DEAD AND ALIVE Life is binary. Life or death, dead or alive. On or off. You have already been dead for an eternity and you will be again. Your life is two pieces of flint, raging against each other’s face for an instant. This momentary spark is bracketed by a never ending peace. 1/0 0/1 NOT …
DARK MATTER Vera Rubin pioneered research into the theory about dark matter through looking at how galaxies spin. She died on December 25, 2016. I learned about her work when I started reading about the nature of our universe. Rubin discovered that there’s an invisible glue holding all that matter in the universe together. Without …
The Problem – Calculate the Average of Alpha Grades An Alpha Grade Average Calculator was required by staff at NCAD for assessment purposes. When assessing students in NCAD there are four separate criteria that projects are assessed under. Now that the college is part of UCD they have adopted a standardised alpha grading system used by …
THE WAR IN WAR IS SILENT The needle leaves a hole each time it passes through Each thread is a struggle to hold yourself together Each word is an effort to say the impossible Each day is a war Your army of one is exhausted
Get yezzirs patches! After much nagging by friends I have decided to do some fundraising for the Repeal the 8th Campaign by selling embroidered repeal patches based entirely on Maser’s wall mural design (all credit to him, sure isn’t he only feckin’ amazing) ABOUT Patches 6cm x 6cm and are sew on not iron on …
I was lucky enough to attend the Make 3 symposium organised by Crawford College of Art and Design in March 2016 where I heard Brian Hand, artist and lecturer, give a compelling talk about the origins of the Irish tri-colour flag. In his talk he gave some fascinating insights in the history of the Suffragettes …
It’s Mental Health Week this week in NCAD so I made some GIFs to go along with a brief I set for my 4th year Education students. I included a cheeky reference to that duuuuuurty ride Bressie who gave a very good talk to Oireachtas Joint Committee (click to view) on the subject of mental …
Animated Embroidery After my first attempts to produce some animated embroidery I decided to take a slightly different approach to making GIFs by importing videos into Photoshop and exporting each frame as a JPG. The next step was to run each frame through the photostitch algorithm in PE Design. The outcomes were more reminiscent of the …
Animated Embroidery After scratching the surface of Adobe After Effects, I tried my hand at producing some animated embroidery through the medium of textile GIFs. This is all experimental right now and I don’t know how far I will go with it. So far the results are pretty crappy – but I’m trying something new and learning a lot. I …
This pair of paper-based typography works are a very simple exploration of how material and process can be used to re-enforce the meaning of type. There’s an American typographer called Matthew Butterick who said, “Good typography is measured by how well it reinforces the meaning of the text.” I think textiles has a lot to …
This series is closely related to the Hail Mary piece and both were exhibited together at Crawford College of Art in Cork. It continues exploring the same theme of human and computer memory by recording aspects of my Grandmother’s decline into Alzheimer’s through memory encoded patterns. These stitched paper-based works exploit binary code through their colour coding. …
I started studying computer programming two years ago, at the same time my grandmother was living in a nursing home and slowly declining with Alzheimer’s disease. She couldn’t remember my name but she did remember my face, it was always a comfort to visit her and see there was still some level of recognition in …
You ever see those motivational posters that say “When nothing goes right, go left”. Well fuck that, sometimes when nothing goes right you should take your ass down to the kitchen and bake yourself a mother fucking cake. Why? Simple. Cake makes you feel better. Hell, make yourself a nice, strong cup of coffee to …
Some phrases are so Irish you could grow potatoes on them. This really straight forward piece was directly inspired by the comedic genius of the Republic of Telly’s “Things you could say in the 80’s” (Go to 2.46). Any illness in Ireland can be treated by a granny equipped with some batch bread and a …
A mate of ours called Conor hooked up with this bird from Dublin. They were lying on his bed in the nip after doing the deed when she took his semi in her hand and gave it an appraising look for a minute, moving it back and forth, before turning her head to the side …
I’ve always admired one of my colleague’s way with words. She can articulate her views and opinions with apparent ease and has a very enjoyable manner when she is talking with the people around her. Most of all, I love her ability to use a ‘turn of phrase’ at just the right time for maximum …
Out of curiosity, I started asking the people around me a simple question – What’s the worst word? As expected, a lot of people voted “cunt” to the top of the list as it remains the one word you still won’t use in front of your mam. Some more interesting words came out when the …
