Alex May

Profile Picture
Birthyear
1972
Currently based
Brighton, UK
Website
https://alexmayarts.co.uk
About

Alex May (b. 1972) is an English artist exploring a wide range of digital technologies, most notably video projection onto physical objects (building on the technique known as video mapping or projection mapping by using his own bespoke software), also interactive installations, generative works, full-size humanoid robots, performance, and video art.

He has performed art at Tate Modern and Watermans, and exhibited internationally including at the V&A, Science Museum, Bletchley Park, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Caracas, Venezuela, the Science Gallery in Dublin, the Rockefeller Arts Center at State University of New York, and the Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris.

He gives talks about many aspects of digital art, and public engagement with social robotics through art (Waag Society in Amsterdam, ICT2013 European Commission Digital Agenda event in Vilnius, Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, British Film Institute in London, Ahmed Shawky Museum in Cairo) and runs workshops for artists using his own software (for Fluxmedia at Concordia University in Montreal, International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) in Istanbul)

Alex is a Visiting Research Fellow: Artist in Residence with the computer science department of University of Hertfordshire and a Digital Media Arts MA sessional lecturer at the University of Brighton.

He is head of Projective Geometry at The Institute of Unnecessary Research.

CV
Exhibitions

2020

Topologies of the Real – CAFAM Techne Triennial, CAFA Art Museum, Beijing, China (18th January – 29th March)
SUBMERGE – Science Gallery Bengaluru, India (15th December – 29th March 2020)
Growing – ZHI ART MUSEUM, Chengdu, Sichuan, China (28th September 2019 – 5th January 2020)

2019

SUBMERGE – Science Gallery Bengaluru, India (15th December – 29th March 2020)
Tetramatyka festival of audiovisual art – Lviv, Ukraine (4th October – 20th October)
Growing – ZHI ART MUSEUM, Chengdu, Sichuan, China (28th September 2019 – 5th January 2020)
Intelligent Machinery – Ugly Duck, London (27th-29th September)
Flow Photo – National Waterways Museum, Gloucester (6th June-13th July)
Silbersalz Science and Media Festival – Halle, Germany (20th – 23rd June)
WRO Media Art Biennale – Four Domes Pavilion, Wroclaw, Poland (15th May-28th July)
Time Portals – Furtherfield, London, UK (9th May-20th October 2019)
Entangled Realities – HeK, Basel, Switzerland (9th May-11th August 2019)
Flow Photo – National Waterways Museum, Ellesmere Port (1st April-30th May)
A World Without Us – IMPAKT, Utrecht, Netherlands (24th November 2018-3rd February 2019)

2018

A World Without Us – IMPAKT, Utrecht, Netherlands (24th November-3rd February 2019)
Unstable Reality and Shifting Knowledges: Mending the Fabric of the World (curated by Annick Bureaud) – Bandits Marge, Chateau d’Eau, Bourges, France (16th November-2nd December)
ArchaeaBot – LABoral, Gijon, Spain (20th September-11th October)
Ars Electronica – POSTCITY, Linz, Austria (6th-10th September)
Flow State – The Francis Crick Institute, London (from 13th of July)
Nothing But Flowers – Łódź Design Festival, Poland (19th-27th May)
Wright Gallery of the Texas A&M College of Architecture (5th-8th March)
Northern Ireland Science Festival (22nd February)

2017

CLINIC //2 – Bargehouse, Oxo Tower, London (20th-25th September)
Our Friends Electric – QUAD Derby (1st July-10th September)
Imperial Festival – Imperial College London (7th May)
Yellow Magic (part of British Science Week) – Museum of the History of Science, Oxford (18th March)
HUMANS NEED NOT APPLY – Science Gallery Dublin (10th February – 21st May)
Embodied Encounters – The Beall Center for Art + Technology, University of California, Irvine (1st October 2016-21st January)

2016

Embodied Encounters – The Beall Center for Art + Technology, University of California, Irvine (1st October-21st January 2017)
Ingenious and Fearless Companions – Victoria & Albert Museum, London (23rd-25th September)
Human, meet computer – NESTA, London (19th July)
HCI 2016 – Bournemouth University (13th-15th July)
The Games Europe Plays – Stephen Lawrence Gallery, London (7th July-26th August)
Digital Festival 2016 – The Egg, Brussels (21st June)
NYC Emergence – Kilroy Metal Ceiling, 283 Greene Ave, Brooklyn, New York (30th April – 1st May)
Gut Reactions: The Microbiome and Human Nature – Princeton University, New Jersey (30th March)
Ingenious and Fearless Companions – Birmingham Open Media (BOM) (1st March-11th June)
No Violence To The Sky – Level 39, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London (11th March – ongoing)
Solo Exhibition: Shadows of Light – University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada (29th February-4th March)

2015

Modernising Medical Microbiology Conference 2015 – Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford (14th December)
Sequence VR – Watermans (14th November)
Sequence – Watermans (3rd-16th November)
Digital (Dis)connections: Ai Weiwei Late, Royal Academy of Arts, London (24th October)
Lewes Light Festival (16th-17th October)
Digital Design Weekend – Victoria & Albert Museum, London (26th-27th September)
Watermans River Weekender – Watermans, London (18th-20th September)
Toy Hack Digital Metropolis – Brighton Digital Festival, Phoenix Brighton (18th-19th September)
Digi-Fears Part 1 – Brighton Digital Festival, Fabrica, Brighton (8th September)
EVA – London (6th-9th July)
Ravensbourne College, London (5th June)
Invisible You – The Eden Project, Cornwall (permanent exhibition from 22nd May)
On Light – Wellcome Collection (1st-4th May)
Serre Numérique Inauguration – Valenciennes, France (9th April 2015)
FutureFest – London (14th-15th March)

2014

Painting With Light: Video Sculptures – Phoenix Gallery, Brighton (6th-10th December)
Networked Bodies – Watermans, London (7-9th November)
Creative Machine – Goldsmiths, London (7-14th November)
“The Institute of Unnecessary Research meets The Egyptian Bio-art Club” – ISEA 2014 – Dubai (30th October – 6th November)
Kinetica Art Fair – The Old Truman Brewery, London (16-19th October)
The Evening Standard “1000” award ceremony – The Francis Crick Institute (16th October)
Cinekid Festival – Amsterdam (9-18th October)
Brighton Digital Festival – Fabrica, Brighton (3rd September)
The Giant Electronic Art Show – The Lightbox, Woking (15th July – 2nd November)

2013

Bletchley Park (9th-10th November)
ICT2013 – Vilnius, Lithuania (6th-8th November)
Intuition and Ingenuity – Hut 12, Bletchley Park (1st-30th November)
Video Street Art – Caracas, Venezuela (16th October)
Museum of Contemporary Art – Caracas, Venezuela (27th September)
My New Robot Companion – Waterman’s Gallery, London (21st September – 23rd October)
Brighton Digital Festival – Clearleft, Brighton (31st August – 6th September)
0P3NR3P0.NET – Furtherfield Gallery, London (8th June – 28th July)
#HYPERLINK – The South Tank, Tate Modern (26th April)
Gone Viral at Marion Art Gallery – Rockefeller Arts Center at State University of New York (SUNY) (8th March – 7th April)
Kinetica Art Fair – London (28th February to 3rd March)

2012

Alan Turing Sound and Visuals Portrait, My New Robot Companion – Phoenix Square, Leicester (October-November)
blinc digital festival – Conwy, Wales (27th-28th October)
Alan Turing Sound and Visuals Portrait – Phoenix Square, Leicester (October)
London Digital Design Weekend – Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London (22nd-23rd September)
Robots and Avatars UK selection – Europe House, London (18th-28th September)
The British Science Festival – Robert Gordon University Library Gallery, Aberdeen
Intuition and Ingenuity – AISB/IACAP World Congress, Birmingham (2nd-6th July)
Intuition and Ingenuity – Lovebytes Festival, Sheffield (22nd-24th March)
Intuition and Ingenuity – Lighthouse, Brighton (17th-26th February)
Kinetica Art Fair – London (9th-12th February)

2011

Robotville – Science Museum, London
Like Shadows: A Celebration of Shyness (curated by Helen Sloan, SCAN) – Phoenix Gallery, Brighton for White Night.
Digital Design Weekend – Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London
The Art and Science of Linen – the Irish Linen Centre and Lisburn Museum, Lisburn, Northern Ireland.
HUMAN+ – Science Gallery Dublin, Ireland
Kinetica Art Fair – London

2010

Canon Expo Europe – Grande Halle de la Villette (12th-14th October)
Artificial Light Festival – Bournemouth (24th April)
Solo in Azione – Milan (16th-25th May)
Monotone Symphony – GV Art Gallery, London (14th January)

2009

Interactive installation – Selfridges, Oxford Street, London (3rd-24th December)
Interactive video installations exhibition – The Drawing Room, Portobello Road, London (10th November)
Video Street Art – digital graffiti around London (18th August)
Chasing Shadows – audio/video commission (May)
Animation Decathlon – Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall, London (March)
Out of White – GV Art Gallery, London (January)

2008

The Hours of Folly – exhibition with Martin A. Smith at The Drawing Room, Portobello Road, London (December)
Live AV performance – Digital Media Awards: South, Brighton (November)
Kaidan – audio/video installation at Holland Park, London (October)

2007

Haunted Holland Park – audio/visual installation Holland Park, London (October)

Residencies

CHIC: Biotechnology From The Blue Flower (current)
VERTIGO STARTS: Robot/Human Co-mobility (current)
EMAP/EMARE – ArchaeaBot: a post singularity, post climate change lifeform
Robot House Residency #2 – Hertfordshire University (18th-22nd November)
We Live in a Robot House – Hertfordshire University (13th-17th May)

Performances

“Serre Numérique Inauguration” – Valenciennes, France (9th April 2015)
“Painting With Light“ as part of Vase Curate – #HYPERLINK – The South Tank, Tate Modern (26th April 2013)

Talks

2020

A Mirror For Remembering – Computer Arts Society online talk (7th April)
Cyberspecies Proximity – Biocomputation Research Group, University of Hertfordshire (3rd April)
CHIC Presentation – CHIC Consortium (26th March)
A Mirror For Remembering – Kent and Medway Museum Conference, Historic Dockyard Chatham (24th February)

2019

Cyberspecies Proximity Vertigo STARTS Residency – Alex gave a talk and was in conversation with his artistic collaborator Anna Dumitriu, and Silvio Napoli (Chairman of Schindler) as part of a panel discussion on “Art, Innovation and Society”, chaired by Nicolas Henchoz (Director of the EPFL-ECAL Lab) at the Schindler City Auditorium in Ebikon, Luzern, Switzerland (2nd December)
AI, Art & Nature – Berlin Science Week, Berlin (4th November)
Intelligent Machinery: Algorithms – Ugly Duck, London (28th September)
(Co)Art workshop “Working with Technology to Co-create Art”
BioCoderDojo Timisoara, Romania, supported by the European Capital of Culture Timisoara 2021
“ArchaeaBot: A Post Singularity and Post Climate Change Life-form” at the WRO 2019 Media Art Biennale in Wrocław, Poland, as part of the conference “Human Aspect – Non Human Aspect” to accompany the exhibition of the work at the Four Domes Pavilion in the Biennale (17th May)
National Institute of Art and Design in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The event was hosted by curator Nasima Dzhuraeva, and Normurod Negmatov director of the Tashkent Art Biennale.
Artistic Exploration of BioRobotics and Sequencing – SynBio19 Conference, Warwick University (30th January)
Future Digital Life – Digital Future Life: A World Without Us? conference, IMPAKT, Utrecht (18th January)
Alex May (moderator)
Ghislaine Boddington
John Holder
Ine Poppe

2018

Light, Code + Time – Eden Project, Cornwall (2:30pm 26th May)
Texas A&M University, Health Sciences HPEB LL30 (6th March)
Northern Ireland Science Festival: The Art and Science of Linen – PRONI, Belfast (22nd February)

2017

Technology & Emotions Conference 2017 – Sentralen, Oslo, Norway (7th November)
MAKE 2017 Symposium: Art + Biology – CIT Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork (4th March)

2016

Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) – University of Westminster, London (15th November)
Colloquium – University of Hertfordshire (13th April)
Gut Reactions: The Microbiome and Human Nature – Princeton University, New Jersey (31st March)
International Visiting Artist talk – University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada (1st March)
ATLAS Speaker Series – University of Boulder, Colorado (8th February)
Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) – University of California, Los Angeles, CA (4th February 2016)

2015

Mendel’s Legacy: Exploring Bacterial Genomics through Art – Mendel Museum, Brno, Czech Republic (28th November)
BioCon – Seoul, South Korea (6th November)
Digi-Fears Part 1 – part of Brighton Digital Festival, Fabrica (8th September)
Curating in the Digital World: Talk with Robert Storr and Alex May – Chelsea College of Arts, London (13th July)
Where to now The Digital Revolution? – Art That Makes Itself Symposium – Watermans Arts Centre, London (16th May)
Maria Chatzichristodoulou
Jim Boulton
Nico Macdonald
Alex May
Computer Arts Society – Phoenix Leicester (11th March)

2014

TEDx Bucharest – Bucharest, Romania (22nd December)
Painting With Light – Nottingham Trent University (14th November)
The Lightbox – Woking (28th October)
Willem de Kooning Art Academy, Rotterdam
Music Tech Fest – London (5-7 September)
Public Engagement in Science through Art – Politics, Ethics, Power, and Propaganda – Waag Society, Amsterdam (31st January)

2013

ICT2013 – Vilnius, Lithuania (6th November)
Painting With Light – Museum of Contemporary Art. Caracas, Venezuela (26th September)
Robot House Artist Residency Colloquium – University of Hertfordshire
My Robot Companion: Living in the Uncanny Valley – GameHorizon 2013 (9th May)
Video Street Art – State University of New York (SUNY), Freedonia, NY, USA (8th March)

2012

Computer Arts Society Christmas Lecture – October Gallery, London (12th December)
Computer Art Pioneers on Making Art by Writing Code – In discussion with Manfred Mohr and on a panel with Roman Verostko, Frieder Nake, and Ernest Edmonds – Site Gallery/Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield (17th November)
Behind Intuition and Ingenuity – Phoenix Square, Leicester (3rd November)
Guests @ Gray’s – Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen (12th October)
Digital Design Weekend – The London Design Festival, Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London (23rd September)
Painting With Light – Phoenix Gallery, Brighton (12th September)
The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB)/The International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP) World Congress 2012 – Wolfson Centre, The Medical School, University of Birmingham (3rd July)
Sinclair and Me – Horizons, British Film Institute (BFI), London (5th May)
The Hoxton Mix Mixer #7 – Digital Shoreditch, London (29th May)
Lovebytes Digital Arts Festival – Sheffield (23rd Mar, 2012)
Code as Art? – Lighthouse, Brighton (25th February, 2012)
My Robot Companion – Lighthouse, Brighton (21st February, 2012)
Kinetica Art Fair – London (12th February, 2012)

2011

Ahmed Shawky Museum – Cairo, Egypt (November)
My Robot Companion – University of Hertfordshire (November)
Institute of Unnecessary Research Panel – ISEA, Istanbul, Turkey (September)
Bio-sensing and Network performance workshop – ISEA, Istanbul, Turkey (September)

2010

Quadratura: The Art of Video Mapping – Farnham University (February)

Workshops

2019

Working with Technology to Co-create Art (Alex May and Anna Dumitriu) – co(art), Timișoara, Romania (11th October)

2018

Painting With Light (video mapping) – Eastbourne (28th April)
Painting With Light (video mapping) – Texas A&M University (7th March)

2017

Painting With Light (video mapping) – Phoenix, Brighton (25th March)
Fugio: Interactive Art Made Easy – Phoenix, Brighton (25th February)

2016

Blockchain Workshop (9th June)
Painting With Light (video mapping) – Phoenix, Brighton (12th March)
Painting With Light (video mapping) – University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada (4th March)
Painting With Light (video mapping) – University of Colorado, Boulder, CO (10th February)
Painting With Light (video mapping) – University of California, Los Angeles, CA (2nd February)

2015

Toy Hack Digital Metropolis – Brighton Digital Festival, Phoenix Brighton (18th-19th September)
Painting With Light (video mapping) – Phoenix, Brighton (22nd March)
Painting With Light (video mapping) – Phoenix, Brighton (7th March)
Painting With Light (video mapping) – Bournemouth University (19-20th January)

2014

Painting With Light (video mapping) – Phoenix, Brighton (29th March)

2013

Painting With Light (video mapping) – Museum of Contemporary Art, Caracas, Venezuela (26th-27th September)
Mapping Bacteria Workshop- Fluxmedia, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (8th February)
Painting With Light (video mapping) – Carousel, Brighton (11th January)

2012

Painting With Light (video mapping) – Brighton Digital Festival, Phoenix Gallery, Brighton (1st December)
Painting With Light (video mapping) – Brighton Digital Festival, Phoenix Gallery, Brighton (15th September)

2011

Biosensing and Networked Performance – ISEA 2011, Istanbul, Turkey (September)

Collections

Alex’s work is held in the following permanent collections:

A Mirror For Remembering – Tunbridge Wells Borough Council
Algorithmic Photography – Computer Arts Society CAS50 Collection
Super-Organism – Eden Project, Cornwall
The Art and Science of Linen – Irish Linen Centre & Lisburn Museum

Awards

2017

VR artwork about CRISPR techonology – Bio-Art Contest, Seoul, South Korea

2015

Brighton Digital Festival Education Award

2011

‘My Robot Companion’ was awarded joint first prize for public understanding of Artificial Intelligence – AISB

2009

2012 Inspire Mark for Animation Decathlon – London 2012, London

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