Visual Arts

Expanding Realities: XR at the Intersection of Hidden Histories, Biosciences, and Creative Technologies [Online and in person, Nov 4th, 12pm]. University of Galway Centre for Creative Technologies.

Expanding Realities: XR at the Intersection of Hidden Histories, Biosciences, and Creative Technologies

This masterclass with visiting Fulbright Specialist, Thomas Tucker of Virginia Tech, explores how Extended Reality (XR), including virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, has become a transformative tool across disciplines. Drawing from his own creative practice and collaborative research, he will present case studies that demonstrate how XR bridges cultural heritage, bioscience and veterinary research, and interactive art.

The session will combine project documentation, live examples, and conceptual framing to illustrate how XR operates as both a research methodology and a medium for storytelling. Attendees will gain insight into how immersive technologies are reshaping education, cultural preservation, scientific research, and artistic innovation.

Highlights

Creative Installations: Immersive XR artworks, including Drosera Obscura and Sound Arcade, which integrate animatronics, sound design, and sensory elements. These projects showcase how XR can provoke ecological awareness and emotional reflection while pushing the boundaries of interdisciplinary collaboration.

Historic Reconstructions: XR as a means of digitally repatriating artifacts and reconstructing lived environments, from WWI trenches and Civil War battlefields to overlooked rural landscapes. These projects illustrate how immersive experiences can expand access to cultural memory and hidden histories.

Bioscience and Veterinary Simulations: XR applications in veterinary training, animal care, and biological research—such as simulations of bat flight and sonar perception in China—highlight how immersive environments can serve both scientific understanding and empathy building for professionals and students.

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Registration: https://ti.to/creative-tech/masterclass-thomas-tucker

This masterclass is part of a series run by the Centre for Creative Technologies at University of Galway. 

Pursuing the Quantum Imaginary: Esoteric Knowledge Production and the Future of Telecommunications Masterclass [Oct 14th @12 – online]

Pursuing the Quantum Imaginary: Esoteric Knowledge Production and the Future of Telecommunications [Online and in person, Oct 14th, 12-2pm]. University of Galway Centre for Creative Technologies.

This masterclass is part of a series run by the Centre for Creative Technologies at University of Galway. The next of this semester’s Masterclass Series is with Nadia Armstrong, a visual artist and practice-based PhD fellow with NCAD and CONNECT, Research Ireland’s Centre for Future Networks and Communications.

Through an artist-ethnographic and cyborg feminist lens, Nadia Armstrong’s practice-based PhD research examines the systems of knowledge that underpin quantum communication technologies.

This masterclass will:

  1. take you through Armstrong’s practice-based research methodologies, and
  2. endeavour to explore how the field of quantum communications is understood through broader histories of science, technology, belief systems and culture – tracing the entanglements of bodies, machines, and knowledge systems to create what Armstrong calls the Quantum Imaginary.

Through this research and practice framework, Armstrong parafictions a techno-feminist horizon, using digital processes to conjure imagined phenomena that might help us resist technocracy and emerging forms of techno-feudalism.

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Through an artist-ethnographic and cyborg feminist lens, Nadia Armstrong’s practice-based PhD research examines the systems of knowledge that underpin quantum communication technologies. This masterclass will take you through Armstrong’s practice-based research methodologies, and endeavour to explore how the field of quantum communications is understood through broader histories of science, technology, belief systems and culture – tracing the entanglements of bodies, machines, and knowledge systems to create what Armstrong calls the Quantum Imaginary. Through this research and practice framework, Armstrong parafictions a techno-feminist horizon, using digital processes to conjure imagined phenomena that might help us resist technocracy and emerging forms of techno-feudalism. This masterclass is part of a series run by the Centre for Creative Technologies at University of Galway. Further information about the series can be found at: https://buff.ly/oJKIuoR About Nadia Nadia J. Armstrong is a visual artist and practice-based PhD fellow with NCAD and CONNECT, Research Ireland’s Centre for Future Networks and Communications. Her current artistic research harnesses the socio-technical imaginary to analyse systems of knowledge in the field of quantum communications. Armstrong’s installations act as interfaces to alternative realities, enveloping audiences in emancipatory parafictions that deconstruct appearances of “natural order.” She creates XR environments through which esoteric forms of knowledge become rituals for contemporary survival. Armstrong’s newest work GIRLHERO (2025) was commissioned by the Luan Gallery, Athlone for their exhibition SYSTEM ARMING curated by Aoife Banks.

The exhibition runs till November 16th. Armstrong’s full bio and more information about her work is available at: nadiajarmstrong.com

CONNECT – CONNECT is the world leading Research Ireland Centre for Future Networks and Communications.