Bio
Dave is an award-winning pioneering artist and creative director of Immersive Networks, an art science research collective. He works internationally at the intersection of art, science, research and the environment. He creates interdisciplinary teams to make large-scale, interactive installations, cultural strategies, performances and creative lab spaces. Dave is a specialist in designing and facilitating antidisciplinary groups to realise novel directions in research.
His work explores modalities of individual agency about our relationship to technology, data and consumption. He is an honorary cultural fellow in art and science at the Cultural Institute and artist in residence at the Centre for Immersive Technologies at the University of Leeds researching collaborative practice and realtime data streams in digital immersive technologies. He is also artist in residence with Vumo.cloud an interdisciplinary team exploring the scientific and sociocultural volcanic impacts of the Masaya Volcano in Nicaragua.
Dave has designed and delivered over 300 workshops to ages ranging 3 to 83 and has seen his students win multiple national awards including the First Light Best Film award. Workshops include leading over 100 cyclists through the streets of Leeds from a mobile projection rickshaw, building laser communications devices with senior citizens, interactive storytelling with the disabled community and radio broadcasts from a swan pedalo.
He has played over 400 live visual performances and including installations in the once largest room in the world, Europe’s largest climbing wall, a 20 storey cylindrical building, a 90m high quarry. 360º projections onto cars and complex crystal structures.
His cultural strategies have been; presented at Downing Street as part of the UK Gov leveling up agenda. His work has been broadcast on the Discovery Channel, BBC 2, Radio 4 & the World Service.
Selected press include New Scientist, The Guardian, The Smithsonian Mag, we-make-money-not-art.com, VICE & the New York Times. In 2016 he was nominated for the Ars Electronica STARTS prize for the world’s first projection of moving images onto clouds from aircraft.
My commercial practice investigates strategies of artistic research and production through collaboration with brands and cultural institutions. I work as creative director or core collaborator across projection mapping, film production, theatre and interactive installations with budgets exceeding £100k for clients including: Jimmy Choo, Vauxhall, Taylors of Harrogate, John Galliano and many museums, business improvement districts, universities and organisations.
Selected Exhibitions & Press
Exhibitions – COP26 | SXSW 2019 & 2022 | Sheffield Doc Fest 2021
New Scientist | Smithsonian | Discovery Channel | We make money not art [blog] | RT.com | Engadget US/AU/UK + more | Project Nimbus 2015
Vice Magazine | Frozen Music Collective – The Sound of Coffee
Resonance FM | Nimbus Performance Lecture from FON Festival 2013.
BBC World Service | Nimbus Crystalize Exhibition Interview
Wired.co.uk – Project Nimbus – AND Festival Highlight
New York Times – Look (DD) – Lumen Festival Showcase
Selected Talks, Papers & Abstracts
2024 Sleep and its meanings: Essays from Critical Sleep Studies.
Book Chapter | MIT Press | Title TBC
Chapter co-written Prof. Stuart Murray about experiences of creating a sculpture from Sleep Data.
2024 Constructing Sites –
Book Chapter | Bloomsbury | Title: The Lab
Chapter co-written with Prof. Stuart Murray, and Dr. Lynn Wray about experiences of a virtual and physical medical humanities lab.
Geophysical Research Abstracts | Vol. 20, EGU2018-19299, 2018 – presented at EGU conference
The Superposition
Book editor of a collection of essays and projects from art science collective TheSuperposition.org detailing the 5 years. Creator of the interdisciplinary glossary as part of the book.
The Joy of Risk – Why I turned down the city of LA
Talk to inspire businesses to invest in the ‘WHY’ of their companies through collaboration with art and artists where the outcome is undefined.
Project Nimbus: Talk and Prototype Showcase
Art/Science talk about the 4 year journey of the worlds first projection of moving images onto clouds from aircraft including the highs and lows of cross disciplinary ways of working between art, science and makers.
The Art of Selling Out
The talk covers a general overview of my practise from a drystone waller to a projection mapper, and key project reflections from a professional playground working across arts and business. Including money strategies, keeping art pure and sharing my fee for commercial projects.
Awards
2022 Winner | Engaged for Impact | Widening Perspectives | University of Leeds – Act Early – Holme Wood community-engaged data science to improve societal outcomes.
This award recognises activities where multiple views from different knowledge holders (including seldom-heard voices) are brought together to inform, reframe or change public debate, and to inspire learning and sense-making that leads to empowerment.
2021 Winner | Best Climate Emergency Film of the Year | AHRC
Newland: A new vision for a wild future. A film about the future of Farming.
2021 Nomination | Alternate Realities Award – Sheffield Doc Fest
Escaping Gravity
Britain’s Imperial Airship programme is the topic of this full room immersive installation, revealing the human desire for progress, adventure and the unknown.
100 ones to Watch (21/22) – Immersive Networks are one of the UK Governments top 100 companies working with new technologies.
2015 Nomination | STARTS Prize | Ars Electronica
Project Nimbus was selected as one of the 20 winners of the prestigious Arts, Science, Technology Prize in Europe.
Selected Projects
21-24 Living Bodies Objects | UoL | UK
Lead Creative Partners on a £1m 3-year Medical Humanities project funded by the Wellcome Trust.
Dec 21 Newland: A new vision for a wilder future | UoL | UK
Film about land stewardship and future of farming .
Winner: AHRC Climate emergency film of the year.
Shown COP26
Dec 20 Holmewood: Recipe book | UoL | UK
Data literacy project using cookbook as the connecting technology to the data about place-making to empower communities to make local change.
Winner : Engaged for impact awards : Winning perspectives UoL
Dec 19 Immersive Science Sandpit | Leeds | UK
Devised and ran nationally attended sandpit researching potential of high-end data driven immersive spaces for science research – Ref Transliminal Space
Nov 19 Immersed in Bradford | Norway | Saudi Arabia | Leeds
Born in Bradford Immersive Experience (BIBIE) is an example of a VR art science collaboration that combines machine learning techniques with aesthetic devices, allowing users to explore real-time data. The prototype experience uses state-of-the-art data reduction techniques to render a 3-dimensional point cloud. Each point in the cloud is one of the 13,818 participants in the Born in Bradford project – a large longitudinal cohort study that examines the lives of people in the city. Commissioned by the Centre for Immersive Technologies and developed during the Cultural Fellowship at the University of Leeds.
https://creativeindustriesclusters.com/born-in-bradford-immersive-vr/
Immersive Futures Lab – Beyond Conference / SXSW
Premiered at UKRI AGM 2019
June 19 Artist in Residence | Centre for Immersive Technologies
Working with Christophe de Bezenac as art science collective calibuYau. We have began a residency looking at critical immersive installations and technologies.
Dec 19 Enlighten | Leeds | UK
Commissioned by Leeds BID, Enlighten is an ANTI-SIGN created for giving an unedited voices to communities. The 12 x 2 meter high letters were first showcased over 6 weeks on the Platform Building at Leeds train Station for Christmas and Green Great Britain Week and seen by over 1 million people over the duration.
June 18 Artist | Christies | Manchester | UK
Working with Dan Dubowich, we developed an artistic strategy for the cyclotron proton beam therapy installed at Christies in Manchester.
June 18 Lab of Labs – Creative Lab Research
Representing independent creative labs. Funded through the Art Council England’s discretionary funding, In partnership with FACT Liverpool and Cultural Institute at the University of Leeds. After on location research and interviews with 9 major European creative labs, we are collating a frame work and infrastructure to share lab models and good practise across Europe.
June 19 Artist | European Geoscience Union | Vienna | Italy
As part of the residency with Vumo.cloud,I presented 1 talk and 2 posters at EGU science conference.
Mar 19 VR | Artist | UN Conference | Bonn | Germany
Representing Centre for Immersive Technologies discussing VR and measurable empathy with Catherine Graves at a conference at the UN headquarters at Bonn Germany.
Feb 18 Artist | EUROVOLC Volcano Research
Invited to reflect on large scale 6m collaborative volcano project from perspective of an artist.
Dec 17 Artist | Masaya Volcano | Nicaragua
Vumo.cloud – Exploring cultural strategy, projections onto volcanic plumes, art science collaboration and communication as part of an trans-disiplinary team including volcanologists, historians, medical practitioners, investigating the impacts of volcanic emissions from a volcano in Nicaragua, through field work, workshops with the local Nicaraguran communities publication and presentation.
Dec 17 – 19 Fellowship in Art & Science | UoL | Leeds | UK
Working with Christophe de Bezenac researching realtime data in immersive systems and transcollaborative languages.