Dr

Charlie Tweed

Personal statement

Charlie Tweed is the Co-Director of the Centre for Media Research and leads the Digital Materialities cluster. He is a media artist and practice based researcher who lectures in digital media practice and culture at Bath Spa University.

His performative, digital and video based works have interrogated the human desire to control the natural world using various forms of technology and systems of management.

Past projects have been informed by detailed research into the development of machines as forms of human prosthetic and their relation with various theories of control, from disciplinary control to informatics and the societies of control. His works utilise methods of fictional writing, appropriation, re-mixing and re-contextualisation to construct detailed proposals and parallel fictions which are often site specific and identify new relations between technology and ecology and new visions of human and non-human agency.

His current research focuses on the materialities and infrastructures of media technologies and their relation with the ecological. He recently developed a large scale project titled 'Re-writing the overcode' which traces the complex production networks and ‘hyperobjects' of digital devices. It exposed the material origins of the black boxed device and looked at defining a new set of relations between the human, the earth’s crust and its raw materials. The outputs of this project included a large scale audio installation that manifests as a performative transmission from dead and forgotten technologies.

He has exhibited his works internationally including recent solo shows at The Stanley Picker Gallery, London; Spike Island, Bristol and Aspex Portsmouth and group shows at WRO, Poland; Nunnery Gallery, London; Meetfactory, Prague; Whitechapel Gallery, London and Zentrum Paul Klee, Switzerland.

He has also created performances and lectures for international conferences and events including Geologies of Value and Vestige, Kingston University; The Signal and the rock at Central Art Academy, Beijing and at Arnolfini, Bristol and Strata Conference, Aberystwyth University. He is the organiser of the Digital Ecologies symposia series at Bath Spa University, the first symposium was titled 'Digital Ecologies and the Anthropocene' and took place in 2017.

He also recently completed a collaborative project with scientist Dr Darren Logan at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge which was funded by a Wellcome Trust Large Arts Award and produced by Animate Projects, London. In this project, he researched the technologies and software used by Dr Logan to sequence genomes. In response he produced a short film titled 'The Signal and the Noise' which looks at aligning the history of computer coding with human coding and looks towards potential future scenarios of hybrid computing and genome sequencing.

In the past he has also worked in a range of commercial roles focusing specifically on user experience design, digital strategy and research. He has worked as a freelancer and with a range of digital agencies and broadcasters.

Academic qualifications

• PhD - Kingston University, London
• MFA Art Practice - Goldsmiths College, University of London
• MA Electronic Media - Oxford Brookes University
• BA (Hons) Fine Art - Oxford Brookes University

Teaching specialism

• Media art
• Digital media practice
• Digital cultures
• Transmedia practice
• Digital materiality
• Practice Based research methodologies.

Current scholarship

Current research focuses on:

• Contemporary systems of control and their associated belief systems
• Fictional methods and their potential as a strategy within critical practice
• Actor networks, hyperobjects and non-human voices
• Environmental media and technological materiality 

Other external roles

• Link Tutor for FdA Film and Media Arts Production and BA Lens Based Media, Weston College
• PhD external examiner - Aberystwyth University.