Digital Art Projects: PluginHUMAN

Learn more about the process behind PluginHUMAN’s award-winning digital artworks and how they provide audiences with new cultural, environmental and scientific perspectives.

How does an artist turn their questions about the world, our bodies and technology into an artwork that will provoke a complete stranger to experience the same wonder? Why do they do it, what do they learn and what skills does one need to do it?

We speak to art-technology duo Dr. Betty Sargeant and Justin Dwyer of PluginHUMAN about the process behind their award winning digital artworks.

Hosted by ACMI Education in Games Coordinator, Kate Ficai.

About PluginHUMAN

PluginHUMAN is a multi-award-winning art duo led by Dr Betty Sargeant and Justin Dwyer. They are at the progressive edge of their field, providing audiences with new cultural, environmental and scientific perspectives. Their artworks address the leading questions and concerns of our times.

Sargeant and Dwyer’s work centres around the art of illumination. They create projection mapping and video artworks; sculptural and community artworks; and immersive multi-sensory environments. They use the medium of light to translate complex data into meaningful audience experiences.

The duo has created commissioned artworks for institutions such as the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (Taiwan), the Asia Culture Centre (South Korea), C-Lab (Taiwan), the Melbourne Museum (White Night Festival, Australia) and Experimenta (Australian triennial touring media art exhibition). They have exhibited in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia. They were awarded the Rupert Bunny Foundation Visual Art Fellowship (2019/20); they’re developing new carbon neutral and carbon negative materials and working methods. They also won a Good Design Award (2018), and a Victorian Premier’s Design Award (2017).

PluginHUMAN has an acute understanding of the role that technology plays in contemporary society. They reimagine new technologies to produce artistic innovations, creating meaningful large and small scale audience experiences for indoor spaces and outdoor public arenas.

Visit their website and follow them on Instagram.