Breathing life into spreadsheets…

Kerrie O’Leary is an Irish computational artist based between Dublin and London. Through environmental information, code and kinetic systems, she creates installations, drawings and sculptures that translate the behaviour of water, weather and coastal systems into physical form.

Her practice sits between art, science and technology, using environmental sensing, creative coding, mechanical systems and field research to investigate how complex systems move, shift and adapt. Tides, flooding, atmospheric conditions, coastal ecologies and environmental change become both subject and material.

Her works often begin with data gathered from specific sites: tidal cycles, weather patterns, hydrophone recordings, GPS traces, depth measurements, satellite information and open environmental datasets. These inputs are translated into movement, sound, plotted line, mechanical rhythm and spatial installation. Rather than using data as illustration, O’Leary treats it as an active material — a force that can generate form, behaviour and atmosphere.

Her background in Management Science and Information Systems Studies at Trinity College Dublin informs the data and structural logic of her work, while her MFA in Computational Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London, developed her research into computational systems, environmental media and the sublime. Drawing from hydrofeminist and ecofeminist thought, her practice questions dominant technological narratives and proposes more fluid, interdependent ways of sensing and relating to the environment.

O’Leary is currently developing Syzygy of the Tides through the S+T+ARTS Aqua Motion residency in Viana do Castelo, Portugal. The project investigates the cultural, ecological and technological histories of tidal mills, using the River Lima estuary and Atlantic tidal landscape as a site for environmental sensing and artistic research. Through weather data, tidal research, hydrophone recordings, field observation and public workshops, the project explores how historic relationships with water can inform contemporary approaches to ecological transition, energy, memory and place.

She is also artist-in-residence at Makerversity, Somerset House. Previous residencies include Studio Quantum in Berlin, hosted by Goethe-Institut, Akademie der Künste and Künstlerhaus Bethanien, where she explored quantum computing as a framework for thinking through complex environmental systems, and the Tides Institute & Museum of Art in Maine, USA.

Her work has been developed and presented with organisations including S+T+ARTS, Somerset House, Makerversity, Studio Quantum, Goethe-Institut, Akademie der Künste, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, the V&A, the Tides Institute & Museum of Art, Policy Lab UK, Estuary Festival / ARISE, Emergency Exit Arts and The Eco Showboat. Her projects have been exhibited and shared internationally in London, Dublin, Berlin, New York, Portugal, China and the USA.

O’Leary is a Visiting Lecturer at Kingston School of Art and a member of Wilderness Art Collective.