S+T+ARTS4Water II Challenge and STARTS Residency
Siobhán McDonald – Shapeshifter
Host / Region
BETA Festival & ADAPT/ Dublin, Ireland – Port of Dublin
Abstract
This residency calls artists to explore the inner working of the Dublin port as to enable the public to better understand the networks and infrastructures facilitating our daily lives
Keywords
port city interface, human centred design, systems thinking, future cities, infrastructure
smart cities, artificial intelligence, data design
Description of the regional challenge
Rapid urbanisation and gentrification in Dublin have heightened land demand, particularly around Dublin Port, straining the balance between operations and city development. Land scarcity compounds congestion and limits expansion, worsened by the housing crisis, as well as post-Brexit landscape creating geopolitical shifts impacting trade, regulations, and stability, crucial as Ireland’s main trade hub with Europe. Navigating these changes demands strategic planning to balance port needs with urban development goals, which is vital for sustainable growth and community prosperity.
How do our challenges in allocation of shrinking resources connect – and how can we ensure that technologies become an asset in solving them, not an aspect of aggravation? How can artistic interventions and research-based practices serve as catalysts for stimulating dialogue and debate around the ethical, cultural, and political dimensions of port development and its impact on society?
How is the mission S+T+ARTS driven?
This residency will be supported by researchers and access to technology through ADAPT – the world-leading Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for AI-Driven Digital Content Technology – who have specific research expertise in AI, Content Analytics, Machine Translation, Personalisation, Multimodal Interaction, Human-Computer Interaction and Data Management. The residency will also be connected and supported by the Irish Maritime Development office.
Beta Festival critically engages with technologies’ impact on society through creativity, experimentation and debate. We invite proposals that make visible the invisible mechanics and infrastructures of ports and waterways highlighting the importance of port-city interfacing. Interdisciplinarity, consideration of the geopolitical landscape and research-based practice is integral to the project.
Artist-in-residency – Siobhán McDonald
Siobhán McDonald is a Dublin-based Irish artist whose work delicately intertwines scientific inquiry with artistic expression, focusing on air, breath, and atmospheric phenomena. Her practice, grounded in fieldwork and collaboration, explores the natural world by engaging directly with materials withdrawn from their cycles of life, decay, and regeneration. Through this, McDonald creates art that contemplates humanity’s place on Earth within the vast expanse of geological time.
About The Project – Shapeshifter
Shapeshifter is an ever-evolving organic project that revives buried traditions and presents new perspectives on Dublin Port. It will map and make visible a slice of underwater time from 1850 to 2050 using cutting-edge technology to address the challenges of urbanisation. It will provoke a departure from conventional structures to pose new questions and underscore the invisible and intangible power of ports through rigorous experimentation and creative collaboration, engaging diverse stakeholders.
Jury Statement
“Creatively and technically ambitious project, the interesting proposed use of data gathering and analysis technologies to ground this project in the past, present and future of Dublin Port. Has the potential to have a lasting impact.“
