2021
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interview: Getting Visual Art, The Sligo Champion, August 10th 2021
Interview with journalist Robbie Brennan exploring work while on residency with Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Manorhamilton, Ireland
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Because time and geology went into the creation of microchips. These aren’t disconnected things. I don’t see nature as one thing and technology another.
The Sligo Champion, quoted by Robbie Brennan, Getting Visual Art 2021
2021
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invited documentation: The Wood Wide Web, Curatorspace UK, May 29th 2021
Invited monologue about working with the Kielderhead Wildwood Project and exploring more-than-human relationships with trees and fungi.
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The relationships aren't simple, and human language is not well equipped to describe them. So I am gradually trying to strip away language and focus instead on visual and interactivity.
Curatorspace, edited by Louise Atkinson, The Wood Wide Web 2021
2021
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interview: Exploring the Wood Wide Web, The Journal Northumberland, April 20th 2021
Publication of interview about ongoing research project
Shane, who grew up in rural Ireland, trained as a painter but went on to study computer science. He talks as passionately about technology as about trees and fungi and refuses to distinguish between natural and non-natural.
David Whetstone, Exploring the Wood Wide Web Interview 2021
2019
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catalogue publication: Over Nature, August 2019
Publication of work in exhibition catalogue for 'Over Nature'
Read the preview Online
In Shane Finan's oevre the dialogue between art and nature, and what is means in a social context can be seen. His art encourages conversation, interaction or engagement to go over the physical or invisible border: both the borders of a country and its population, and the perceived "do not touch" borders of artworks.
Valeria Ceregini, on Shane Finan, Over Nature Catalogue 2019
2017
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interview: Impermanence and its Lasting Effect, Painting in Text, December 2017
Interview for online magazine
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I tend to focus on transient ephemeral things that disappear over time – things that change the relationship between people and place.
Technology is one of those things that is constantly shifts and is constantly in flux.
Shane Finan, interview with Barry McHugh, 2017
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2016
critical essay: Shane Finan, ADA, Criticismism, January 2016
Critical write-up on project 'ADA'.
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We are more connected than ever, but the quality of our online relations remains in question.
Art, which generally requires your physical presence, might be the apotheosis of connection.
Perhaps that is why austerity governments value it so little. That makes archipelagoes a timely and potent image:
a cluster of discrete entities joined up more closely than it seems at first.
Mark Sheerin, criticismism, 2015
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2022
Project Booklet: Púca in the Machine, Blessignton Library, March 2022
Designed, edited and authored Púca in the Machine, a project booklet documenting the work for an exhibition at Blessington Library of the same name.
More information
In the 1930s in west Wicklow, Ireland, the rivers in the area of Poulaphuca were dammed and the valley flooded to create a new hydroelectric power station...Unrecorded voices from beneath the reservoir include nonhuman presences in the valley. In undertaking such a massive engineering project, homes of many critters were inevitably destroyed without compensation. Rodents, birds, insects and fungi were among those evicted or drowned.
statement excerpt, 2022
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2021
Book Chapter: The Power of Inconspicuous Things, ENTWINED, VARC 2021
A chapter, titled The Power of Inconspicuous Things appears alongside a documentation of work in the new publication by Visual Arts in Rural Communities (VARC), ENTWINED. The publication includes work from the six resident artists with ENTWINED and is also a celebration of the 21st Anniversary of VARC.
More information
In May 2021, four human bodies and twenty young silver birch saplings moved on a hillside near the border between England and Scotland. Each tree was barely a branch, roughly the length of a human forearm, the leaves young and bright green, the roots living in a small plug of soil.
chapter excerpt, 2021
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2021
Newspaper Article: The Master's Device, Visual Artists Ireland News Sheet, May-June 2021
An article about using free and open source software for artists, piublished in the national news sheet.
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Artists … are known for challenging hegemonies, exploring environmental issues, … or voicing ethical concerns within their work. So, there is an unfortunate contradiction in using ethically, environmentally or socially unsound tools.
post citation, 2021
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2021
Online Article: Five Things a Gate Can Be, FIELD project blog
Blog post that about the aesthetic and use of gates, and their relevance.
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[A gate] can rust and degrade, and become buried in gorse. It can be opened and passed through. It can be locked. It can be climbed over, with one leg dangling on either side, placing the climber halfway between two possible worlds.
post citation, 2021
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2021
Online Article: Callous Caring: The myth of dichotomy in farming, FIELD project blog
Blog post that covers the dichotomy I have witnessed in farmers, and how they must navigate the care and callousness needed to live with livestock.
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Animals have individual personality; they have behaviours and motivations that we can’t always understand; they are sentient, thoughtful and caring. Farmers have always known this, and see it constantly.
post citation, 2021
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2021
Online Article: The artist who stares at sheep, FIELD project blog
Blog post about being-with and learning-from sheep while working on the FIELD project, and how they have taught me to see vulnerability.
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What eyes do we use to do our looking? We all have preconceptions and assumptions. I went into fields seeking ideas about farmers and disease, and I found vulnerability.
post citation, 2021
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2020
Book Chapter: We, the Mycorrhizae, Evolving the Forest, published by art dot earth
Book chapter as academic essay exploring the complexity of art and interconnection
More information at publisher's website
With all of our technologies to communicate and demarcate, we try to distance ourselves from these species, these places, these 'others' that we see as unlike ourselves. And yet, time and again, we fail in this distancing.
chapter citation, 2020
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2020
Article: A Different Kind of Grief: Learning to Love Our Networks in a Time of Disconnection, Institute of Network Cultures, Hogeschool van Amsterdam, June 12th 2020.
Article about networks, technology, grief and place-making, and how these seemingly disparate things are interconnected.
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To build a network is to build a future. The idea of grievability, of grief in the future tense, requires enough imagination to see beyond today and to create a place that has value enough to be grieved.
post citation, 2020
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2020-21
Online Series: The Wood Wide Web, Visual Arts in Rural Communities
A series of research articles about networks. The articles cover networks of communication between forest organisms, humans, and the structures of networks that are formed physically and digitally. This is part of a residency with Visual Arts in Rural Communities on the programme ENTWINED. Rural. Land. Lives. Art., collaborating with Kielderhead Wildwood Project, Northumberland Wildlife Trust.
Read Post #1: The Wood Wide Web (March 2020)
Read Post #2: Pandemic and Communication (April 2020)
Read Post #3: Staying Together Apart (April 2020)
Read Post #4: Monoculture Monoliths (June 2020)
Read Post #5: Independent Interdependence (September 2020)
Read Post #6: Repairing The Chain (March 2021)
I am dividing networks into two types: mutualistic and parasitic. In the former, the nodes of the network act together to help one another to grow and flourish. In the latter, a node or nodes in the network thrive off the other nodes without returning anything symbiotically.
The examples of mutualistic networks range from forests to technology to human communities. In the forest, the “wood wide web” is the network of fungi and trees that work together to help one another survive in forests. In technology, social networks, particularly those online sources and openness of communication between research communities, are a key example. In communities, the public sphere is the network: The bringing together of people to share ideas and values.
post citations, 2020
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2020
Online Article: Soil, Fungi and Chthonic Communication, Newcastle University Centre for Rural Economy blog
Blog post about communication and the importance of soil, published by Newcastle University Centre for Rural Economy.
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The idea of place is tied to the structure of soil – the demarcation of one place from another not by borders but by identity is how people perceive ‘place’.
post citation, 2020
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2020
Online Article: Planting, Stewardship and Value, Newcastle University Centre for Rural Economy blog
Blog post about research on networks and trees and how they link to art and value.
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Every tree is better alive than dead…and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
Henry David Thoreau Walden, 2020
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2020
Online Article: Complexity, Contradiction and the Symbiocene, Newcastle University PGR Sociology
Blog post about complexity, and how we understand or untangle it.
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Any dynamic idea is complex, and art is great at untangling complex ideas.
post citation, 2020
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2020
Online Article: The City, The Country and Resources, Newcastle University Centre for Rural Economy blog
Blog post about research on art, networks and infrastructures, published by Newcastle University Centre for Rural Economy.
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The end result is a removal of responsibility, a separation between the “dirt” and the “clean”. This is important in any philosophy that suggests a closer connection to nature. This connection between rural and urban has been intentionally eroded in a dream of a pristine city reality. Although an illusion, the dream is, as Kant may have described it, a “Regulative Ideal”. It is an unattainable goal, but one that nonetheless guides the philosophy of the expansion of cities.
post citation, 2020
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2018
book chapter: Social Computing and the Law, Cambridge University Press, August 2018
Chapter contribution and editing credits for book about GDPR and the legal use of social computing.
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technological developments in all areas of human endeavour involve a reconsideration of established ethical norms and an assessment on their impact on societal values and power relations.
chapter citation, p.23, 2018
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2018
artwork documentation: faigh ar ais as an fharraige, Interartive Issue #99, July 2018
Article documenting research used for the artwork faigh ar ais as an fharraige (2018).
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No language, whether technological, social, linguistic or artistic, appears without some baggage from a historical school of thought, and this is the reason for using painting as part of a visual metaphor in an interactive digital installation.
article quote, 2018
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2018
academic article: How Sentimental Are We About Brexit?, RTÉ Brainstorm, April 2018
Contributing author to article on political and social effects of news on economics.
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Our research shows that policy makers, researchers and politicians should pay heed to the 24-hour news cycles made even more noisy with Twitter
article conclusions, 2018
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2016
artwork documentation: Mugwort, Wormwood, and how little we know about the end of the world, Interartive Issue #84, May 2016
Article documenting research used for the artwork Mugwort, Wormwood, and how little we know about the end of the world (2016).
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Creating mental maps of areas, sights, sounds and smells are all integral to this development of a sense of place. Leaving one place and entering another can also been seen as an experience; boundaries dictate the allowed behaviours inside one place or another.
article quote, 2016
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2015
conference publication: Trust Building Through Social Media Communications in Disaster Management,
SWDM15 at WWW Conference, Florence, 2015
Academic article on trust in communication using social media.
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The potential for developing confidence in authorities through the two-way reciprocal communication of social media provides an avenue for trust-building that arguably was not provided by previous authority/public communication media.
article conclusions, 2015
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2015
journal publication: Transient Places: The Public Benefits of Short-Term Artist-Led Spaces,
Irish Journal of Arts Management and Cultural Policy, 2015
Academic article on artist-led spaces.
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Community co-creation of a transient place like Granby Park allows for the development of a cultural place identity that is temporary, but continues to function as part of the space’s place-memory.
article conclusions, 2015
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2013
journal publication: Rebuilding The Public Sphere: Community and Communication in Trinity College
in the 21st Century, Journal of Postgraduate Research, Trinity College Dublin 2013
Academic article on the use of public spaces in an age of digital media.
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networked publics are broadening the horizons for discourse by offering new audiences for engagement, debate and collaboration, and as a result they are changing the role of particular architectural places.
article conclusions, 2013
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2013
postgraduate thesis: This Must Be The Place: The importance of Place in Portable Digital Media,
Trinity College Dublin MSc in Interactive Digital Media, 2013
Thesis about pervasive digital media and its effects on culture
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It is possible to create a sense of place through a combination of devices and physical realities that, together, can reshape and redetermine the world that we live in and move through.
thesis conclusions, 2013
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2012
newspaper article: The Artist-led Scene in Sligo,
Visual Artists Ireland News-sheet, 2012
Article about artist-led spaces in Sligo, Ireland
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...the post-recession landscape altered the Sligo art scene significantly
article quote, 2012