Research

This thesis brings attention to what comes to matter in our entanglements with biosensing and biometric technologies in our sensor society. It seeks to creatively defy and carefully disrupt the instrumental applications of these technologies through the work of art.

The research project is defined by five artworks, or speculative fabulations (Haraway). The works share the materiality of digital technology — they all rely on sensors and software to respond to various aspects of the human body, including heart rate, breath behaviour and facial features. These installations offer new ways of relating to and critically engaging with technologies that have been promoted in many Western societies as the solution to perceived health, economic, and security problems.

Using the epistemological-ontological-ethical framework of agential realism (Barad) and a diffraction methodology (Haraway), the thesis reads through the relentless contingency of relations in such phenomena. It calls on heterogeneous theories from consciousness studies, science and technology studies, medical anthropology, and philosophies of art and aesthetics.

A performative aesthetic theoretical framework is developed to consider how the work of art involves the development of embodied aesthetic experiences. The thesis concludes by shifting focus from 'matters of fact' to 'matters of care' (Puig de la Bellacasa), proposing an 'aesthetic of care' to consider response-able applications of instrumental technologies.

Caring for Curious Ecologies: an open-ended, multispecies collaboration with Metal Organic Frameworks. Working with Xavier Mulet, JJ Richardson, and the CSIRO MOF research team, Jiann investigated how Metal Organic Frameworks and their proposed biomedical applications might influence our understanding of what it is to be human.

The research brought MOFs and fungi together to co-exist — producing speculative scenarios through the cultivation of biochemical kinships via fermentation, brewing, and experimenting with lichens.

Published: Hughes J, Caring for Curious Ecologies, Leonardo, Vol. 54, No. 5, 2021.

Supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.

Jiann was chosen to represent Northern Ireland for the European Future Artist-Maker Lab, where she investigated processes of CNC digital fabrication in artwork production and created a body of work for an exhibition that toured Europe.

The residency explored the intersection of digital manufacturing technologies with artistic practice, resulting in works such as No Donor Required.

To conclude a year-long ACES residency at the Millennium Court Arts Centre, Jiann organised the Exhuming the Archive exhibition and symposium. The exhibition included Monument to Invisible Labours and Our Ancestors the Rocks, Death Mask for Lively Data, Diaspore, and Victims of Progress.

The symposium brought together curators, theorists, and practitioners including Matt Packer (CCA Derry~Londonderry), Rachel O'Dwyer (Maynooth University), and Tina Kinsella (TCD/NCAD) to explore themes of the archive, digital materiality, psychoanalytic theory, and relational subjectivity. Matt Packer wrote the essay "Lost Arks" in response to the exhibition.