british artist Dominique Harris (b. 1976) has a practice centered on the intersections found between art, culture and technology. Using state-of-the-art digital tools, Harris’ work offers new ways of looking at how we view current realities as well as possible futures.
A graduate of Cranbrook Kingswood School in Michigan, as well as University College London where he studied architecture, Harris founded and currently runs the architecture firm Future Systems in London. His work has been exhibited internationally, and opening this week is the subject of the solo exhibition “feed the conscience” To Halcyon Gallery—the inaugural exhibition at the gallery’s new flagship location in London. The exhibition will run from May 25 to July 16, 2023 and will feature 18 new works that promise to transform “the visitor from spectator to participant”.
Ahead of the opening, we reached out to Harris to find out more about what’s in store for the exhibition and his thoughts on AI and new digital technologies in art.
Dominique Harris. Photo: Nicholas Dawkes. Courtesy of Halcyon Gallery, London.
Can you tell us a bit more about the themes or inspirations behind your exhibition, “Feeding Consciousness”, which opens this month in Halcyon Gallery’s new flagship space?
“Feeding Consciousness” is an exhibition of my new works in which I place the viewer unequivocally placed at the heart of each work. I use all sorts of technologies operating at different scales to truly immerse the viewer in concepts that encourage a fresh look at the world around us. I mine global data feeds from global giants like Google and stock markets, dig into databases of specimens of butterflies and other natural phenomena, and come back to some of the biggest stories on the human perseverance and power.
It’s an exhibition about where we are collectively now, but also where we individually have power and influence. The underlying themes are serious, but I study and portray them with absolute beauty and optimism. I harness the power of some of the most exciting technologies to temporarily move us into the sublime world of storytelling brought to life through exquisite execution.
With a mix of on-screen and immersive multi-sensory works included, what do you want visitors’ viewing experience to be like? What do you hope they take with them?
The exhibition will be exciting and I hope it will surprise people. It’s the biggest launch of new artwork ever, and I’m pushing boundaries and using techniques that even a few years ago I never expected to be able to achieve.
My artistic medium is still quite unique, and my approach even more so. But the stories I tell are timeless, although quite reinvented and updated. I sincerely hope that the artworks will fulfill their purpose, which is to engage viewers and inspire a greater sense of appreciation and awareness of the world around us.
Installation view of “Dominic Harris: Feeding the Consciousness” (2023). Courtesy of Halcyon Gallery, London.
Much of your work uses cutting-edge technology, how does the rapidly changing technological landscape influence or inform your practice?
Technology is so deeply embedded in each work that it has become an integral part of my palette of materials and techniques. And like any palette, it can evolve and improve over time. Ultimately, what drives me in my creations is always the visual beauty and poetry, and the impact, whether fleeting or visceral, that the work has on its viewer. That’s what makes The Artwork. But, behind the work of art, there is technology, which I consider to be an art form in its own right.
The use of technology in art has always been strong. Painters have pioneered new ways to use pigments and make paint, photographers have developed new techniques to capture their images, and sculptors frequently push technical boundaries. While some may find the rapid pace of technological change daunting, to me it’s exhilarating. My relentless quest to depict the world around us can only benefit from each new technological rise in power which further enriches my palette of materials.
AI has recently become a hot topic. How has the use of AI broadened the scope of your practice and what is your view on how it is or will be more widely used in artistic creation?
Recently, there has been a lot of talk about generative AI art – it’s the idea that AI can produce images or video from a written prompt. Just rewind a year and no one was talking about AI in art, or particularly interested in it. But, for me, AI and related tools have been part of my practice for many years now, just not used to generate visual images or videos. Instead, I used AI to better understand the topics I study, to better model movements and behaviors, and to make interpretations and inferences from large data sets.
AI is just one of the many advanced tools that I am constantly developing in my materials technology palette. It is inevitable that AI will become more and more powerful, but it will not replace the role of a true independent creative. I will use the AI, but not in a way that would replace me. On the contrary, it will be in a way that will increase the ambitions and concepts that I am working on, and allow me to create even more amazing and original works of art.
Dominique Harris, Unlimited (2023). Courtesy of Halcyon Gallery, London.
In your opinion, what is the role of art in society today?
Art has always played a crucial role in society, and that remains true today. It is a means of expression, communication and exploration. It allows us to think about who we are, where we come from and where we could go.
In the information age, we are constantly bombarded with data, whether it is news, social media feeds or stock market transactions. We live in a data-saturated society. I believe that the new digital and interactive art movement can address these topics, just as artists of previous generations have explored and represented the changes of their time.
Through my work, I aim to make the invisible visible, to bring the abstract into the tangible realm. The data that surrounds us every day is more than just numbers or headlines. It is a reflection of our society, our values, our fears and our hopes. I want to highlight this and inspire people to think about the information they consume and how it shapes their understanding of the world.
My new pieces are not just about presenting data in a new form, but also about questioning our relationship with that data. We are so used to being passive consumers of information. With my interactive, screen and physical work, I invite viewers to become active participants, to interact with data in more meaningful ways.
In a broader sense, I see these works as a bridge between technology and humanity. It’s my way of humanizing the digital, and in doing so, holding up a mirror to society in the greatest tradition of how artists have often strived to do in centuries past.
With a background in architecture, what does your creative process look like? What is the most important tool in your studio?
What might surprise people is how physical my digital work is. My works are digital and interactive, but they all have a physicality that places them firmly in human space. I trained and graduated as an architect, so perhaps I’ve always been drawn to the human scale. I tend to work in 1:1 scale, or at the very least with a keen awareness of the viewer’s scale in relation to the artwork or scene being depicted. The architect in me constantly resurfaces, for example in my absolute fascination with the micro-scalar structure of a butterfly’s wing, or perhaps in understanding and interpreting other physical structures.
My new works Unlimited And feed the conscience both are inspired by the story of the Tower of Babel. In both cases, the architectural form of the legendary tower is redesigned, except in Unlimited the structure exists as a marvelous ever-growing parametric digital architectural form, while in feed the conscience it results in a physical spiral structure of aluminum and electronics.
Dominic Harris, detail of Unlimited (2023). Courtesy of Halcyon Gallery, London.
What have been your most significant projects, commissions and collaborations to date?
While most of my work is created speculatively and produced in very limited editions, I occasionally undertake special commissions and projects. These tend to be very specific, and I seek to develop my stories and concepts for generally site-specific answers or memoirs that resonate with me.
Recent examples include the Concentric study (2015), which was projected on the façade of the Grand Palais for Paris Art Week. The “Son et Lumière” piece questioned the underlying architecture through audio-sensitive geometric patterns. Working at scale is always exciting, and later this year I will be delivering a landmark permanent digital facade for a new public square project in Canada.
For OurOnyx I created Everything that floats turns to gold (2021), a floating wall of golden butterflies permanently installed in their landmark locations in London and Dubai. And perhaps the most ambitious of all the commissions to date, Each wing has a silver lining (2023) will soon be unveiled in Venice, a wall with silver reflections that will be one of the largest real-time interactive pieces ever made.
“Dominic Harris: Feeding Consciousnessis on view at the Halcyon Gallery, London, from May 25 to July 16, 2023.
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