Join Dr Simon Ingram as he delves into his artistic journey of gathering and visualising data in experimental ways to make art. Over the past 15 years, Simon has reworked conventional artistic boundaries using an abstract language of materials and ideas to explore nature-culture relationships. In this talk, he will discuss a variety of projects involving cosmic waves, brain waves and new work gathering and visualising birdsong. He will also share how social and cultural dynamics encountered in his artistic research influence his work’s form, meaning and impact. This talk promises to be a fascinating insight into a compelling convergence of art, data and new ways of looking at the nature-culture interface.

Dr Simon Ingram is a contemporary artist and senior lecturer at Te Waka Tūhura Elam School of Fine Arts. Using a transdisciplinary approach, Simon engages art with techno-science to create works that embody relationships between people, machines and the environment. These include painting machines coupled with custom devices to interpret the cosmos, the image, music and the brain. He is director of the Master of Fine Arts programme and an active member of professional groups, including the Centre for Arts and Social Transformation, and the Creative Arts and Industry International Committee.

Raising the Bar is a worldwide initiative founded in New York in 2013 and has been hosted by the University of Auckland since 2017. It aims to make learning part of a city’s popular culture – taking education out of the lecture theatre and sharing it with the wider public.