Newsletter 63

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👋 Welcome

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Welcome to #63 Hope everyone is staying cosy in this cold weather!

The Monthly meetup is on this coming Tuesday on the Digital Artists Ireland discord [meetups channel] - drop in and say hi / share what you’re working on / or just to or just share your art/tech joys and frustrations with a group of like-minded people.

Before we get on to the opportunites and events section of this one, we want to give a lil recap of two big undertakings we completed last month, Concept Null 2025 and Emergent Sound System Workshop:

Concept Null 2025

Following nearly a year of planning, Concept Null 2025 finally came to life in Dance Limerick on 15 November. It was brilliant to see so many enthusiastic people at both the meetup and the evening performances — ideas flying, artists vibing, and genuinely great energy in the room. Moments like this remind us why we do what we do. Ireland is full of unique work and artists who deserve the spotlight, and we’re so grateful to everyone who came along and made the night feel so special.

The daytime meetup featured a great spread of WIPs and experiments: Róisín Berg kicked things off with a demo of their DIY synth; Sorcha Hassett shared her kinetic-origami master’s project; and Nicolás Rojas showed an AV piece in TouchDesigner. After the break, Walter Nied presented a screen-dance WIP, Sióda McCarthy demoed her Syncmap tool (later used in her performance), and Bánk Burján explored new ideas for his performance practice with the room.

The evening programme rounded everything off beautifully, with a fully improvised electronics set by Róisín Berg & Nicolás Rojas (performing together for the first time); Gaelic harp, voice, electronics and visuals from Mícheál Ó Catháin; a dance-music and Tixl-generated visuals performance by Sióda McCarthy; and Structures, the new live AV show by Pauric Freeman.

Thank you to Limerick City & County Council, the Limerick Arts Office and Creative Ireland for supporting this event through the Creative Communities grant, and to Dance Limerick for sponsoring the night. Huge thanks to Sorcha Hassett and Seán Murray for production and tech, and to Paul Michalski for the extra help. Thank you to Harshini Karunaratne for their mentorship throughout the process. And of course, thank you to all our performers and to everyone who presented at the meetup. Finally, a massive thank you to everyone who came along and made it such a fantastic night!!

Emergent Sound System Workshop

This FLINTA-led, one-of-a-kind workshop was led by Concept Null’s Róisín Berg and Synthesize_Her’s Viva Dean for Irish Design Week 2025. Across five evenings in the CSIS MakerSpace and Fab Lab [University of Limerick], participants moved through the full process of building a mono sound system, with conversations around sound-system culture, access and context woven into every session.

We began with signal flow (Day 1), moved into cable-making and laser cutting (Day 2), then spent a day designing and CNC-routing the enclosure in the Fab Lab (Day 3). Soldering drivers, wiring the passive crossover and preparing the electronics took over Day 4, and Day 5 brought everything together - assembling, sealing and testing the final system.

We wrapped up with a Day 6 reception at Starling, where we showed off the finished build, and reaped the benefits of our hard work, listening to music through the newly made system.

Thank you to Irish Design Week for funding us, to the Computer Science and Information Systems Department UL, and Fab Lab Limerick - Gerard Walshe in particular - for supporting us. Thank you to Starling for hosting our reception.

Thank you to the participants, who brought so much creativity, enthusiasm and curiosity to every session; it was an absolutely transformative experience to teach on this project.

Anyways, on to our regularly scheduled programming — as always, if you want to support this project, please share this newsletter! And if you want to submit something, email us at [email protected]