Structural Media
Artistic Approaches to Failure and Liveness in Art and Technology

Project by

Tim Shaw
Senior Fellow 2023–2024

Integrating his research interests in communication media, environmental sound, performance, and site-responsive art practices, Tim Shaw’s project at the Collegium Helveticum will develop new artistic systems that directly respond to the infrastructures and systems surrounding them.

Throughout the fellowship, he will explore the concept of “structural media,” an approach to media art that embraces the aesthetics of failure in live systems and promotes a heightened perception of the mechanisms of our shared technological infrastructures. This may include, for example, working with networks in order to reveal the material and temporal nature of the communication technologies that pervade everyday life.

Tim’s approach to art and technology values process over production, more specifically, a process which includes developing open mechanisms and generative systems for the creation of art. He will develop strategies for how these artistic interventions can facilitate collaborative and interdisciplinary exchange.

As a senior fellow at the Collegium, Tim will generate new artworks exploring these themes and present them through an ongoing series of interventions.