriers, exploring alternative models of practice.

What Tallaght Future Makers Collective aim to bring/offer to the event incubator/accelerator: 

Students from within the collective have been exploring hidden documents and data sets, which explain how the world is functioning. Working on varying themes we would like to explore how technology and data impacts human interaction. 

We have been researching societal structures and technologies that control our world. The four themes we’re working under are:

• Church/State entanglement in women’s health issues 

• Humanising Data 

• Data mining and pseudo-voluntary metadata collection 

• Structures of control in city architecture 
   

Church/State entanglement in women’s health issues

We are working with this in two categories; The Magdalene Laundries and abortion law in Ireland. 

1.   Briefly, the Magdalene laundries were mother and baby homes set up by the state and run by nuns. There is documentation of severe abuse of the women and their babies. (http://www.thejournal.ie/magdalene-laundry-true-story-margaret-bullen-samantha-long-614350-Sep2012/) Orlaith, Christina and Louise will be working with the 1911 census data from the institutions. They’re examining data-sonification. 

2.   Abortion is illegal in Ireland, so pregnant people must travel to the UK to access a termination. There is a lot of shame and secrecy surrounding this in Ireland, and up until recently it was illegal to travel for an abortion at all. It is still illegal to procure an abortion in Ireland, with a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. In 2016, 3,265 Irish women travelled to the UK for an abortion, and a further 1,642 abortion pills were illegally sent to Ireland. Ireland is the only country in the world to have a constitutional ban on abortion, and is set to have a referendum to repeal this amendment in May of this year.

Emma, Megan and Marc will be creating a structure reminiscent of the Jacquard loom – upon which early computers were based – to represent the data we have collected on the number of people who travel to the UK to have an abortion over the period of a year.  The piece will be constructed in RUA RED gallery as part of Andrei Molodkin’s current exhibition Fallout Pattern ( http://www.ruared.ie/gallery/exhibition/fallout-pattern ). A video of its assembly performance and a 3D model will come with us.

Humanising Data
Under this theme Tomas is researching how we engage emotionally with large amounts of data relating to human beings and the phenomenon of “psychic numbing” in the face of tragedy. He is using Processing to do this. 

Data Mining and Pseudo-Voluntary Metadata Collection
Here we are developing work on facial recognition technology and the quantified self. 

Structures of control in city architecture
Lou is looking into the use of high-pitch frequencies and various colours and materials in buildings, which control the way we interact with them.

What Tallaght Future Makers Collective hope to get from the event: 

Creative collaboration!

Social media links:

Instagram: futuremakerscollective 

Twitter: FutureMakersCol

Website:  

http://futuremakerscollective.ie