Our mission as Concept Null is to establish new media art as a recognised artform in Ireland and help grow and nurture a community of artists, technicians, enthusiasts and facilitators that embody a voice of Irish new media art.
Concept Null is currently run by Róisín Berg , Cailean Finn , Walter Nied and Scott Robinson and is funded currently by our volunteered time and community donations.
Currently, we publish a newsletter on the 1st and 15th of every month that highlights events, exhibitions, workshops, open calls, studio vacancies, and any other tidbits of interest for the Irish new media art community.
Alongside this, we organise and host meetups that offer a space for artists to share their work and process with others in the community. By hosting such events, it doubles as a pilot to investigate the need for and benefits of a communal space for the new media art community in Ireland.
Through regular conversations with members from various funding bodies, art ogranisations, academia, and working artists, we aim to gain insight into the field of art and technology in Ireland. Our goal is to relay this information to the artists who need it.
As individuals, we are active members of the Digital Arts Ireland Discord , and as an organisation we help out in hosting ‘Monday Meetups’ that happen virtually on the first Monday of every month. Addiontionally, we stream and connect our physical meetups to the Discord, enabling people to present remotely, and tune in if they can’t make it physically.
For more info on each of our activities, please see our Constitution .
Brief history of Concept Null
Concept Null started in 2019 as an audio visual event bringing together nightlife and art exhibitions with a focus on new media art. Its original members and the artist they commissioned, began to explore the possibilities of projection mapping, live performance, installation art, light art, lasers, sound art, video art.
After the second event , which took place in the Shannon Rowing Club, the hurdles of producing events that could fairly pay and host emerging artists who wanted to delve into this space became clear -- Difficulty securing funding, finding suitable venues which could accommodate for the intense installation times and needs, high venue rental cost, insurance costs, lack of prototyping spaces suited for the needs of the artist -- the list went on. However, the only thing that wasn’t lacking was the artists who wanted to exhibit and explore the potential of working with emerging technologies.
After a long hiatus, and some guidance, we decided to refocus our energy towards community organisation. As individuals, we have worked with a wide array of artists, technicians, and enthusiasts in Ireland. Through this, we felt there was a need to connect these groups with one another. As a result, we decided that a newsletter was the best place to start.
Later, this expanded into physical meetup in cities such a Cork, Limerick, Dublin, and Belfast. Following this, the Digital Artist Ireland Discord was started which now has 170+ members. As of now, we have produced almost thirty newsletters, ran multiple artists meetups, and produced one interview with D.A.T.A who are a big inspiration to our organisation.
Contact
You can contact us at [email protected]
***Disclaimer***
As Concept Null, we refer to any artwork that uses contemporary technological devices to make art or critiques these devices or the cultures surrounding as ‘New Media Art’. This term can be seen (to some extent) as interchangeable with the terms ‘Digital Art’ ‘Interdisciplinary Art’ ‘Multidisciplinary Art’ or ‘Art and Technology’. This association applies to the term ‘New Media Artist’ too. We find this term to be most descriptive in contrast to the others mentioned but are, for the most part, indifferent to the actual linguistic terms as they all refer to much the same thing.