Art Meets Innovation: A Neurodivergent Perspective on Climate Action Through Digital Media
28 August 2024
AlanJames Burns (they/them) is a neurodivergent and environmental artist, curator, and festival maker. They won the Accenture €10,000 Digital Innovation in Art Bursary in 2023. We sat down with them to explore their work and progress since then.
AlanJames' practice is marked by collaborative, socially engaged, and site-specific projects. The focal points of their highly collaborative practice are disability, the climate emergency, and the pursuit of a just society.
What encouraged you to apply to the Accenture Digital Innovation in Art Bursary?
As a neurodivergent person with dyslexia and AuDHD, traditional learning methods like reading books were never effective for me. Growing up as a queer, disabled kid in a rural area, television became my window to the world, educating me about its diversity. This exposure to digital media sparked my interest in technology, which has since evolved into my current arts practice. My recent research explores how science and technology (STEAM) could help people with lived experience of disability and neurodivergence contribute to the fight against climate emergency.
I really love experimenting and storytelling with technology but it takes time and resources. There are too few opportunities that can support artists through digital creative exploration. That's why the Accenture Digital Innovation in Art Bursary is so important and which also felt like an ambitious next step for my practice.
What was your project about?
My project focused on more inclusive climate action for neurodivergent and disability communities. By using cutting-edge brain-computer interface technology that can creatively visualise brain waves to demonstrate how collaboration between minds and brains, that physically work differently to each other, can lead to innovative outcomes by working together. The work is particularly interested in how this innovative potential generated by all different types of brains working together can address complex issues like the climate emergency and create more inclusive climate action. The project also explores how experiential digital technologies can be among the most effective methods for connecting audiences with these important issues. By engaging participants directly, interactive and immersive artworks encourage active involvement in the story, fostering empathy and motivating people to take meaningful action against climate change.
What was it about your practice that you hoped would help you stand out?
As an artist, I believe in the power of art to inspire, educate, and make the urgent message of climate action accessible to diverse audiences. My work is particularly concerned with disability rights within the context of climate action, as the disability community is often excluded from these critical discussions, despite being disproportionately affected by climate change.
I am very passionate about the importance of inclusive climate action and a just transition that I hope to do everything I can to advocate for this through my practice. I am extremely grateful that this drive within my practice resonated with Accenture and the Digital Innovation in Art Bursary.
How has your practice expanded since winning the Bursary?
My practice has reached new levels of technical ambition that I previously didn’t think possible. The Bursary has transformed areas of my practice, including working with experts across material science and interactive technology in Dublin City University. We have been working together to revolutionise the design of a physical Brain-Computer Interface headset. Using more natural and bio-material for BCI headsets including workchip and algae, further supporting how I can conceptually connect how brains work to how we think about non-human nature and the climate emergency.
What professional opportunities did winning the Bursary create for you?
The Accenture Digital Innovation in Art Bursary provided much-needed studio time for experimentation to collaborate with experts in material research. Working and collaborating with others truly enriches my practice and that takes time and resources. Through these collaborations including with fellow artist Ailbhe O’Connor and writer Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan, the bursary has deepened my excitement and ambition to continue working in interactive technologies because of its artistic potential for engaging with diverse audiences.I have also been able to exhibit a new artwork incorporating bio-material in a BCI headset design at the Light Art Museum in Budapest, September 2024. Extending the reach of my practice and creating opportunities across Europe.
The Bursary also gave me the opportunity to reflect on my practice and assess my needs as a disabled person. Administrative, logistical, and research tasks can be very challenging for me, so having support in these areas allows me to focus on creativity and developing artworks, rather than spending large amounts of time struggling with paperwork.
What advice would you have for the next winner of the next Accenture Digital Innovation in Art Bursary?
Always follow your own path and try to have fun and to experiment, for me that is where innovation comes from. Being awarded the bursary can be an ideal moment in your career to start conversations and reach out to people, to collaborate and foster new connections. Also, Business To Arts are just sound and the whole team are lovely, they really are here to help and support you, remember you can reach out to them.
How do you see art and technology evolving over the next 10 years?
Oh gosh, that’s a difficult one, digital art and tech is such a rapidly and constantly developing space. It's hard to say how they might look in the future. But with leaders like Accenture creating opportunities in arts and technology, it is only going to gain momentum. Furthermore the new Digital Arts policy from the Arts Council of Ireland and Beta Festival, Ireland’s new art and technology festival, further signals the importance of nurturing new media and technology-driven arts in Ireland through opportunities like the Digital Innovation in Art Bursary. Importantly, I also see technology playing an even bigger and a more crucial role in making art accessible, for so many people especially for disability, rural, elderly and lower-income communities. Digital technology can bring art directly to people, presenting it in innovative and more inclusive ways, which can break down barriers to creative expression and cultural inclusion and enrich the lives of so many people.
Burns’ projects include; Disrupt Disability Arts Festival, an annual festival taking place at Project Arts Centre and online; Our Place, 2020-2024 a socially engaged sound art and placemaking project with artist Sinead McCann and community services St John of God; Augmented Body, Altered Mind a BCI series of artworks exploring the climate crisis through the perspective of disability; The Waking Walls' 2023, an immersive audio-lament that connects Caoineadh, traditional Irish mourning practices, to understanding experiences of ecological grief.
https://www.alanjamesburns.com
Launched in 2022, the Accenture €10,000 Digital Innovation in Art Bursary seeks to recognise artists whose work delivers on the promise of technology and human ingenuity. The inaugural winner was Nadia J. Armstrong and you can read more about her work here
