Technological Claustrophobia

Tim O'Riley discusses the genesis of his project to examine how technology can be used to construct a speculative model of a physical and spatial experience.

Tin O'Riley's Current Research
I am interested in the complex and eclectic relationship between art, science and literature and between the still and the moving image. Work has been centred around computer technology - specifically modelling and animation - but is informed by an underlying interest in painting, photography and writing. Over the past few years, I have been visiting and documenting various scientific establishments in Europe and the USA, combining a reasoned approach to science and its history with one in which serendipity and speculation play an equally significant part. I am intrigued by the idea of parallel or alternative spaces, dialogue and the relation between observer and object. I am particularly interested in Vilém Flusser's philosophy and critique of the 'technical image' and his speculations on virtual worlds.
Recent projects have been spurred on by a chance encounter with a memento from the Apollo 11 lunar mission, a small Irish flag which had travelled aboard the historic spacecraft and which resides at an observatory in Dublin. This prompted research into various fictional journeys to the moon stretching back almost 2000 years, the more recent history of the space race and the lives and opinions of astronaut Michael Collins and Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Astronomer Royal of Ireland from 1827-1865, who lived for much of his life in the building where the flag eventually ended up. In the light of this serendipitous encounter, I have recently completed a 118-minute animation of a real-time orbit of the moon together with an artist's book bringing together some of the material I have found relating to the observatory, lunar exploration and fictional, imaginary journeys.