Studio Dewi Mac Donald

Media , installatie , Digitale technologie , Digitaal

I'm a media artist interested in systems and how we interact with them. I make kinetic sculptures, experimental machines, and installations that combine hardware, software, light, and sound. Coding, building mechanical parts, and assembling electronics allows me to understand systems from the inside out and make them visible.

My approach is both technical and intuitive. I investigate how ideas move between different media and deliberately make the workings of my machines visible. Translation and transparency are the basis of my work, both in concept and form. By using transparent materials and openly displaying mechanisms, I invite the viewer into the logic of the work. I play with meaning by reimagining ideas through mechanics, image, text, and sound.

I'm curious about how technology shapes our daily behavior, and how our culture influences how that technology looks and works. By showing how machines and systems function (or fail) I aim to invite a different way of looking at the technologies that surround us.

I make work for people who are curious about systems, both technical and social, and how they might be reimagined through art. My goal is not only to show how something works, but to demystify it, creating space for new ways of understanding and imagining technology.

**Bathroom Archive (2025)** - athroom Archive is an installation with a drawing machine that mimics latrinalia (messages found on bathroom walls). The work explores what is created or lost when a machine reproduces these texts without context or understanding, and reflects on how we assign meaning to language. Bathroom Archive explores how humans and machines experience and interpret language differently. The work focuses on latrinalia, the messages, jokes, and confessions often found on bathroom walls. These scribbles can be strange, poetic, funny, or even deeply personal. The installation features a drawing machine that mimics latrinalia. I approached the machine as a learning process, designing and programming it myself as a way to explore how meaning shifts through this system. It imitates the act of writing on a wall, but without knowing what it’s writing or why. A message like “I am scared of Jason Derulo #free me” might be funny or emotional to a human, but the machine just follows instructions. This difference in how we relate to language is at the core of the work. Where humans attach meaning, memories, or feelings, machines process text as patterns and data. Even when a machine produces something that looks expressive, it does so without context or understanding. Bathroom Archive explores what is lost and what might be created when a machine attempts to replicate human language or symbols it does not understand. It reveals the gap between human meaning and the way machines process language without context or reflection

**Liquid Mind (2024)** - Collaboration with Eunseong Park Project Overview Liquid Mind is an installation where a robotic hand is controlled by the sound of local waters. We aimed to create a nonbinary machine—a “water computer”that challenges the binary processing typical of digital systems. We explored the idea that computation doesn't have to be binary. This installation mirrors how we think in binary terms like on/off or yes/no. We often feel the need to classify and define the world in binary ways, and in the process, we reinforce existing frameworks that limit our understanding. Liquid Mind challenges our perception by emphasizing that reality is not binary but a spectrum of possibilities. By mirroring the complexity of the real world, our project encourages moving beyond simple classifications and embraces the patterns of nature, reminding us of our shared existence Context We have excerpted James Bridle's "Ways of Being" as a contextual framework for the Liquid Mind project. In his book, Bridle mentions a computer that is a bucket of water. The water in the bucket isn’t ‘thinking’ or ‘remembering’ but it is processing. It’s computing information. The form of this information isn’t like the ones or zeros that pass through digital machines (including the crab computer): it’s analogue, which rather than old or fuzzy means complex, knotty, and continuous. It has texture and color, like the world. We can’t read water in the same way as we can read data, and this is a good thing. Working with it makes us more aware of the distance between ourselves and the matter under consider ation. It reminds us that we share this world rather than own it. Knowledge produced through the medium of the shifting surface of a bucket of water is made in cooperation with the world, rather than by conquering it. - James Bridle Similar to the bucket of water, our installations suggest that people can work together with the water, instead of trying to control it. This encourages us to evaluate the way we interact with the world.

**Harmonic Fusion (2023)** - Frank Doornbos Jonas van Son Sjoerd Helder Dewi Mac Donald This artwork explores the connection between humans and machines. Each brushstroke, guided by your unique bio-data. It is an interplay that raises the question: who is the true artist? Is it the machine executing the physical actions, drawing lines, and creating forms? Or is it the human who brings the machine to life, sharing their inner world? Each new visitor continues the drawing where the previous one left off. The result is a unique artwork that reflects the collaboration of machine and human.

**Lichtspraak (2023)** - Collaboration with Ron Smits A conversation through light as a language. Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective ... an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green?' - Stan Brakhage (1963) Let go of everything you think you know and step into the world of Lichtspraak, a new mode of communication that directly translates body language into light. Become a pioneer and “speak” freely through movement. Lichtspraak is an interactive installation that translates movement directly into light visuals. The visitor immediately sees the impact of their movement projected in front of them.

Bathroom Archive

Datum: 01-08-2021 t/m 31-08-2025

Locatie: Oudenoord 700

In samenwerking met: HKU Media

Een kinetische installatie die onderzoekt wat ontstaat en verloren gaat wanneer een tekenmachine latrinalia (toiletgraffiti) reproduceert, zonder contextueel begrip van wat het zelf tekent.

https://dewimacdonald.com/

Deze kunstenaar heeft nog geen toekenningen.