Representing Illusions

Editors, Macleod and Holdridge, had explored my contribution to the debate surrounding practice-based research in previous papers and subsequently asked that I contribute a chapter, distilling aspects of my PhD, to a new book, looking at the various processes at work in practice-based Doctorates.

The editors’ introduction locates my work within the broader international context of art and design research practice. My research has consistently been preoccupied with the question of where exactly the significance of the artwork lies: in the object; its relation to its context and viewer; in the viewer’s involvement with the work, or somewhere else again? The chapter explores these relationships and the notion of spectatorship as a form of ‘construction’ through an analysis of mental, optical, perspectival, narrative and filmic spaces, and by reflecting on works from a variety of sources including a detailed analysis of Hitchcock’s 'Rear Window'.

The proposition is that ‘the work itself’ exists most completely only in the space between artist, viewer and work (whether that be an image, object, situation, experience or performance). It also proffers an alternative sense of a ‘participatory practice’ to some of the notions in current circulation.

Building on this, I presented a paper, ‘An Inaudible Dialogue’, at the 'Research Into Practice' conference (University of Hertfordshire, 07/2006), subsequently published in the peer-reviewed journal, 'Working Papers in Art & Design', Volume 4, 2006. The paper reflects on the relationship between an artwork and its environment, and considers if the process and methods that are characterised as ‘research’ can be identified with art making.

The paper posits the notion of a ‘distributed’ artwork, whereby the significance is not only in the form of the work but in the relation between it as a singular thing or event, the questions it poses, and the experience it engenders.

Tim O'Riley
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.

• http://www.timoriley.net
• http://www.houldsworth.co.uk/exhibition_...
• http://www.rubicongallery.ie/exhibitions...
• http://ps1.org/exhibitions/view/195
• http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/about_us...
• http://www.newmediacaucus.org/journal/is...
• http://www.icfar.co.uk