iLRN2020 6th International Conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network

Nicholas O’Brien is an artist and researcher that makes video games, digital animations, and installations addressing civic history, urban infrastructure, and overlooked narratives of technology and labor. O'Brien has recently exhibited at Knockdown Center in Queens, LiMA Media Art Platform in Amsterdam, The Photographers Gallery in London as well as several online outlets like Keen On Magazine, Sedition, and The Creative Independent. As a past recipient of a Turbulence.org Commission funded by the NEA his work has also appeared or featured in ARTINFO, The Brooklyn Rail, DIS magazine, Frieze d/e, Art in America, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. He currently lives in Brooklyn and is Assistant Professor in 3D Design and Game Development at Stevens Institute of Technology.


About the iLRN 2020 Artist/Curator "Studio" Visits Program

Traditionally artists share their work with curators and collectors by bringing them to the studio and showing them what they are working on. This has always been a challenge for the digital artist because often the best place to experience the work is not in person but through a digital interface. With the coronavirus pandemic this is still a challenge for digital artists but now it is also a challenge to every artist and every curator that is trying to either show what they are making or see what is being made by others. Thinking about the new interfaces through which we are now communicating, our idea was to leverage the video conference model and ask artists and curators to show what it looks like, from their digital point of view, when they are making their work or when they are scouring the web to discover emerging practices. By sharing their screens, and walking us through their work and process, we get a clearer sense of what our new normal looks like, but we also discover, in this age of isolation, a new form of intimacy in which we see as another sees, navigating their virtual habitat as they experience it.

Organized and curated by Justin Berry (Yale University) and Johannes DeYoung (Carnegie Mellon University)