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About us    


Beta festival is co-founded by The Digital Hub and Aisling Murray and funded by The Digital Hub and Science Foundation Ireland.

The Digital Hub is managed by the Digital Hub Development Agency, a state agency set up by the Irish government in 2003 to run The Digital Hub and implement its enterprise and campus development strategy. It also facilitates and contributes to urban regeneration in the Liberties area and pilots projects that are vital to the ongoing development of the digital sector in Ireland. The Digital Hub campus is home to companies, organisations and individuals at the forefront of technology, digital media and the creative industries in Ireland. For the last twenty years The Digital Hub has delivered imaginative programmes that span a variety of areas, from developing 21st century skills in young people and empowering females to develop their own businesses, to demonstrating the potential of digital innovations to transform the health and wellbeing of citizens. The Digital Hub’s arts and culture programmes provide an intersection between innovation, art and technology to the benefit of enterprises at The Digital Hub and the residents of the Liberties community. The festival is incubated by and supported by The Digital Hub. www.thedigitalhub.com

Beta is led by Aisling Murray (Festival Founder & Director) a curator and creative producer with 15 years’ experience across exhibitions, festivals, literature, spoken word, theatre and dance. She has worked as programme manager for Body & Soul and recently worked with the Goethe-Institut Irland in developing their Quantum Technology Art residency. She also curates the art and science stage Human Lab at Electric Picnic funded by Science Foundation Ireland. Prior to this she worked for Science Gallery Dublin where she produced national and international creative programmes converging art, science, technology and society. Aisling has extensive experience in public engagement and transdisciplinarity and has spoken on the subject internationally including MuseumNext (New York, 2019) on “Critical Thinking and Crucial Conversations with Audiences”, “Art & Science on Display: A Critical Perspective” at Medical Museion (Copenhagen, 2022) and was the keynote at the International Federation of Finance Museums Conference (Rome, 2022) speaking on “Art and Technology: A Transdisciplinary Approach”.  This year she was the Irish representative and one of 20 people selected internationally by Institut Français Paris and supported by the French Embassy in Ireland for the Digital Art Focus Programme in Paris that coincided with the International Symposium on Electronic Art 2023.

Conor Courtney (Producer) is a creative practitioner working at the intersection of art and technology, if "technology" also includes things you find in charity shops or abandoned warehouses. He has worked all over the world as a technician, curator and artist with Science Gallery Dublin and the Office of Life +Art, having produced various scales of work from Objects and Installations to Exhibitions and Festivals. Described as mercurial, passionate and "rude", His artistic work draws metaphors from biology and the environment, exploding the rules of microscopic realms out into our own, and in so doing, seeks to midwife a new form of transformative community expression. He is currently producing Beta Festival for November ‘23 and is the chair of Taplin’s Fields Community Garden in Bridgefoot street Park.

Anne Kearns (Event Manager) is an experienced engagement officer, project manager, researcher and creative producer. Anne has a background in learning and development, evaluation, and community co-creation across the public, private and cultural sectors in Ireland and the UK. She is passionate about designing playful encounters which inspire ideas and connections.

Amelia McConville (Production & Curatorial Assitant) holds an interdisciplinary PhD from Trinity College Dublin in visual poetry and visual poetics with Neurohumanities. Before commencing doctoral research in 2018, she received her BA from Trinity College Dublin in English Literature and Philosophy. She works in Communications and Outreach for DARIAH-ERIC, an EU-funded research infrastructure, and is the co-founder and co-host of the Art+Science Salon, an evolving pop-up podcast and event series exploring the way art and science shape one another and society. She is currently based in Dublin.

Paul O’ Neill (Research Lead) is an artist and researcher whose practice and research are concerned with the implications of our collective dependency on networked technologies and infrastructures. Paul is a postdoctoral research fellow at the ADAPT Centre for AI-driven Media Technologies at University College Dublin where he is focusing on the ethics and design of Artificial Intelligence systems. He is also a co-curator of the Dublin Art and Technology Association (D.A.T.A).


PURPOSE


To empower people in the way they think about and use new technologies.

To support and showcase Irish artists and researchers in art and technology.


MISSION


To critically engage with technology’s impact on society through creativity, debate and experimentation.


VALUES


Collaboration: 
Reaching outside ourselves. Always seeking partnership and new ways of doing and seeing things. Inter/Multi/Trans-disciplinary


Integrity: 
Embracing openness, transparency and equity across all areas.


Empowerment:
To equip people with the tools to engage with and understand new technologies


Curiosity: 
To be playful, generous and inquisitive in the way we engage with ideas and people.


Our supporters



Festival partners, supporters and funders include:

NCAD Gallery, Project Arts Centre, Transmediale, Goethe-Institut Irland, Creative Futures Academy, Ambassade de France en Irlande, Novembre Numerique, The British Council, ADAPT Research Centre, The Arts Council and Science Foundation Ireland.