Institute of Art Design + Technology
Dún Laoghaire

Jackson Byrne 

 
BA [Hons] Art

Jackson Byrne is an Irish artist based in Wicklow. He works with a variety of media, combining video, photography, digital game-design and drawing. He explores techniques of combining drawing and video work, as well as using digital environments to create narrative films. He is particularly interested in ideas of reality and looking at the possibilities of the advancements of artificial life and the impact it could have on humanity. He has taken part in IADT group shows such as New Translations (2019) at IMMA, and Propositions (2022) at IADT on campus.

Project Description

My project explores concepts of reality and deception, and the boundaries between real life and digital life. I combine physical drawings, sculptural objects and video to explore how people and things might exist both in a ‘real’ space and a digital space. In my work, things from the digital world pass into our ‘real’ world, and real people enter the digital world through technologies such as gaming interfaces. The line between what is real and what is fake becomes more difficult to differentiate. My work also is inspired by the question of ‘will technology eventually replace us’. I’m interested in where technology may go in terms of implants and becoming a part of us. How much does technology need to evolve to allow us to have cyber implants and bionic limbs, or are we possibly already at that stage where we can start replacing larger parts of ourselves with computers?